Shark FlexStyle or Dyson Airwrap: Which Styling Tool Is for You?

Introduced in 2022, the $300 Shark FlexStyle is a powerful hair dryer, hair straightener, and hair curler. When buying the FlexStyle directly from Shark, you can choose which of the nine available attachments you’d like included with your kit. (A variety of bundles with different included attachments are available for purchase at other retailers.) You can also buy additional attachments separately, for $30 each.

The $600 Dyson Airwrap, which launched in 2018, has the same drying, straightening, and curling capabilities. But unlike the FlexStyle, it cannot completely replace a traditional hair dryer, as it is meant to get hair only semi-dry before you use the other attachments, though some people do find it adequate for their drying needs.

When buying a new Airwrap directly from Dyson or other retailers, you can choose between a kit that includes a set of six attachments meant for curly or coily hair, including a diffuser and a wide-tooth comb, or for straight or wavy hair, including more curling-iron widths and brushes. You can buy additional attachments separately for $40 each.

Notable attachment differences include the FlexStyle’s concentrator, which the Airwrap lacks, and the Airwrap’s additional, larger curling barrel (1.6 inches). The two tools’ brush attachments differ slightly in style too, with the Airwrap having more size options, and the FlexStyle offering an additional shape (oval, in addition to the traditional paddle and round brush heads).

Both the Airwrap and the FlexStyle use Coanda airflow technology, which factors into patents that Dyson owns related to the Airwrap (PDF)—intellectual property that Shark parent company SharkNinja says it has not infringed.

But only the FlexStyle is billed as a standard hair dryer, and for good reason. When bent into the hair-dryer position and used free of attachments, the FlexStyle is nearly as fast and hot as many of the best traditional hair dryers, so you can use it to go from just washed to fully styled, no other device needed. This unique capacity essentially eliminates the need for a separate hair dryer for people who blow dry as the first of multiple hairstyling steps.

Meanwhile, Dyson markets the Airwrap as a finishing tool for use on slightly damp—not wet—hair. The Airwrap’s smoothing dryer attachment is not a traditional hair dryer, so we did not test it as such. But it is very hot and very fast. Fully drying a head of hair using the dryer-attachment-equipped Airwrap is not impossible, but it’s clunkier and more time-consuming compared with using the FlexStyle with or without any drying-specific attachments. Some reviews claim that the Airwrap dries hair slightly faster than the FlexStyle. In our timed testing on fine, straight hair, we could not replicate this result.

Because the FlexStyle base twists 90 degrees into a hair dryer, all of its attachments can work in this position, too, affording you a different grip and more styling versatility. As with any hairstyling tool, a learning curve is involved, and depending on your skills and hair type, you might find your styling efforts falling flat over time (though that’s a possibility with any styling tool).

The Airwrap’s button placement is significantly better than the FlexStyle’s, making that tool easier to control during use. (The FlexStyle’s buttons are largely out of reach.) And the Airwrap’s curling barrels are easier and less awkward to use than the FlexStyle’s curlers, which require switching barrels mid-styling to curl hair either toward or away from the face; the Airwrap, in contrast, can change the direction of the airflow with the flick of a switch at the top of the base.

The FlexStyle also comes in only two colors (black and stone) with seasonal limited editions, while the Airwrap comes in multiple colors year-round, including special editions like the delightful Ceramic Pop.

Not every FlexStyle kit comes with a storage case, but every Airwrap set does; Shark sells a FlexStyle storage case for $50. The Airwrap case is mostly functional—cramming the styler and all its attachments back inside can take some finessing—but depending on your taste, it’s possibly display-worthy.

Whether for the superior button placement, the bidirectional curling barrels, the color options, or the storage case, some people may find the Airwrap well worth the additional investment in comparison with the FlexStyle. But don’t count on a better blowout.

This article was edited by Tracy Vence and Kalee Thompson.