Dyson Airwrap Co-anda2x review: worth £580 for hair that's changed with age?

"Your ends are telling on you, Gill." That was my hairdresser in the spring, holding a pinch of my hair up to the light like evidence. She was right. Every morning for twelve years I'd blasted my hair with a dryer and then clamped it between straighteners set to 200°C. Around 52, it started answering back.

Menopause does odd things to hair, and nobody warns you properly. Mine got finer overall, drier at the ends, and the grey coming through at the parting is wiry and springy, so it sticks up in any damp weather. I live in Bristol. It is always damp weather.

That's the question I brought to the Dyson Airwrap Co-anda2x. Can a £579.99 styler that works with air instead of hot plates give me smooth hair without cooking it? And because my head isn't everyone's head, my neighbour Priya, who has thick, poker-straight black hair to the middle of her back, tested it too. Between us: 33 sessions, six weeks, one stopwatch.

What you actually get in a UK box

All Airwraps rely on the Coanda effect. Fast air running over a curved surface clings to it, so when you bring a section of hair near a barrel, the air wraps the hair round for you. No clamp, no hot metal. The hair dries and takes its shape at the same time.

Inside the handle of the Co-anda2x spins Dyson's Hyperdymium 2 motor, which the company says pushes double the air, at double the pressure, of the Airwraps before it. You feel that as a barrel that snatches up a thick section straight away and keeps hold of it.

The UK Straight+Wavy set I bought came with two Coanda barrels (30 mm and 40 mm), a round volumising brush, an anti-snag loop brush, a smoothing attachment and a fast dryer head. On 30 July, Dyson released four new attachments in the UK as separate buys: a conical curling barrel and a longer 40 mm barrel at £34.90 each, a larger round brush at £34.90 and the Air Straightener 2x at £39.90. I bought the conical barrel and the air straightener on launch day, so they're in this review too.

How we tested it

I bought the set at full price and started on 17 July. Priya joined on the 20th, and we both kept going until 1 September. Every session went into a shared note on our phones: hair wet or damp, attachment, time on a stopwatch, and a photo by the landing window at lunchtime and again after breakfast the following day.

I also put a cheap hygrometer on the bathroom shelf, because frizz is really a humidity story. Over the six weeks it read between 61% and 88%. On a probe thermometer I checked the air 2.5 cm from each attachment on every heat setting, and I timed drying on three matched wash days against my old dryer. Everything else follows the rules we use across the site, which you'll find on our how we test page.

Session one, and the bus stop lesson

My first go took 37 minutes and looked lovely in the bathroom mirror. Soft, bouncy waves. I felt about 40. Then I walked down to Gloucester Road for the bus, and by the time the 75 turned up, in fine drizzle, most of the waves had quietly given up. I got on looking like I'd been caught in a hedge.

The mistake was mine, and it's the most common one. I hadn't used the cold shot. Each wrap wants roughly 10 seconds of warm air to shape it, then 6 seconds of cold to fix it. Without the cold, the shape is still soft when it meets damp air, and damp air wins.

Drying: where it quietly earns its keep

Everyone talks about the curls. For both of us, the drying was the thing we'd miss most. My shoulder-length hair went from towel-dry to dry in 7 minutes 50 seconds on average, while my old dryer needed 11 minutes 20 seconds on comparable wash days.

Priya's results were the headline. Her hair is thick and nearly a metre long when you measure it, which she did, for us, with my sewing tape. Her usual dryer took 23 minutes 30 seconds. The Airwrap took 14 minutes 10 seconds. She washes four times a week, so that's more than half an hour back every week, which she has mostly spent, in her words, "sitting down for once."

The finish was smoother too. On the photos, my crown had noticeably fewer flyaways after Airwrap drying on 12 of 14 wash days. Part of that is lower heat and part is the direction of the air, which runs down the hair instead of blasting at it from every angle.

Waves, curls and the conical barrel

On my hair, the 40 mm barrel gave the loose, grown-up waves I wanted. With the cold shot, they lasted through the day and about half the shape was still there the next morning. On day two, a couple of minutes with the round brush and it was fit for the office again.

The conical barrel arrived in August. It's narrower at the tip, so it makes a tighter curl at the ends and a looser one near the root. I liked it for the pieces around my face. It's also easier to get close to the scalp without the barrel knocking your ear, which matters more than you'd think at half seven in the morning.

