Dreame Dazzle review: More budget-friendly than rivals, but with inconsistent results

The Dreame Dazzle is a mid-range air styler in a crowded market that can be pretty wallet-taxing. The Dazzle offers a wide array of styling options and comes with five attachment types. The different modes for the attachments also make the hair styling experience easy.

However, the powerful motor proves too forceful at times and causes tangles in my hair. The negative ion feature is also ineffective, and resulted in my hair being super frizzy. The insecure mechanisms for the attachments are also annoying and slow the process down. I guess in this case, you don’t get what you don’t pay for.

To find out more, you can read my full Dreame Dazzle review.

Dreame Dazzle review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A high-speed hair dryer with five styling attachments
• Who is it for? Anyone with fine hair who wants an air styler but can’t afford a Dyson Airwrap
• How much does it cost? $299 / £269
• What does it do well? It’s easy to use, with automatic attachment detection and a flexible design
• What are its weaknesses? Hair is left super frizzy, some attachments aren’t secure, and there’s no storage case

Dreame Dazzle review: Specs

Dreame Dazzle review: Price & availability

The Dreame Dazzle hair dryer is available in the U.S. from Amazon for $299 and directly from the Dreame online store for £269 in the U.K. The styler is only available in one color, which is a similar champagne shade to the Dreame Pocket Neo ($159), so this seems to be Dreame’s signature look for air stylers.

The Dreame Pocket Neo is a lot cheaper, but it’s also a lot smaller, and is a more travel-sized hair-drying solution. If you just want a powerful dryer with curling attachments, then I’d recommend the Neo, which is a powerful dryer for under $200 and is far less complicated.

Around the same price as the Dazzle comes the Shark SpeedStyle 5-in-1 for $259, which has an angled dryer head like a traditional hairdryer. But with the Dazzle, you get the benefit of using an angled dryer and a straight dryer. If you want something more premium, you can look to the Dyson Airwrap i.d. for $599, which comes with similar attachments and is far more user-friendly. However, it comes at a premium cost too.

Dreame Dazzle review: Design

If we can learn one thing from vacuum manufacturers like Dyson and Shark, it’s that they know how to make a good-looking hairdryer — and Dreame is no exception to that rule. The Dazzle is a golden champagne color, which complements the cream-colored plastic attachments well.

Hold a button and the dryer ‘flexes’ in the middle to switch between a traditional-looking 90º hair dryer and the more common straight air styler shape. Being able to switch between the two shapes makes the Dreame a lot more versatile than the Shark SpeedStyle, which is fixed to a 90º angle. It resembles the Shark FlexStyle ($279), which uses the same flex motion.

This air styler comes with five styling attachments, making it very versatile. These include a Soft Wind nozzle, a diffuser head, an oval brush, and two curling nozzles that need to be swapped to curl in alternate directions. Having a diffuser as standard is a win over Dyson — with the Airwrap, you need to purchase the pricier Curly and Coily version of the styler to get one.

Unlike the Dyson, which has easy-to-attach magnetic attachments, the Dazzle had me frustrated each time I needed to switch tools. The attachments slot in at the top and then twist to lock, but this proved quite tricky as finding the slot and twisting didn’t work every time. On top of that, when I used the oval brush to style my bangs (which requires a little tension), the attachment kept unlocking itself from the dryer. This was really annoying and meant I had to stop and re-lock everything in place.

On the plus side, there’s a clear digital display that lets you know what heat and power settings are being used by the dryer, which is unlike any other air styler I’ve tried. While it was nice to have this information on hand, it wasn’t much use in practice, sitting outside my line of sight or covered by my hand most of the time.

The heat and airflow are preset depending on which nozzle is being used (more on that later), but you can also use the two buttons above the display to make changes. The top button controls the force of the air, and the button below controls the heat. This makes the styler easy to use, even for novices.

Dreame Dazzle review: Functions

The Dreame Dazzle knows what’s going on. It may not be a sentient hair dryer — we’re not there just yet — but it does know what attachment you're using to style your hair. In Auto Mode, the dryer recognizes the nozzle being used, altering air flow and heat accordingly to protect the integrity of your hair.

