The Best Travel Hair Dryers

Best Choice

Compact and lightweight design

The Revlon Essentials Compact Styler 1875W is a lightweight hair dryer for traveling. It weighs in at a little over a pound.

Best Choice

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Pros:
The high setting gets very hot on this little guy. Your hair will dry quicker than with other travel hair dryers so you can get on with life outside the bathroom. It comes in three colors. There is a pink one and a yellow one – both very cute. This tool also comes in black. It’s not very noisy, and there is a removable filter for cleaning dust and lint. It has the standard settings for a travel dryer: high and low with a cool shot. It is a folding hair dryer.

Cons:
Some users found the low setting to be unimpressive. There has been a minimal percentage of defective units wherein the high setting had extreme, uncomfortable heat. This hair dryer is not dual voltage.

For Less Frizz And Damage

Lightweight for travel

A step up from the Revlon Essentials dryer, the Revlon Ionic Ceramic Compact 1875W also weighs a bit over a pound and gets the job done well.

For Less Frizz And Damage

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Pros:
This travel hair dryer has a lot of power and a powerful blower. It is unusual to see a travel hair dryer that is ionic ceramic in the cheap category of hair dryers. This product is a great deal! You’ll get a more professional look with this hair dryer, with less frizz and less damage. It also has a very short nozzle and comes with a smoothing concentrator attachment, both of which make for easier styling. It is dual voltage, so you will be able to use it overseas, if necessary.

Cons:
The concentrator attachment does not always like to stay on, however. It fits loosely. When it stays, it works perfectly. Due to the high power of this appliance, it is also a bit on the loud side.

Best For Styling

Create your own favorite style

The Conair 1875W Ionic Styler comes with a five and a half-inch cord. You might remember this retro hair dryer and styler in one. Now it's made for today.

Best For Styling

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Pros:
This travel hair dryer comes with three different attachments. It has a detangling comb that is very helpful for keeping long or thick hair from tangling while drying. The detangling comb attachment also helps to provide volume. The regular comb attachment is to facilitate straightening hair that is mildly curly without a flat iron. The bristle brush attachment is for blowing out very curly hair to get it straight. It’s a dual voltage hair dryer and dries hair rapidly.

Cons:
Some users have a hard time getting the brush attachment to stay connected to the hair dryer and say that it warps a bit the more times it is used. There are also complaints that when on low, the dryer is not powerful enough.

Best Folding Hair Dryer

Folding handle for compact storage

In the cheap hair dryer arena, Conair is king - after Revlon, of course. And this Conair is probably the smallest travel hair dryer out there.

Best Folding Hair Dryer

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Pros:
The Conair 1875W Compact Folding has the same properties as all the products here on our best list. There are two heat settings with a cold shot, and the dryer is dual voltage. It also weighs about a pound. What differs about this Conair dryer is how small it is, and how much smaller it folds up to be. Despite its size, we found this hair dryer to be great to use daily in place of a conventional hair dryer.

Cons:
Since we are discussing the common features of travel hair dryers, they also all seem to lack sufficient power and heat on the low setting. For this reason, portable hair dryers may not be ideal for people with fine hair strands who normally use the dryer on low.

For Ultra Fast Dryin

Gives a lovely salon finish

The Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryer is a high-tech hair dryer. More protective for the hair, once you get used to it, you won't want to use anything else.

For Ultra Fast Dryin

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Pros:
A very expensive tool, users report this hair dryer is worth every cent if you are a person who uses a blow dryer everyday – especially if you want results that look like they came out of a salon. Relatively gentle on the hair, this hair dryer works in about half the time as others, even though it uses less heat. It comes with three magnetic attachments. There are four heat settings and three-speed settings in this dryer. It is compact enough to be stored away in a regular drawer.

Cons:
Did we say it was expensive? The cost averages about $400, depending on where and when you purchase it. It is also a pretty heavy device and weighs about five pounds. There is a learning curve to be conquered with the Dryson Supersonic, and even if you don’t like gadgets, you will be impressed with this one.

What really matters

Sufficient heat and power to do the job

With portable hair dryers, there is always the worry that they will be less powerful to do the job. Or worse, there is a dread that they will be as useless as hotel hair dryers sometimes are.

