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The Dyson Supersonic hair dryer [video]
- stormcrowsx 11y agoI could care less about the product but I thought the presentation on this page was excellent.
- overcast 11y agoJust a heads up, if you could care less, that means you in fact care in some amount.
- ksenzee 11y agoIt may well be amazing engineering, but $399 for a hair dryer? The only scenario I can imagine in which I would spend $399 for a hair dryer involves USD hyperinflation.
- Raphmedia 11y agoProfessional hairdryer go up to $200, so $399 isn't that much of a stretch for something new like this Dyson hairdryer.
- Pitarou 11y agoIt may be a better hair dryer, but at $400 it's hard to argue that it's a better product. But if you have $400 burning a hole in your pocket...
- mikeash 11y agoAfter experiencing the Airblade in too many public bathrooms, I wouldn't pay $4 for this thing, let alone $400.
- bdavisx 11y agoAgreed, they don't do that good of a job, and nowhere near as good of a job as the high-speed "normal" designed hand dryers.
- nrjames 11y agoNot to mention the fact that some research suggests they blast bacteria all around the bathroom/environment. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/13/dyson-airblades-spread-germs-1300-times-more-than-paper-towels/?cid=sf24291415&sf24291415=1 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/13/dyson-airblades-s...
- lowmagnet 11y agoAbout that… http://www.vox.com/2016/4/26/11461304/hand-dryers-spread-germs http://www.vox.com/2016/4/26/11461304/hand-dryers-spread-ger...
- mikeash 11y agoBlasting bacteria around sounds dubious, but I can't use these stupid Airblades without touching the sides, so that's pretty yucky. The point that we're still touching other stuff without feeling squeamish is a good one. My main complaint about the Airblade is simply that they don't work very well at all.
- FatalLogic 11y agoIf you spend 15 minutes every other day drying your hair, and assuming this product saves you 5 minutes each time you do that due to its "supersonic" technology, and you earn $100 per hour, then I think it would pay for itself in six months (Assuming your hairdrying time doesn't have much value to you). (OTOH if you earn $20/hour and rarely wash your hair, this product isn't economic) review: http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/shortcuts/2016/apr/27/dyson-supersonic-hairdryer-worth-299-test http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/shortcuts/2016/apr/27/dys...
- Alupis 11y agoJust about every Dyson product appears to be way over-engineered, and also way over-priced. I know they're not targeting us "normal" folks, but I have yet to see Dyson products in the wild, even in my "high class" acquaintance's, friend's, and family homes. Who is the target audience for a $399 hair dryer? Surely not "professional" salons, which have their own preferred "professional" brands with a lot of market traction. So are they targeting home users? Seems like a lot to bite off for a non-status symbol (nobody will ever see your Dyson hair dryer, so it's not a "show off" piece).
- geoelectric 11y agoI have two Dyson vacuums, the small space heater Air Multiplier (i.e. fan), and the tall tower Air Multiplier. I have the vacuums because they're the single most effective things against cat hair I've ever used--and I tried the competitor's versions because I also thought Dyson was overpriced. After spending $200ish a couple times in a row on crappy vacuums that got clogged I realized that I actually saved time and money with the Dyson I'd had before that, and bought another. Its air path was much less prone to clogging, though I've run into other problems like the brush bar jumping its gearing. Took about ten years for that though. The space heater and tower fan are hugely overpriced, I won't argue this, in the sense that holy crap, I paid that for a heater and a fan? However, there just weren't competitors I could find that handled 24/7 operation on the oscillator as smoothly and quietly as the Dyson models have. Everything else developed whining noises, stutters, or the air noise itself was too high for usage in my living room by the home theater. It's true that the Dysons get loud too if you crank them up super-high, and also true that the noise volume tracks airflow, period, and therefore being quieter means they push less than the competition (at least where the competition also buries the turbine motor in a sound-insulated base). The difference is that there is a configuration that pushes enough, quietly enough, which is what I couldn't find elsewhere. So my bedrooms, where I don't care about that stuff, those get relatively cheap Bionaire or Vornado fans. But for the main room, Dyson actually ends up being worth the money. Anyway, there's my anecdotal stories as to why in the world I'd spend $400 a pop for stuff that's normally $100-200. That said, I'm not buying a $400 hair dryer. Jeez.
