Shark SpeedStyle review: Superfast drying and styling for all hair types

If you want to upgrade your beauty routine, swapping out your old clunky hair dryer with a modern, more powerful one is one of my top recommendations. The Shark SpeedStyle is the brand’s second hair dryer, following in the footsteps of the four-star Shark Style iQ.

When we reviewed its predecessor, it had three attachments, a distinctive design and a whopping £230 price tag. Thankfully, the SpeedStyle builds on this original design, refining it in several places and adding more attachments while somehow managing to slash the price.

I tested the Shark SpeedStyle over the course of a few weeks and found the dryer to be immensely powerful and convenient to use. Its attachments transformed the dryer into a versatile multi-styler of sorts. That said, you’ll need a healthy dose of patience to master the technique and if you struggle with arm mobility or tangly hair, you’ll want to steer clear of the round brush attachment.

Shark SpeedStyle review: What do you get for the money?

The Shark SpeedStyle currently costs £180. For that price, you’ll get the hairdryer, five versatile attachments (more on this below) and a soft storage case. It’s also available to buy with just three attachments for £140, which means you lose out on – the diffuser, round brush or the concentrator nozzle, depending on your chosen configuration.

The hair dryer itself has a compact, gun-like design, with a 1,700W motor housed in a sleek cylindrical barrel. Below this, the handle has simple controls, which include a power switch, speed controls and temperature buttons. It weighs 436g without the cable, which should minimise wrist strain and help to make styling as comfortable as possible.

Furthermore, thanks to the 244cm wire, you’ll get a good amount of space to manoeuvre the dryer without ever feeling restricted. That said, the cable doesn’t swivel, which makes using some of the attachments a little more fiddly.

The dryer also offers a good heat and speed range, including three speed settings, two heat settings and a cold shot. In my tests, the maximum wind speed was 26.2m/s, making it the third-fastest hair dryer we’ve ever tested.

Despite this powerful performance, the maximum noise levels of the dryer reached 93dB. That’s pretty bang average for a hair dryer, which is impressive at this speed. If you want the quietest option, consider the mdLondon BLOW, which also offers faster wind speeds than the SpeedStyle, although you lose out on the versatile attachments.

The main selling point of the Shark SpeedStyle is its range of attachments. While you can buy the dryer in different configurations to suit your hair type and styling needs, there are five attachments in total: a quick dry concentrator, a smoothing brush, a shine finishing nozzle, an adjustable diffuser and a rotating round brush.

Knowing which setting to use for each attachment can be tricky. Thankfully, Shark has fitted each attachment with “iQ” sensors that can automatically set the dryer to the ideal heat and speed settings. This eliminates any guesswork from styling, making the process as seamless as possible.

If you’d prefer to take hold of the reins yourself, you can adjust these settings manually and the dryer will remember which settings you’ve used the next time you use that attachment. Or, if you want to revert to Shark’s recommended settings, you can scroll through the heat and speed settings until the iQ logo on the back handle of the dryer is illuminated.

Shark Speedstyle review: What’s it like to use?

I tested the Shark SpeedStyle on multiple occasions over the course of about a month and I’m pleased to say the dryer outperformed my expectations in multiple areas. Its controls were intuitive and comfortable to use during styling.

For each test, I used only a heat protection spray on clean, wet hair before styling. This was to protect the health of my hair while allowing me to test the longevity of each blow dry, independent of any hold- or volume-boosting products used.

Firstly, thanks to its high wind speeds, the dryer managed to rough-dry my hair with the concentrator nozzle in well under five minutes. That puts it among the top-performing hair dryers I’ve ever used. However, I found the highest temperature setting to be a little too warm on my sensitive scalp.

I also found that my hair wasn’t hugely shiny after a simple rough-dry using the quick-dry nozzle, but the shine nozzle worked exceedingly well to add shine afterwards. It also smoothed down most of my flyaways to create a sleek, uniform look in the morning on day two and three of my hair wash cycle.

On days where I had more time to style my hair after washing it, I tested out both the smoothing brush and rotating round brush attachments. Each attachment locked securely into place on the front of the dryer, which was particularly important for the brush attachments as they require the hair to be under a little tension to achieve the best results.

Starting with the smoothing brush, I found it helped to iron out any kinks in my hair when it was about 80% dry. It was also capable of creating small flicks at the end of my hair, when I twisted the hair dryer the right way. Furthermore, I found that holding hair straight up under tension at the root for a few seconds as it dries helped to add volume there. Admittedly, this felt a little clumsy at times, even when rotating the angle of the smoothing brush to make the styling as comfortable as possible. However, the volume it created stayed at the roots for a good few days, which is pretty impressive longevity.

The rotating round brush was also able to create good amounts of volume in the hair. However, the rotating mechanism was both a blessing and a curse. Since the hair dryer handle is at a right-angle to the spinning attachment, it took me a little while to find a comfortable angle at which to use it.

Once I’d wrapped my head around the technique, I found it difficult to add any tension to the hair without the round brush spinning and letting go whenever I tried to pull it downwards. To prevent this and maintain adequate tension, you have to hold onto the end of the brush, meaning you won’t have a free hand to help guide sections of hair around the brush to begin with.

After a few tries, I figured out a routine that worked for me – smoothing the hair down with one pass, then smoothing the hair down to the end and rolling the hair around the barrel. After a few seconds, I used the cool shot to set the large curly wave in place, then unravelled the hair from the barrel. Having followed this process, I found the bouncier blow dry lasted for a good day without dropping significantly.

Still, I can’t help but think that those wanting to achieve a quick bouncy blow dry would be better off investing in a stick-shaped multi-styler like the Shark FlexStyle. These are far easier to use than the SpeedStyle’s rotating round brush attachment, and achieve longer-lasting results.

The SpeedStyle also comes with a diffuser attachment to allow those with curly, kinky and coily hair to gently dry their hair without disrupting their curl pattern. All Shark diffusers feature extendable prongs, which are designed to reach deeper into the roots of curly hair to dry it more evenly, while creating lift.

Since my hair is on the straight side, I couldn’t test Shark’s diffuser attachment. That said, one of our reviewers has previously tested the brand’s diffusers on her curls. She was impressed by how easy the diffuser’s extendable prongs made it to create volume and lift at the root. The diffuser that comes with the Shark SpeedStyle is near-identical to the one that came with its predecessor, so I’m certain it would garner similar results, especially with Shark’s automatic iQ speed and temperature settings.

Shark SpeedStyle review: Should you buy it?

Despite the rotating round brush attachment being fiddly to use, the Shark SpeedStyle hair dryer is an extremely versatile styling tool that has far faster drying speeds than any other hot air multi-styler on the market. It certainly measures up to its competition in terms of wind speed, weight and noise levels.

Better still, considering such a versatile range of automatically-programmed attachments, it’s brilliant value-for-money. I personally love that the Shark SpeedStyle has suitable attachments for every hair type. As long as you aren’t fussed about creating bouncy blow dries with total ease, it’s an easy recommendation.