GHD Air Hair Dryer Review

GHD is best known for its straighteners, but the company also makes stylish and premium hair products including curlers, brushes and hair dryers. We’ve been putting the GHD Air hair dryer through its paces to bring you our full review.

GHD Air Price and Availability

The GHD Air hair dryer costs £99 in the UK. It’s available to buy directly from GHD’s website, as well as John Lewis, Amazon and Look Fantastic. If you’d like the additional diffuser, roller brush and sectioning clips, there’s also a GHD Air Style Kit available from Amazon for an additional £16.

In the US, the GHD Air is available from Amazon or GHD for $199. The US Black Friday offer is even better, with 25 percent off to bring the overall price down to $149.

There’s also a Limited Edition Lulu Guinness model of the GHD Air available at the same price, but with limited stock you’ll need to get in quickly if you want to get your hands on one. We explain the differences between the two models below.

You can get the Lulu Guinness GHD Air from  John Lewis, Feel Unique and Toni & Guy, or from GHD US here.

GHD Air Design and Build

There are two models of the Air hair dryer available from GHD: the original and the Lulu Guinness model. We’ve been using the latter, but aside from some minor differences that don’t affect the performance of features, they are essentially the same.

The GHD Air by Lulu Guinness adds a touch of pink to the metallic portions of the hair dryer, you’ll get a coordinating dust bag for storage that you won’t get with the original model, and for every purchase £10 is donated to Breast Cancer Now ($5 for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center if you’re in the US).

Beyond that, your experience with either model will be the same. Right down to the packaging, this looks and feels like a premium product. It’s simple and sleek, with subtle metallic touches within an otherwise solid black design.

The heat and power controls are positioned perfectly beneath your fingers as you use it, so you won’t need to take the hairdryer away from your head to look at them whilst you’re styling. It feels comfortable to hold, but is a little on the heavy side at 1.54kg.

There are rubber bumpers on the widest parts of the hairdryer to stop you from cracking its shell, but they do get a little dusty after a few uses. Its cable is wonderfully long at 3m, so if your dressing table isn’t as close to a plug socket as you’d like you shouldn’t have a problem.

When it comes to noise, it’s noticeably quieter than other hair dryers we’ve used so is ideal if there are members of your household asleep.

GHD Air Features and Use

Beyond its design, you’ll be pleased to hear that it’s effective, too. GHD claims that it’s twice as fast as a regular consumer hair dryer, which without extensive testing is tricky to confirm but we definitely noticed a big difference. It’s particularly powerful, and even without the included concentrator nozzle attached it feels as though the air is exceptionally precise.

What we were unable to determine was whether the advanced ionic technology within the hair dryer made a difference. GHD says it’s designed to reduce frizz and result in a softer finish but we didn’t notice much of a difference and still needed to use frizz-reducing hair products as well as straighteners to finish styling.

However, the top heat setting seems like a perfect temperature that is effective without damaging the hair, and because it’s speedier overall we have found that we are more thorough, meaning our hair keeps its style in place for longer.

Talking of temperature, there are three settings available: cool, medium and hot. The cool really is cool (we’ve tried hair dryers in the past that still feel very warm on the cool setting), and if you want a quick blast there’s a cold trigger button on the front of the hair dryer’s handle too.

(You’ll also like our GHD Platinum+ review.)