- 11y ago
- choward 11y agoA video warning would have been nice.
- dang 11y agoAdded.
- bane 11y agoDyson must have some pretty intense legal representation and protection. I've yet to see cheap knockoffs of most of their products selling for 1/4th the price. I feel like a cheapo version of this should probably run for about $30-40 at Target. That being said, I wonder how many more products Dyson can come up with that are basically just moving air around?
- wnevets 11y agoI've seen the hand dryers in the wild and they're absolutely awful. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/13/dyson-airblades-spread-germs-1300-times-more-than-paper-towels/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/13/dyson-airblades-s...
- viggity 11y agoso, i saw the article talking about the airblade spreading germs before, but upon re-examination it seems a bit weird. They dipped their hand into water with a harmless virus (as a stand in for a dangerous virus), but isn't the whole point of washing your hands is to wash them with _clean_ water. Water coming out of a faucet is likely chlorinated and free from contamination. Right? Just seems odd. FTR, as cool as the airblades are, I have meat hooks for hands and have about .5 cm of clearance on either side when I use one, so I almost always bump into it. I'll use paper towels if I can. Either way, the Hygiene Hypothesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis) seems very reasonable to me, and while I haven't studied it in depth, ancedotally it seems to ring true.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoI'm still waiting for a Dyson Supersonic Backyard Skydiving Simulator.
- jerf 11y agoWhy wait? https://www.youtube.com/user/iflytunnelvision https://www.youtube.com/user/iflytunnelvision (No affiliation, I just know these things exist and this was a quick Google hit.)
- jarmitage 11y agoWeird that this product is so gendered
- Jtsummers 11y agoI'd be willing to wager that home (not salon, stylist, barbershop) use of hairdryers is significantly skewed towards female users. Perhaps the current man-bun trend (and the requisite long hair) is changing that, but that'd be a, presently, niche market. Do you also find it odd that electric shavers for facial hair are also gendered and targeted towards men?
- derekp7 11y agoI don't know -- I'm a guy with relatively short hair (off the collar, off the ears), but not a buzz cut. And I've always used a hair dryer -- my hair is just a mess all day without the morning styling routine.
- overcast 11y agoI can imagine this thing sounds like their blade less fans, same idea, just smaller package. The motor runs at approximately a billion rpm, and sounds like a harrier jet taking off.
- wmeredith 11y agoI thought this was parody for about the first 30 seconds. Obviously I'm not the target audience, but a $400 hair dryer? WTF?
- afandian 11y agoIt is the greatest irony that Dyson, who make products that produce noise in excess of the pain threshold and who honestly have probably caused hearing damage to thousands, should make a hairdryer. I don't care how quiet they say it is, if their QA can approve their hand driers for sale, I don't trust their sense of hearing! EDIT: And vacuum cleaners. I have one (it was a gift), and it hurts to use.
- strictnein 11y agoI laughed when I pointed out the ridiculous price of this. Then my wife pointed to my desk filled with the Rift, HTC Vive, and Rift DK2 (and a couple variations of Google Cardboard). "You have $2000 in VR headsets". Oh... erhh. The market research Dyson did for something like this is probably absolutely insane. The Hacker News crowd isn't exactly the target market.
- chaostheory 11y agoYeah my wife would probably love this and it's cheaper than jewelry
- headShrinker 11y agoYeah, I agree with you and your wives point as well. We aren't the target here. One thing to note, as you point out. The R&D on these new products while they seem relatively simple, they are very hard to get right. That costs a lot of money and certain companies like Dyson are willing to put in the resources. Take for example, their vacuums. So many are appalled at the price of a Dyson and act as if Dyson is robbing people. At the same time every major competitor has come out with designs similar to the Dyson 'cinetic' tech. No one seems to have a problem buying obvious knockoffs. It's safe to say Dyson singlehandedly made bag vacuums almost a thing of the past. Did bagless tech exist before Dyson? Yes, it just wasn't very good. Does Dyson deserve to recoup some of that R&D money? Sure. These products are expensive. So another company will knock it off and it won't be quite as nice, at 1/3 the price. Meanwhile people with unlimited budgets love this stuff!
