I should probably preface this post by saying that I am, in fact, a bald man with no use for a hairdryer.
And when my wife told me she wanted to spend $400 on one, I insisted that she was on crack.
But then, our sponsor Best Buy offered to send us the Dyson Supersonic hairdryer to review. The very one my wife had been eyeballing. I was still skeptical because the facts remain that A) we typically charge a lot more than $400 for a blog post and B) it's a hairdryer. Seriously.
“Kim Kardashian uses it!” she exclaimed.
Yawn.
“It's made by Dyson.”
That's where my interest piqued. We have a Dyson vacuum that's pretty much the greatest sucking machine of all time. Those people know wind technology, I will give them that. So I pulled up the specs for this ridiculously over-the-top beauty product and…well…I was intrigued.
The Dyson Supersonic hair dryer uses a unique 110,000 RPM digital motor for super-speedy drying, with special sensors that measure air temperature 20 times per second to protect hair from heat damage. Said motor is actually in the handle instead of the head unit so the operator's hand doesn't get as tired and sound is muffled, and it has a crazy-long cord for total maneuverability. It uses magnetic attachments, including a smoothing nozzle, a styling concentrator and a diffuser with three speed and four heat settings so Chelsea can get her hair into whatever style she wants.
Frankly, though, I don't care about any of that.
What I DO care about is the fact that my wife – who used to spend almost half an hour drying her hair – has cut that time down to less than five minutes thanks to this $400 machine.
You see, Chelsea has super-thick hair that even her hairdresser loudly complains about. Apparently it holds onto liquid like a fiend.
It must know that California's in a drought.
When we were in college, Chelsea had plenty of time to sit around drying her hair and it was nothing more than a vague nuisance while we were trying to get out the door. Now that we've had four kids and started our own business, though, her life looks more like this. It's not unusual for me to find her feeding the baby, putting on makeup and fielding a conference call all at once. So anything that can shave minutes off of her day is admittedly a pretty big deal for both of us because it means she's in a better mood all-around.
But is it a $400 big deal?
Turns out, it is.
My wife started cutting and bleaching her hair a couple years ago to make her life easier and combat the ridiculous drying time. The boys and I vocalized our preference for her long, brown hair, but apparently Chelsea's head is not a democratic situation.
Well, thanks to this hairdryer's magical skills, she's now growing it back out! So the boys are happy and mama gets more time in her day, and we'll save $150-ish in monthly salon fees. Chelsea also says that this fancy-pants dryer makes her hair super-smooth, she can ditch most of the products she was using and save money there, too.
Best of all, the motor is quiet and doesn't freak the baby out like the old dryer did. So Chelsea can deal with him while she's getting ready. Which frees up my time to play video games do more helpful things.
Clearly, everybody wins here.
Have you ever splurged on a household item that made your life easier?