
The Dyson Supersonic hair dryer [video] - uptown
http://www.dyson.com/haircare/supersonic
======
strictnein
I 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.

~~~
headShrinker
Yeah, 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!

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patrickg_zill
I 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
I 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.

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bane
Dyson 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?

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I'm still waiting for a Dyson Supersonic Backyard Skydiving Simulator.

~~~
jerf
Why 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.)

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overcast
I 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.

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tzs
(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...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/dyson-dryers-
hurl-60x-more-viruses-most-at-kid-face-height-than-other-dryers/#p3)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11507239](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11507239)

~~~
alphang
There's some quibble about that here:
[http://www.vox.com/2016/4/26/11461304/hand-dryers-spread-
ger...](http://www.vox.com/2016/4/26/11461304/hand-dryers-spread-germs)

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Pitarou
It 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...

~~~
FatalLogic
If 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/dys...](http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/shortcuts/2016/apr/27/dyson-
supersonic-hairdryer-worth-299-test)

~~~
mrob
Getting a better hairdrier is probably not the best way to speed up hair
drying. If you haven't already, try drying your hair with a microfiber towel.
It's much more effective than a conventional towel. It leaves your hair dry
enough that only brief use of a hairdrier is needed to completely dry it. It's
a lot cheaper than $400.

~~~
FatalLogic
That indeed sounds like a more efficient drying strategy. Although there are
some hidden backend costs (laundry).

But don't some people who use hairdryers need their hair to be somewhat wet
though, so they can style it?

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wmeredith
I thought this was parody for about the first 30 seconds. Obviously I'm not
the target audience, but a $400 hair dryer? WTF?

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Eric_WVGG
Back 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
The 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.

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stormcrowsx
I could care less about the product but I thought the presentation on this
page was excellent.

~~~
overcast
Just a heads up, if you could care less, that means you in fact care in some
amount.

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ksenzee
It 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
Professional hairdryer go up to $200, so $399 isn't that much of a stretch for
something new like this Dyson hairdryer.

~~~
ksenzee
This is a consumer-grade dryer. They specify it in the pricing section. If I
were a stylist I wouldn't hesitate to drop $400 or more on a good fast dryer.

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afandian
It 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.

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Shog9
Fwiw, 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
I'd imagine reduced noise would be a big bonus for groomers too.

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Alupis
Just 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
I 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.

~~~
derekp7
For the fans -- have you tried ceiling fans? Their low setting moves enough
air around, and even on high they aren't that loud due to the large fan
blades. (I just moved into a house with ceiling fans, and wow what a
difference)

~~~
geoelectric
Yeah, ceiling fans are great, but I have limited ability to install them in my
rental. If I owned my place that probably would've been my first step.

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ljoshua
Slightly 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.

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_xander
Dyson's pivot 5-10 years ago from sucking (vacuum cleaners) to blowing
(dryers) seems to be going well.

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jarmitage
Weird that this product is so gendered

~~~
Jtsummers
I'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
I 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.

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tfandango
I'm bald and I'm going to buy one.

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diimdeep
And We add Bluetooth, because Everything is Better with Bluetooth, and Open
Source SDK with JavaScript support.

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gtrubetskoy
The only thing missing is the Internet connection, this is the IOT age, after
all.

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choward
A video warning would have been nice.

~~~
dang
Added.

