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- Fast drying
- Stylish design
- Versatile settings
- Expensive
- Heavy and unevenly weighted
- Left hair slightly frizzy at the root
The GHD Speed Ionic is the first hair dryer the haircare giant has launched since the GHD Helios in 2020. Its predecessor was adored by many for its quiet operation, fast drying times and stylish build. It was awarded five stars in our review and has been a long standing feature on our best hair dryer roundup.
Six years later, in February this year, the GHD Speed promised to build on the success of its predecessor, adding helpful styling features and an even more powerful motor. Snazzy features and a stylish new design aside, many good hair dryers have become lighter and more powerful in recent years. As such, the price tags for impressive technology have fallen steadily over time, so the GHD Speed must do a lot of legwork to justify its sky-high £299 price. Unfortunately, its good looks didn’t quite win me over.
GHD Speed hair dryer review: What do you get for the money?
The Speed Ionic hair dryer has a 1650w digital motor, which spins at a blisteringly quick 118,000 RPM. That gives the dryer far more oomph than an older brushed motor with the same wattage.
All that power is channelled into four speed settings, controlled via buttons on the handle. There are also four heat settings and a separate cool shot. A particularly sleek design element is a digital display on the rear of the hair dryer, which displays selected heat and speed settings at a glance. There’s also a settings lock to avoid accidentally changing the settings mid-styling.
Regardless of the chosen setting, the dryer uses ‘halo’ technology, its most distinctive feature: a jet of warm air is surrounded by a ring – or ‘halo’ – of cool air, designed to make the warm air feel more comfortable on the scalp, so you can style right up to the root. This is an exclusive feature on the GHD Speed and, while I’m not blown away by its efficacy, as someone with a sensitive scalp, I appreciate the theory behind it.
The GHD Speed Ionic comes with a magnetic concentrator nozzle as standard. This has an extra plastic layer so that it stays cool to the touch, meaning you can comfortably swap it out with other attachments, like the diffuser, comb and wide concentrator nozzle, which are sold separately for £30 each.
Finally, the cable is 2.7m long, which gives plenty of room for home use, although this is 30cm shorter than the 3m cord on the Helios. If you need maximum movement to accommodate awkwardly spaced plugs, consider choosing something with a longer cable.
How I tested the GHD Speed Ionic hair dryer
I spent a month testing the GHD Speed Ionic hair dryer, assessing the versatility of its controls, identifying any usability problems and comparing it to the competition to assess its value for money. I also tried all the included attachments, which in this case was just one concentrator nozzle. Nice and easy.
In that time, I tried rough drying my hair to assess the overall speed levels, while a more precise round brush blow dry allowed me to gauge how much control is really on offer, as well as how smooth, frizz-free and soft my hair could be after styling.
The final tests involved taking measurements for crucial performance indicators: wind speed, noise levels and weight.
What’s it like to use?
Given the light build of its predecessor, which weighed 510g without its cable, I wasn’t expecting this latest iteration to be quite so heavy. However, at 620g, it’s far heavier than every other dryer with a digital motor that I’ve tested, which meant my arms quickly started to ache during use. This was bad enough during a quick rough dry, but was especially irritating when styling my long, thick hair using a round brush. The dryer’s top-heavy weighting is hard to balance, and I can easily see this causing wrist strain if users aren’t careful.
I also found the dryer’s button placement quite awkward to use on my own hair. When pointing the hair dryer away from you, as a professional might in a salon, the controls are easy to reach and adjust mid-styling. However, holding the dryer the other way around makes this same process feel awkward, which makes me think this dryer would be far better suited to professional use, rather than at home.
Gripes aside, the Speed dried my hair incredibly quickly. My wind speed tests measured maximum levels at 24.3m/s, which isn’t quite as fast as other dryers, but the results told a different story: for a rough dry, my thick long hair went from wet to dry in around 4 minutes. Admittedly, it was quite loud, reaching 92dB at its fastest speeds, so don’t expect to be able to use this close to a sleeping baby.
Using a round brush took far longer at fifteen minutes, but that’s to be expected. I’m also not convinced the ‘halo’ technology was as effective as it sounds; my sensitive scalp still felt the heat when styling near the roots. That said, the versatile settings gave me a huge amount of control when styling. There’s a tangible difference between each setting, which makes it safe to use on everything from fragile bleach damaged hair to thick, coarse textures.
How well does it work?
The main thing to note here is that it dries long, thick hair remarkably quickly, which certainly lives up to the speed of similarly priced rivals such as the Dyson Supersonic. Smoothing my hair with a paddle brush was fast and effective and the versatile speed settings made it quite easy to control the air for round brush blow dries. After drying, my hair felt soft and healthy and styles lasted well, with a good amount of lift and bounce on the ends.
Frustratingly, though, the dryer left me with more frizz and flyaways at the root than I’m used to – even with its ‘halo’ technology designed to prevent this. Other hair dryers have far more effective scalp-protecting features.
Should you buy the GHD Speed Ionic hair dryer?
This hair dryer offers a huge amount of speed and control but, having tested over 20 hair dryers, I wouldn’t buy it. There are cheaper, lighter dryers available that dry your hair quickly with far less resulting wrist strain, such as the Shark Speedstyle Pro Flex and the mdLondon Blow. These typically don’t have as many heat and speed settings, so you sacrifice a little control, but I think most people will get on better with a lighter dryer.
That said, if you’re a professional stylist, the robust build of this dryer would work well for constant use in a salon. It’s significantly more comfortable to hold when styling others’ hair, and the amount of control and power you get is perfect for fast, precise blow dries if you know what you’re doing.
