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I’m only half-joking when I say that one of the reasons I cut my long hair short last year was because I was just so terrible at blow-drying it myself. I definitely wanted a style update, but I was also fed up with my barely passable DIY blowouts; I lacked the skills and also the patience. The 30 minutes or more it took—for results that were pretty average and still frizzy—were just not worth it.
So I chopped my hair, invested in a pair of straighteners, and just accepted the heat damage as par for the course.
It’s not that I hadn’t tried to find a hair dryer I liked. Over the years I’ve tested various models, from the cheap to the expensive, and settled on a Parlux as the best of the bunch: It was around the $150 mark, a solid 6 out of 10, and gave good results if I had the patience to persevere. However, it was also heavy for the length of time it took me to make my hair look okay. And nothing I did at home could compare with the results of an in-salon blowout, so I was never super tempted to shell out more than I already had for a new one.
I’d all but given up on a good hair dryer until I met the Gama iQ Perfetto Hair Dryer. Launched in Europe in 2019 and in the U.S. in 2021, it’s billed as the lightest (weighing in at 0.65 pounds) and most powerful hair dryer in the world, claiming to cut drying time by 30%. It comes with a diffuser and two smoothing nozzles, and rings in at $400.
Before I tried it, I was a skeptic. Now the only thing I can say is: You need this.
Using the Gama iQ Perfetto Hair Dryer for the first time was game-changing. Firstly, the weight—it is extremely light. There is no way you’ll get tired arms, no matter how long you hold it for. Then there’s the drying time. It took me three minutes to do an unstyled rough dry, which was surprisingly smooth and sleek. And when I attempted my first properly styled blow-dry. It took me 10 minutes—I timed it!—and is the closest I’ve ever come to a salon look at home.
