Product: Pro Volare Hair Dryer
Manufacturer: Babyliss
Wired Rating: 7
While you can’t actually drive the Babyliss Pro Volare hair dryer, its 2,000-watt Ferrari-built AC V-12 engine will leave you windblown enough to look like you just did a couple of laps in a drop-top Daytona. In other words, you’ll look rich — and honestly if you’re dropping $400 on a blow dryer, you probably are.
With its brilliant red finish, multiple heat and speed settings, and use of a ball-bearing engine (a first in a hairstyling tool), the Volare is one elegant rig. The grill is made with nano-titanium, which conducts far-infrared heat better than the ceramic grills found in most other models. Geeky stylists will also tell you one of the byproducts of a hair dryer is positively charged cations, which often cause frizzy coifs. The Volare’s titanium components coupled with an internal tri-port ionic generator are designed to emit negatively charged anions and cut the frizz out.
Conair claims the Volare capable of pushing air to a hurricane-worthy 80 mph. For us, that’s a speed really only necessary if you’re using it to save money at the laundromat. That said, it dried my fine, medium-length chestnut locks in five minutes flat. For a dryer of this wattage, we were expecting a roar that would wake the neighbors as well as an appreciable amount of vibration in the body, but thanks to the lubrication-sealed ball-bearing design, the Volare runs smooth and quiet.
We loved the extra-long tangle-free cord, which allowed for great maneuverability and full arm extension while drying. The six heat and speed settings were useful, especially for turning it down a little, as the wind-tunnel effect on our first couple of drives caused the underside of our hair to dread, which is a plus only if you’re heading to Burning Man.
The dryer comes equipped with two sizes of diffuser add-ons, which focused all that hot air, and got our hair smooth and straight, although not as shiny, silky, Gisele-y as we are used to with salon-quality dryers. If you’re going to spend this kind of money, you want to leave the house looking like an understudy in a Pantene commercial.
WIRED So pretty, even bald dudes wanted to touch it. 10-foot tangle-free cord seemed really long at first, but was actually the perfect length for comfortable drying. Long engine brushes and ball-bearing design mean you get 2,000 hours of drying time. Hang ring is cool: simple but great touch. Very quiet for a dryer with this kind of horsepower.
TIRED Ferrari-like price — although our stylist friends say a pro-level hair dryer can cost $500. Turbo-speed button is overkill: It blows so hard it tangles. Doesn’t leave hair very shiny.