All the travel hair dryers on this list crank out the heat, even though they only host two heat settings. The high setting on these is super powerful, and the ability to wield smaller hair dryers easily without hurting your arms is a plus.

Portability is important

These are made to be toted around, hence the smaller sizes. They fit inside traveling and gym bags with no fuss. Dryers that have folding handles work even better because the handle itself provides some protection from the appliance getting knocked around. If you choose a travel hair dryer with a folding handle, it will be a more convenient choice and one that will help keep your new dryer safe while in transit.

Good grip and handling

Being able to zip around your head with a dryer is one of the benefits of owning a small hair dryer. For some people, the ease of handling makes travel hair dryers their standard choice for drying and styling their hair. With a short nozzle that’s pushing out a lot of air and heat, you should be able to get your whole head dried with less fuss than a standard dryer.

The best travel hair dryers are those that have a good grip on the handle. You should not have to hold the hair dryer to tightly. It can be tiring, especially when your arm has to get into so many different positions to dry your hair around your head.

What’s in right now

Multi-products are the most popular right now. These are the two-in-one and three-in-one hair dryers that combine hair styling and drying in one product. These hair dryers usually have attachments that help you multitask so you can get out of the bathroom quicker. Comb and brush attachments help you to detangle and straighten your hair. A diffuser attachment can help preserve a curly style you’ve already created with a curl defining product but dries the roots of your hair for added volume. A diffuser also helps get the roots of thick hair to dry quickly during the winter months. Drying the roots with a diffuser allows the length of the hair to air dry, preserving the integrity of your curls. Concentrator attachments are used to dry individual sections of hair with a round brush to create curls. Of course, the more attachments your travel hair dryer comes with, the more aid it will deliver to your styling routine.

Prices

Expensive

$30 – $50 These are the travel hair dryers the pros carry around with them instead of packing full sizes. Names like BaByliss, Hot Tools, and higher-end Conair products are in this category. They almost always have folding handles, are ionic, and have one or two attachments.

Mid-range

$20 – $30 These may or may not be from the big names in hair dryers, but they are usually ceramic or titanium, come with one attachment, and are dual voltage. They should also come with a folding handle.

Cheap

$10-$20 Some of these have a folding mechanism, and others do not. If of good quality, they work as well as the mid-range and expensive travel hair dryers. They will not have the ceramic or titanium coatings, however, so they might not give the same salon finish.

FAQs

The best tools to use with a travel hair dryer

The best tools to dry and create curls at the same time without an attachment are round brushes. These come in many different sizes to create small or large and tight or loose curls and for all different hair lengths. The nozzles on standard and travel hair dryers are usually the same width. If your portable dryer happens to be more narrow than the standard width, you may want to choose a narrower round brush so that your curls dry evenly. The brush will work better if it has bristles instead of prongs. A heat protectant in liquid or spray form is an excellent  product to apply before drying to protect your tresses.

Best way to wield a travel hair dryer as opposed to the standard size dryer

With a travel hair dryer, it is not necessary to hold your arms so far out to dry your hair. Because the nozzle is short, you can hold it much closer to your head. We’ve even seen people lean on their dressing table to dry their hair. So as long as you have a nice grippy handle, a concentrator attachment, and a powerful dryer, you can dry and style your hair in a much more relaxed manner.

Just remember travel hair dryers do not usually have a filter for the fan, so be careful not to get your hair caught inside the nozzle when operating them at certain angles or when they are close to the hair.

Standard features to look for in a travel hair dryer

The travel hair dryer you choose to take around with you should have a folding handle. It will pack smaller that way. It should at least have two heat settings to keep your hair healthy by using a combination of both. It should have a cool shot for setting your style. Preferably there will be a concentrator attachment at least, at most two or three different attachments. In short, it should be something you would not mind using at home or away from home.

Portable hair dryers are powerful, so to keep your hair from blowing all over the place, a concentrator is a good idea. These hair dryers are made to pack a punch, so don’t expect too much from the low setting. If you choose a dual voltage hair dryer, the low setting is more ideal for use overseas. The high setting cannot be used at all on any heat tools when you’re using 250v. You must set the dryer to low in this case, and because the current is more powerful than the 125v we have in North America, it functions as a high setting.

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