The Dreame Air Style Era is the Airwrap alternative that nearly has it all | Tech Radar

Overview

News, deals, reviews, guides and more on the newest computing gadgets

Start exploring exclusive deals, expert advice and more

Details

Unlock and manage exclusive Techradar member rewards.

The Dreame Air Style Era is the Airwrap alternative that nearly has it all

This 8-in-1 multi-styler has the attachment lineup to rival Dyson – but a few frustrating oversights hold it back

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

The Dreame Air Style Era is the brand's most versatile multi-styler yet, with eight attachments that should cover all of your styling needs. The curl barrels are excellent, if a little fiddly; the diffuser is a long-overdue addition; and it's well-built and comfortable to use. The straightening nozzle underdelivers and the lower temperatures won't suit longer and/or thicker hair styles, but it's as close to Dyson Airwrap-style performance without Airwrap prices I've tried.

+Eight attachments cover virtually every styling scenario

Eight attachments cover virtually every styling scenario

-Straightening nozzle less effective than the flyaway attachment it replaces

Straightening nozzle less effective than the flyaway attachment it replaces

-Maximum temperature may not suit thicker or longer hair

Maximum temperature may not suit thicker or longer hair

The best Dyson Airwrap dupes: affordable alternatives, tried and tested

We've tested the best hair stylers on the market – these are our 6 top picks for every budget

We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you're buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

The Dreame Air Style Era is an eight-in-one multi-styler that works as a dryer and creates smooth, curly, bouncy, or straightened styles from a single device.

On paper, it looks like one for Tech Radar's best hair styler roundup, and it's the follow-up to the seven-in-one Air Style Pro, addressing some of that model's most obvious gaps. Namely, adding a diffuser for the first time, and replacing the Pro's flyaway attachment with a U-shaped straightening nozzle.

The auto-wrap curl barrels remain the headline act. The 360-degree airflow draws hair in automatically and produces bouncy, natural-looking curls without the need to manually wind sections around a barrel.

For fine to medium hair, the results are impressive, and at

The Dreame Air Style Era styling system includes interchangeable attachments for drying, smoothing, curling and volumizing (Image credit: Future)

The issues are harder to ignore, though. The maximum temperature of 176F / 80C — unchanged from the Air Style Pro — will be a limiting factor for anyone with thicker or longer hair. You could rope in one of the best hair dryers for that first stage, but that rather defeats the point of an all-in-one tool. The straightening nozzle is also more fiddly than expected, not to mention time consuming.

None of these are dealbreakers on their own, but together they add up to a tool that falls slightly short of its potential. The Era is still the most complete multi-styler Dreame has produced, and the most attractive multi-styler I've tested, and at this price it's a worthy Airwrap dupe, but it needs to be better than it is in a few key areas to make a truly compelling case.

That's the two-minute version; read on for my full Dreame Air Style Era review.

Dreame Air Style Era review: price & availability

The Dreame Air Style Era costs

It sits closer in price to the

(There are also other, cheaper Dyson Airwrap dupes, but few come with the auto-wrap curl barrels of these four stylers.)

In comparison to its predecessor, the Air Style Era swaps the Flyaway Attachment of the Pro for a U-shaped straightening nozzle and adds a diffuser for the first time, addressing one of the glaring gaps in the original's feature set.

It's also had a meaningful upgrade under the hood — the NTC temperature sensor now checks 1,000 times per second compared to 300 on the Air Style Pro, which in practice means more consistent heat distribution and less risk of spikes that could cause damage.

