Dyson Airwrap Co-anda 2x review: is it worth $750 on thick, frizzy hair?

My hair has two moods. Wet, it's heavy and takes forever to dry. Dry, it turns into a soft, puffy cloud the minute anyone mentions humidity. For fifteen years my routine was a $60 hair dryer, a round brush, a flat iron, and 40 minutes I could have spent sleeping.

So when Dyson relaunched the Airwrap Co-anda 2x on July 9 with a new set of attachments, including a straightener that works with air, I had a very personal question. Can a $749.99 hair tool replace three tools and half my morning? Or is it a beautiful pink object that ends up in the cupboard with the facial steamer?

I didn't want to answer that with only my own hair, because my hair is not your hair. So our tester Tammy Rademacher, who has fine, straight, shoulder-length hair and two toddlers who give her about nine minutes each morning, used it too. Between us we logged 38 sessions over seven weeks.

What's new in the Co-anda 2x

Every Airwrap works on the same trick, the Coanda effect. Fast air flowing over a curved surface sticks to it, so when you hold a section of hair near the barrel, the air wraps the hair around it for you. No clamp and no hot metal. The hair gets dried and shaped with air that stays well below flat iron temperatures.

The Co-anda 2x has Dyson's new Hyperdymium 2 motor, and Dyson claims twice the air pressure of the Airwrap i.d. That's the number that matters, because more pressure means the barrel grabs hair faster and holds thick sections better. The machine itself weighs under a pound.

The July relaunch updated the attachments. The Straight+Wavy set we tested comes with six: a conical curling barrel, a longer 1.6-inch curling barrel, a large round volumizing brush, the new air straightener, a fast dryer head and an anti-snag loop brush. A Curly+Coily set is coming later in the year. On paper, it's a complete kit. On a real Tuesday morning, the first question is how long it takes to learn.

The first session was a disaster, and that's normal

My first go took 48 minutes. I grabbed sections that were far too thick, the barrel wrapped them in the wrong direction on one side, and at one point a piece of hair spun round the barrel so fast that Tom, watching from the doorway, started calling it "the hair vacuum." He still does.

The fix was boring and it worked. Sections no wider than the barrel. Hair about 80% dry before you start curling, not soaking wet. Hold each wrap for 8 to 10 seconds of heat, then 5 seconds of the cold shot to set it. By session four I was at 24 minutes for a full head of waves. By session ten, 19 minutes, which is less than half my old routine.

How we tested it

We bought the set at retail and used it from July 14 to August 30. Each session got a line in the log: hair type, attachment, time with a stopwatch, and how the style looked at 2 p.m. and the next morning, with a photo from the same spot by the window. Tammy and I also tried the attachments the other one used, because a tool this expensive should work for more than one kind of hair.

For heat, we used a small probe thermometer an inch from each attachment on every setting, and compared it with my flat iron. We also timed drying against my old $60 dryer on three identical wash days. It's the same approach we take with everything on the site, explained on our how we test page.

Drying: the most underrated part

Everyone buys an Airwrap for the curls. I ended up loving it for the drying. With the fast dryer attachment, my thick, frizzy chin-length bob went from towel-dry to fully dry in 11 minutes 40 seconds on average, against 19 minutes 10 seconds with my old dryer on the same settings. I wash four times a week, so that's half an hour back every week.

Tammy's fine hair took 4 minutes 30 seconds. She said, word for word, "that's shorter than a toddler's attention span," and for her that's the highest compliment available.

The finish was smoother too. My hair frizzed less when dried with the Airwrap, and the photos show it: fewer flyaways at the crown on 11 of 13 wash days. That's partly the lower heat and partly the angle of the airflow, which runs down the hair shaft instead of blasting it from every direction.

Curls, waves and how long they last

On my hair, the 1.6-inch barrel made the loose, bouncy waves I actually wanted, and they held beautifully. At 2 p.m. they were still defined, and the next morning about two thirds of the shape was still there. A quick pass with the round brush turned day-two waves into a decent blowout.

The conical barrel is the new one, narrower at the tip. It makes tighter curls near the ends and looser ones at the root, which looks more natural on medium-length hair. I liked it for the front pieces around my face, and Tammy preferred it overall because the smaller tip grabbed her shorter layers.