- spennant 11y agoThere are a quite a few women that read Hacker News. I'm sure Dyson is going to get an awareness/sales boost from here
- patrickg_zill 11y agoI am going to go ahead and say that it will be successful. (I am a dude and will not buy one.) Reasons are that regular hair dryers are just not very good. They are not pleasant to use. And there are millions of women, primarily, who spend probably $2500 or more a year on cosmetics/makeup/hair. So a $400 one time expense for something that will last for years, doesn't seem that bad.
- alva 11y agoI agree. Many of my professional female friends spend a large amount of money on beauty/cosmetics/make-up. Items at the higher end of the market, thought to be luxury, are extremely popular among this demographic. It is useful for showing off a bit and as a talking point. I certainly don't need a £150 mechanical keyboard over a cheaper one, but it is slightly more functional for me and is interesting for my mates.
- tzs 11y ago(Oops...I noticed a couple minutes after posting that the present article is about hair dryers and the article I cite is about hand dryers. I would have deleted this, but someone had commented by then which disables delete. I could edit this to replace the entire contents with "[deleted]", but someone has commented on the assertions in the hand dryer article, so I'll leave this up, despite it being an embarrassing monument to my poor reading comprehension) There may be a downside to these very fast hot air dryers: "Using a Dyson hand dryer is like setting off a viral bomb in a bathroom" [1]. There was some HN discussion of that article [2]. [1] http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/dyson-dryers-hurl-60x-more-viruses-most-at-kid-face-height-than-other-dryers/#p3 http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/dyson-dryers-hurl-60x... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11507239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11507239
- gtrubetskoy 11y agoThe only thing missing is the Internet connection, this is the IOT age, after all.
- Eric_WVGG 11y agoBack around 2004 I switched from Windows computers to a Powerbook G4. It was inarguably a slower and much more expensive computer than its Windows equivalents at the time. The desktop G5s were still pretending to be in race with Intel, but the laptops were an embarrassment. And yet I switched, because despite the significant performance deficit, it was a better experience — both for the OS but also a metal chassis that was a pleasure to both to touch and look at — an experience that dominated a minimum of half my waking hours of every single day. All of which is to say that anyone who is wondering why consumers would spend $500 on a hair dryer are completely missing the forest. If the device lives up to Dyson’s hype, every hair stylist in America will happily pony up for it, no hesitation. Just for the noise alone, $500 to make all day every day better is a bargain. also see: the hand dryers, which are a huge hit and have close to zero consumer penetration
- jkestner 11y agoThe new wave of hardware companies like to make better versions of overlooked objects by building on top of a computer/mobile platform. I'd love to see more people just focus on redesigning a product to give us the benefits of modern UI without cramming a smartphone into it.
- _xander 11y agoDyson's pivot 5-10 years ago from sucking (vacuum cleaners) to blowing (dryers) seems to be going well.
- diimdeep 11y agoAnd We add Bluetooth, because Everything is Better with Bluetooth, and Open Source SDK with JavaScript support.
- Shog9 11y agoFwiw, hair dryers for dogs or horses can easily hit or exceed $400 for a solid professional model (one that moves a lot of warm but not hot air efficiently to dry the coat quickly without undue damage to skin). IF this manages to accomplish a similar feat without the bulk, it's easily worth the price for those who do a lot of hair drying.
- cjrp 11y agoI'd imagine reduced noise would be a big bonus for groomers too.
- Shog9 11y agoFwiw, hair dryers for dogs or horses can easily hit or exceed $400 for a solid professional model (one that moves a lot of warm but not hot air efficiently to dry the coat quickly without undue damage to skin). IF this manages to accomplish a similar feat without the bulk, it's easily worth the price for those who do a lot of hair drying.
- ljoshua 11y agoSlightly OT, but how did they do the almost Matrix-style slow-mo pan and zooms in the videos? Array of cameras, rendering, some other technique? Very slick.
- tfandango 11y agoI'm bald and I'm going to buy one.