The modes have varying dryer speeds, and all of the attachments use a heat of 194ºF, apart from Soft Wind mode, which uses 134ºF. The other modes include Diffuser Nozzle Mode, Oval Brush Mode, and Curling Nozzle Mode.

Curl Mode is especially impressive as it cools curls to set them in place. It uses 10 seconds of warm air for shaping, five seconds of cool air to set the shape, and finally a seven-second pause to give you time to move on to the next section of hair. With the Dyson Airwrap, I have to go through this process manually, which isn’t that much of a hardship, but it’s still much nicer to have it done for me.

Dreame Dazzle review: Performance

The Dreame Dazzle ostensibly has all the makings of a great dryer, but unfortunately, some of the functions fall flat (but not my hair).

Styling Nozzle

The Dreame Dazzle isn’t suited to my hair type at all. Firstly, the 11,000RPM motor is incredibly powerful, and that’s no bad thing if you need to dry your hair quickly, but it ended up making my naturally curly hair look like a bit of a rat’s nest. I was seriously channeling Monica Geller from Friends in Barbados.

The dryer has a built-in negative ion generator, which releases up to 300 million negative ions to reduce frizz, but I found this ineffective. In fact, I’d say this is the most frizz I’ve experienced with any hair dryer. The Dyson makes my hair totally smooth! This also led to tangles as I’ve never seen before, and I then had to spend ages brushing my hair.

Soft Wind Nozzle

Unlike the Styling Nozzle, the Soft Wind Nozzle is a little more forgiving. It spaces out the force of the wind and gives a gentler flow of air. However, when using this, my hair took far too long to dry, and I felt that I couldn’t get the force needed at my roots to ensure they were dry.

It would be great to have a happy medium between the two drying nozzles, like the Dyson Airwrap’s anti-frizz nozzle and regular dryer head — but maybe I’m being too much of a Goldilocks.

Oval Round Brush

Upon first glance, this looks like any other round brush, but you’d be wrong. Beyond the annoyance of it coming unclipped when tension is put on the hair, as I mentioned before, the bristles aren’t that great. They’re clumped together, and there aren’t enough of them to get your hair teased enough for a smooth finish. It’s just annoying.

Diffuser

I was glad to see a diffuser attachment included here because with devices like the Dyson Airwrap i.d., you need to buy a specific model to get a diffuser. The diffuser for the Dazzle is very easy to use, and the air distribution means that my hair was dried all the way to the root.

Curling Nozzles

There are two Curling Nozzles included with the Dreame Dazzle, each with airflow directed in different directions, so you have to swap them around for each side of your hair. These are pretty easy to use, and the auto-cooling was very helpful. However, I was able to get better results with the Dreame Pocket Neo, which isn’t even as powerful.

It’s also worth noting that since my hair is naturally curly, it holds styles like this very easily. The curls stayed put until I next washed my hair, which was impressive, but as with any hair styling, it all depends on the texture of your hair.

Dreame Dazzle review: Storage & maintenance

There’s no carry case or storage box for the Dreame Dazzle, as you get with more premium models like the Dyson Airwrap i.d., but I’d recommend purchasing a case for it, as there are a lot of moving parts here.

In terms of maintenance, it’s important to make sure the filter at the bottom of the dryer is free from debris to keep everything running smoothly.

Dreame Dazzle review: Verdict

The Dreame Dazzle is a versatile air styler that sounded great on paper, offering powerful air styling and premium features at a more affordable price than its counterparts. I really enjoyed the cooling cycle when curling and the flexible dryer head, which makes switching between nozzles really simple.

However, the overall experience is highly inconsistent. The negative ion generator is ineffective and left me with the frizziest hair I’ve ever experienced when blow-drying, and the tangles were too much to handle. Some of the attachments also detach themselves when in use, as the locking mechanism isn’t the strongest, which is frustrating.

I would’ve liked to see a storage case with the dryer too, since there are so many attachments to keep track of. The Dazzle might be okay for finer hair types, but given that it struggles so much with thick and curly hair, I’ll be sticking to the Dyson Airwrap for now.