Priya's hair was the honest test, and the honest answer is mixed. Her hair is heavy and very straight, the kind that sheds a curl the way a duck sheds water. On the first four tries, her waves had dropped to gentle bends by 3 p.m. What helped: a light mousse on damp hair, a full 6-second cold shot, and pinning each wave up while she made her son's packed lunch. With all three, the waves were still there at teatime. Without them, an old-fashioned curling tong keeps its grip on hair like hers for longer.

The Air Straightener 2x: my favourite £39.90

This is the add-on I was most curious about, because straighteners were what did the damage in the first place. The Air Straightener 2x closes over a section like ordinary straighteners, except the plates are never scorching: warm air flows out through them. Dyson's claim is wet to dry and straight, sometimes with a single pass.

On Priya's hair, one to two passes, and it came out sleek and swingy. On mine, two passes per section, and the finish was smooth and soft rather than glassy. My old straighteners still win on shine. But my probe never read more than about 95°C between the plates. My straighteners were set to 200°C for twelve years. That gap is the whole point.

The bit I didn't expect: the wiry greys at my parting. With straighteners, they'd flatten and then spring back within the hour. With the air plates they lay down and mostly stayed down, on 17 of my 21 sessions that used them. I don't fully know why, and Dyson doesn't claim it, so take it as one woman's parting.

"My hair's so thick I'd given up straightening it on weekdays. With the air plates I did it before work twice, and I'm not someone who does anything before work." Priya Chauhan, our neighbour and second tester

A few words for anyone whose hair has changed

If you're in your forties or fifties and your hair isn't what it was, a few things from these six weeks might save you some trial and error.

• Use the middle heat setting, not the top one. On finer, drier hair, it shaped just as well and my ends felt softer by week three.
• Greys and fine hair need less time per wrap. I cut the front sections to about 7 seconds of warm air and the wave held just as well.
• Don't chase volume at the crown with the barrel. The round volumising brush, used at the roots while drying, gave more lift with less fuss.
• Trim first. Split ends look frizzy whatever tool you use. My hairdresser took off a centimetre in August and the results improved immediately.

None of this is magic, and it won't turn back hormones. But I finished the six weeks with ends that my hairdresser described, cautiously, as "better behaved." From her, that's a rave.

Living with it day to day

Noise first. On high, I measured 78 dB at arm's length, where my old dryer hit 83 dB. It's not quiet, but the roar has gone. Martin, my husband, can now hear the radio in the kitchen while I'm upstairs, which he mentions more than the hair.

Fluff builds up in a mesh filter at the base of the handle, and once it's furred up you lose airflow and the handle warms. An old toothbrush once a week sorted it. Swapping heads is quick, they snap on magnetically, but seven attachments and a case need a proper home. Ours ended up in a drawer divider, after I found the 30 mm barrel inside one of Martin's slippers, which nobody has been able to explain.

I also took it to my sister's in Brittany for a week in August. Because the UK model runs on the same voltage as mainland Europe, it just needed a plug adapter. It worked exactly as at home. Our son Callum, back from uni for the summer, used the fast dryer head once on his wet trainers. It worked on those too, apparently, and he has been asked not to do it again.

The key numbers

Is it worth £580? The honest sums

A good dryer costs £80 to £300, decent straighteners £60 to £200, a curling tong £40 to £100. If, like me, you were using all three most weeks, you're already at £180 to £600 in tools, and the Airwrap replaces them with a lot less heat. Add the air straightener at £39.90 and the gap shrinks further.

If you mostly just dry your hair and save styling for weddings, that's a lot to spend on saving time. Own an earlier Airwrap already? This one is quicker and punchier, but it won't feel like a new world. Watch the promotions: £50 off at the big stockists isn't unusual, and that's worth waiting a few weeks for.

Who it's for, and who can skip it

Cheaper routes to good hair

Dyson Airwrap i.d.: the older model, a touch less powerful, and typically about £100 less now. For most people buying their first Airwrap, that's where I'd start.

Shark FlexStyle: under half the money, and the handle folds to become a normal dryer. Gentler airflow and a less polished finish, but surprisingly close on waves for medium-length hair.

A decent dryer and a round brush: if slow drying is your only complaint, a quick dryer on its own fixes most of it and costs far less.

Grooming in our house wasn't only about me this summer. Our physio, Darren, put the Philips OneBlade Pro 360 through seven weeks on his face, his legs and a rugby club's worth of ankles. For everything else we've tested, the blog has the full list.

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