the shark flexstyle came home and my airwrap had to justify itself

Once a week or so since my airwrap post, the same comment lands in my inbox: love this, but does it have to cost six hundred dollars? So when the shark flexstyle dropped to $199.99 on shark's own site last month, I did the only responsible thing a blogger with a full bathroom counter can do. I bought a second almost identical device and staged a tournament.

Six sunday nights. Two stylers. One dog asleep on the bath mat like a tiny neutral judge.

the honest bit, both receipts on the counter 💸

The confession first, since it's the engine of this post: I bought the flexstyle partly to review it and partly to find out whether past me got scammed.

Did she? The answer is "sort of, and also no," and I'll show my work.

The honest answer on the gap: it moves around. List to list it's about $300. Sale to sale, closer to $320. On the weeks when everything aligns, the shark costs less than a third of the dyson. The question isn't "is the flexstyle good." It's "is the dyson worth another few hundred dollars," and that depends on how many sundays a year you do this.

what the cheaper tool does the same

The physics are the same and the trick still works. Both tools use the coanda effect, the airflow fluke that pulls hair around a barrel with air instead of heat, and the flexstyle's auto-wrap curlers produce the same small miracle the dyson did. Week two, mid-podcast, a section caught and wrapped itself and I stood there with my mouth open again. Same trick, same "oh." The guardian's reviewer timed both on her fine, clavicle-length hair and both took seven minutes from damp to blown out. On my longer, wavier hair the shark ran maybe two minutes behind, which I can live with.

The low-heat religion carries over. Four heat settings, three airflow settings, a cool shot, and both brands build their identity on not cooking your hair. My ends, which have been through it, stayed calm the same way they did under the dyson. No burnt-haystack smell, no red ears, and the curls set once I used the cool shot this time. Growth.

The finish is most of the way there. The blowout the shark produces is, to the naked eye, the same blowout. My coworker who notices hair asked about my bangs. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has clocked which machine I used. Back to back on sundays, the dyson's result was a little silkier and its curls survived a humid day maybe an hour longer. That's real, but it's the difference between very good and slightly better.

where the shark straight up wins

The bend. The base rotates 90 degrees and turns into an actual blow dryer, the kind you can rough dry with, which the dyson's straight wand makes awkward. This is the flexstyle's best idea. My old college dryer, kept "as a backup," went into the donation bag within the month.

The learning curve. The dyson i.d. wants you to download an app, connect over bluetooth, and program your curl times. It's neat, but the flexstyle comes with a paper manual and buttons, and I was producing decent curls on week two instead of the dyson's three sad weeks. The guardian's tester picked the shark here too.

The brushes, genuinely. The flexstyle's oval brush mixes lengths of bristle and it grips hair better than the dyson's version, which the guardian's tester also found. For a straight-and-smooth day I reached for the shark first. It also wins on price in every direction: a build-your-own with three attachments, extras at $39.99 a pop, same as dyson, and a base machine that starts half off.

where the airwrap keeps its crown

The curling barrels are better. Dyson sells three widths and two shapes, including a conical barrel that gets close to the roots, and its barrel is an inch longer, holding more hair per pass. You also switch curl direction with a button on the dyson instead of swapping barrels on the shark, which matters more than I expected at 9pm with wet arms.

The details money buys. The dyson's buttons sit at the top of the wand where my fingers naturally live, while the shark's are at the bottom and I kept covering its intake with my palm. The dyson runs about seven decibels quieter at max, per the guardian's measurements. And it feels like an expensive object in the hand, the way a brass faucet does, which is shallow and I care about it anyway.

the verdict, priced out honestly

Here is what I did, not what anyone should do: I kept both. The dyson keeps the sunday ritual job it earned last year. The flexstyle took the tuesday job, the wet-hair-fifteen-minutes job, and the travel job.

If I were starting from zero today, with my hair and my habits, I'd buy the flexstyle and pocket roughly $320. The guardian's tester landed in the same place: identical results for nearly half the price, unless the dyson's extras matter to you. The deluxe version is worth a premium. It is not worth a second rent payment, and the industry knows it, which is why the shark is always on sale and the dyson never is.

the tangent: the tutorial finally happened, with the wrong tool

Remember my one wavy friend who has been asking for the airwrap tutorial since last year, the one I kept almost booking? She finally came over three sundays ago, sat on my Marketplace chair, and we laid every attachment on the counter like surgery. The diffuser we reached for first was the shark's, because my 4-in-1 came with one, and she loved it on her waves so much she ordered her own that night, from my couch, in her socks.

A year of scheduling, and the answer was the cheaper tool the whole time. Her text the next morning said "the curls held through spin class," which is more than my hair has ever promised anyone.

the soft landing

I keep meaning to move the dyson's suitcase back under the bed where it belongs, and every time I open the lid to check a barrel I

The truest thing: the expensive tool taught me my hair could hold a curl at all, and the cheap one taught me that was never magic, it was mechanics, and mechanics go on sale.

ava, sunday judge, signing off