Dyson Airwrap
A $549-600 hair styler with a genuine cult following — Dyson's beauty division alone pulled in £6.6 billion in 2024, even as company-wide profit was cut in half.
The Airwrap is Dyson's multi-styling hair tool, using airflow (rather than direct heat contact) to curl, smooth, and dry hair — the product most responsible for Dyson's move from a vacuum-cleaner company into a genuine beauty tech player. It's consistently one of the most-wishlisted, hardest-to-catch-on-sale items in the beauty space.
A genuine cult product, even as the parent company had a rough year
Dyson's overall technology revenue fell from £7.1 billion to £6.6 billion in FY2024, and pre-tax profit was cut roughly in half — the company cited weaker consumer confidence, currency swings, a factory fire in the Philippines that caused an Airwrap shortage, and a broader restructuring that cut 1,000 jobs.
Despite that, the Airwrap specifically has stayed a genuinely aspirational, frequently-sold-out product — Dyson kept iterating rather than resting on the original, releasing the Bluetooth-connected Airwrap i.d. in 2024, which adapts styling settings to a user's specific hair type via a companion app.
Why it costs what it costs — and why people still buy it anyway
The core technology is the Coanda effect — airflow that curls hair around a barrel using air pressure rather than direct heat contact — which Dyson has patented extensively (238 new patents in 2024 alone) and which is the main technical differentiator competitors like Shark's FlexStyle are chasing at a much lower price point.
It functions as both a styler and a dryer, which is part of the value case at this price — a genuine "multi-tool" instead of a single-purpose curling iron.