Here's the honest part. On fine, straight hair, Airwrap curls drop faster. Tammy's curls were mostly gone by lunch on the first four tries. What fixed it: a light mousse on damp hair, the cold shot for a full 5 seconds, and pinning each curl up for 10 minutes while she got the kids dressed. With those steps they lasted into the evening. Without them, a traditional curling iron still holds better on hair like hers.

The air straightener: smooth, not glass

This was the attachment I was most curious about. The Air straightener 2x has two plates that you close around a section, but instead of hot metal it blows air through them. Dyson says it can take hair from wet to dry and straight in as little as one pass.

On Tammy's hair, one or two passes was accurate. On mine, it took two or three passes per section, and the result was smooth and swingy rather than glass-straight. For a sleek, poker-straight look my flat iron still wins. But on our probe, the air at the plates peaked at about 205°F, while my flat iron plates sat at 410°F. For hair you style every day, that gap matters a lot more than the last 10% of shine.

"I used to straighten every morning and my ends looked like straw by Friday. Three weeks with the air plates and I stopped needing a trim appointment every six weeks." Tammy Rademacher, home and kitchen tester and mom of two

The small stuff you only notice after a month

Some things don't show up in a first-week review, so here's what seven weeks taught us about living with it.

• Noise: 79 dB at arm's length on high, against 84 dB for my old dryer. Still loud, but less of a jet engine. Tammy could use it without waking the toddler in the next room on 5 of 7 tries.
• The filter: there's a mesh cage at the bottom of the handle that collects dust and hair. When it clogs, the airflow drops and the tool gets warmer. We brushed it out every 10 days or so, which takes a minute with an old toothbrush.
• Attachments: they click on with magnets and swap in two seconds, but six of them take real space. Ours ended up in a drawer organizer, because a pile of barrels in a basket is how one ends up under the sink for a week.
• Heat in the hand: the barrels get warm, the handle doesn't. After a 20-minute session the handle stayed at room temperature on our probe.

None of these are dealbreakers. They're just the difference between a tool you use happily every morning and one you resent a little. So, with all that in mind, here's the spec sheet.

Specs at a glance

Spec	Dyson Airwrap Co-anda 2x
Price at the time of writing	$749.99 (Straight+Wavy set)
Motor	Hyperdymium 2, claimed 2x the air pressure of Airwrap i.d.
Weight	Under 1 lb (styler only)
Attachments in our set	Conical barrel, 1.6-inch barrel, large round brush, air straightener, fast dryer, anti-snag loop brush
Extra attachments	$39.99 each, air straightener $44.99
Max air temp we measured	About 205°F an inch from the attachment
Our drying time, thick hair / fine hair	11 min 40 s / 4 min 30 s
Voltage	US only, not dual voltage

The price row is the big one, so let's look at it next to the alternatives.

Is it worth $750? Some honest math

If you'd otherwise buy a good dryer ($200 to $400), a decent flat iron ($100 to $150) and a curling iron ($60 to $100), you're already at $360 to $650 in tools. The Airwrap replaces all three and is gentler on your hair. For someone like me, who uses all three weekly, the gap is smaller than it looks.

If you only dry your hair and style twice a week, it's a lot of money for convenience. And if you already own an original Airwrap or an Airwrap i.d., the upgrade is faster and lighter but not a different experience. The i.d. is often $100 cheaper now, and that's the one I'd tell most first-time buyers to look at.

Who should buy it, and who shouldn't

Alternatives worth a look

Dyson Airwrap i.d.: the previous model, same idea, a bit less power, often around $100 less. The best value if you want the Dyson experience.

Shark FlexStyle: roughly half the price or less, with a handle that bends into a dryer. Not as strong or as smooth, but it gets surprisingly close on waves.

A good dryer plus a round brush: if drying speed is your main pain, a fast dryer alone solves most of it for a fraction of the cost.

Grooming at home works the same way for the other half of our bathroom. Tom spent eight weeks with the Philips OneBlade Pro 360 earlier this year. For the rest of our beauty and care picks, see the reviews page.

Questions people ask about the Airwrap Co-anda 2x