The 12 Best Travel Hair Dryers to Keep Your Hair on Point While on the Go
Easy, breezy styling without the bulk.
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The sweet taste of the spring and summer travel season is finally upon us. With roundtrip flights and hotels booked, it's time to start packing. The only problem? We often overestimate what we need, and furiously empty and swap items out of our suitcases and into our carry-on to avoid overweight baggage fees at the airport. Gifting your beauty-obsessed loved one a travel hair dryer is an easy and relatively affordable solution to prevent the inevitable overpacking.
As Best Products beauty editor, who travels cross-country frequently and has lived in hotels for months at a time, I can safely say all hotel hair dryers are lackluster. (Sorry, not sorry!) Investing in a travel hair dryer saves your giftee precious suitcase space and guarantees you or your giftee will always have a great hair day without heading to the salon. Most importantly, travel hair dryers are lightweight and deliver similar results to your favorite full-sized model.
Don't believe me? Celebrity hairstylist and author Kee Taylor, who works with Keke Palmer and Tika Sumpter, agrees. “Travel hair dryers are amazing as they offer the power of a full-sized tool, but are portable and more convenient,” she says. Between their compact size, strong drying power, and convenient styling features, who knows — your loved one might just find themself working these tiny dryers into their hair routine post-trip.
Best Travel Hair Dryers
What to Consider
Selecting the best travel hair dryer for your giftee will require a little work, but luckily, I'm here to help. Not only have I covered and tested travel hair dryers for several years, but I chatted with two of my most-trusted hair experts about all things travel hair dryers to help streamline your gift-giving needs. Their most important advice: make sure your giftee's potential travel hair dryer is aligned with their lifestyle, which we explore below.
Functionality
Celebrity hairstylist Andrew Fitzsimons advises shoppers to pay close attention to which settings and functions a travel hair dryer has to offer. He says, "The more versatile the product is, the more looks you can achieve with packing less!" For example, consider the wattage of the hair dryer and throw in a universal travel adapter if your loved one frequently travels abroad.
Attachments
Taylor, the creator of Deeper Than Hair, says if you or your giftee want to get many looks out of one tool, ensure your dryer comes with attachments. For example, the HOT TOOLS Pro Signature Travel Hair Dryer has a traditional nozzle for smoothing the strands during blowouts and a hair diffuser for enhancing waves, curls, and coils.
Size and Weight
Fitzsimons, who founded his namesake haircare line, recommends travel hair dryers that are relatively small or easily foldable. Taylor adds foldable models to help limit the awkward shape of the hair dryer. The pretty pink T3 Afar Lightweight Travel Size Hair Dryer and BaBylissPRO Nano Titanium Travel Dryer are just two of our favorite foldable hair dryers.
Taylor also suggests considering the weight of a hair dryer. The Best Tested Dyson Supersonic Hairdryer isn't technically a travel-sized hair dryer. Still, it is incredibly lightweight, and multiple experts travel with the Supersonic because it doesn't add unnecessary bulk to the suitcase. Don't worry: Our other travel-sized products are petite in form and incredibly lightweight, but don't skimp on quality.
How We Chose
I’ve tested a seemingly infinite number of travel hair dryers over my 6-plus years in beauty journalism, and I can assure you that these are truly the best of the best. Some are personal favorites I keep in my suitcase for impromptu trips or have gifted loved ones who fly, while others earned snaps from Taylor and Fitzsimons.
I also researched dozens of models, looking for various prices, functions, and features to ensure you find the best gift option within your budget. Plus, each travel hair dryer is rated at least 4 stars out of hundreds (or thousands!) of reviews on Amazon, Sephora, Dermstore, and more. These are the best travel hair dryers that will hardly fill your giftee’s precious packing space and beat out any hotel hair dryer during their travels.
Nicole Saunders is the beauty editor at Best Products with over seven years of experience researching, writing, and editing lifestyle content. She specializes in breaking down complicated topics, like high-frequency wands and microcurrent devices, into easy-to-understand guides. She takes great pride in heavily researching and testing featured beauty products, — such as hairdryers and foundations — on our site, and spotlights her all-time seasonal favorites in her quarterly column Best New Beauty. And she tests quite literally thousands of launches for our Beauty Awards package.
Leah is the Editorial Planning Associate for Hearst’s Enthusiast Group, which encompasses BestProducts.com, Runner’s World, Bicycling, and Popular Mechanics. She’s been with the team since 2019, engaged in various editorial tasks across both print and digital. She’s an avid lover of platform shoes, all things Bravo (power players of past and present include: Real Housewives of New York City, Real Housewives of Potomac, Ladies of London—the list goes on), and tracking down the next vintage print for her apartment’s gallery wall.
Ashley is the beauty and style editor at BestProducts.com, and her work has been featured on Cosmopolitan and Town and Country. She has an obsession with designer handbags, Liberty prints, 1960s fashion, and owns more shoes than she’s willing to admit. She's been using her learnings from owning a boutique and her shopping addiction for good since 2015. She’ll never accept that black isn’t a color. Away from the computer, you’ll likely find the Texas native binging on a British period drama or theorizing over Game of Thrones. She has yet to find a real cup of queso in NYC.
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