2 (122F / 50C and 176F / 80C) + cool shot (room temperature)

2 (122F / 50C and 176F / 80C) + cool shot (room temperature)

2 (122F / 50C and 176F / 80C) + cool shot (82F / 28C)

2 (122F / 50C and 176F / 80C) + cool shot (82F / 28C)

Fast dryer, straightening nozzle, diffuser nozzle, 32mm auto-wrap barrels (L+R), hard smoothing brush, soft smoothing brush, round volumizing brush

Fast dryer, straightening nozzle, diffuser nozzle, 32mm auto-wrap barrels (L+R), hard smoothing brush, soft smoothing brush, round volumizing brush

The UK listing features different specifications than the US page – 28°C/55°C/80°C for temperatures and 50m/s, 57m/s, 65m/s for wind speeds. We tested the US model so use the US figures throughout.

Pink and bronze colorway with pebbled leather-texture grip

Eight attachments covering drying, curling, straightening, smoothing and diffusing

Twist-on mechanism same as the Air Style Pro but more secure

The Dreame Air Style Era follows the same basic design as its predecessor (and all other multi-stylers for that matter) – a tube-shaped dryer onto which you twist different styling heads.

It comes in a single pink colorway, not too dissimilar to the pink Dyson Airwrap i.d, with bronze accents at either end, and a soft pebbled leather-texture grip running the length of the handle.

It feels and looks solid and luxurious, and at 0.64lbs without the cord, it's light enough that your arm doesn't start aching even when working through a full set of curls.

The controls consist of two buttons with LEDs that let you cycle through the two heat settings. and three wind speeds. The cool shot is built into the top of the on/off slider rather than given its own dedicated button, and you enable and disable it by sliding up once for on, and sliding up again for off.

The Air Style Era’s textured handle feels solid and luxurious and features dedicated controls for airflow, temperature and power settings (Image credit: Future)

These controls sit at a natural thumb position on the handle and toe a delicate line between being easy to control mid-style and difficult to press accidentally. This is much rarer on stylers than it should be.

At the base of the handle is a removable dual intake filter— an inner stainless steel mesh that keeps fine hair and particles out of the motor, and an outer mesh that prevents tangling.

A small cleaning brush is included for maintenance, and the filter is straightforward to remove and reattach. Attached to this filter is the cord that runs to 9.2ft / 2.8m with a 360-degree anti-tangle swivel at the handle end.

Each of the eight attachments twist on using the same mechanism as the Air Style Pro, but unlike the heads on the older model, the Era's attachments securely lock into place because they're also magnetic. This was a major complaint in our Air Style Pro review and I'm glad it's been resolved.

In terms of the attachments, the line-up is as follows:

Straightening nozzle: U-shaped head with dual airflow channels that direct air downward to smooth and straighten without heating plates

Diffuser: Bowl diffuser with prongs for dry curls without disrupting them

32mm auto-wrap barrels (x 2): One for left curls, one for right; 360-degree airflow draws hair in to create curls without manually winding sections

Soft smoothing brush: Spherical teeth designed for fine, fragile, or chemically treated hair

Hard smoothing brush: Conical teeth for coarser, thicker, or heavily product-styled hair

Round volumizing brush: Wider tooth spacing to reduce tangling, with perforations to diffuse airflow and create lift at the roots

A close-up look at the Air Style Era’s branding, filter and styling tools (Image credit: Future)

The two additions — the straightening nozzle and diffuser — address the most obvious gaps in the original Air Style Pro's feature set.

If you wanted smooth, straight hair or defined natural curls from the Pro, you needed separate tools entirely. The Era fixes that, and the result is a kit that not only covers the full range of everyday styling needs, but it makes it the only styler that can truly rival the Dyson Airwrap in terms of scope and scale.

Elsewhere, everything ships in a leather-textured storage box that keeps the attachments organized and easy to find, plus you get a travel bag if you need something more portable.

Fast dryer attachment works well on fine to medium hair; may struggle with thicker, longer hair

Auto-wrap curling barrels produce good results but swapping between directions is fiddly

Straightening nozzle is less effective than the flyaway attachment it replaces

I started, as Dreame recommends, by removing most of the water in my hair with the fast dryer attachment. Like all multi-stylers of this type, you need to get hair to around 80% dry before switching to any of the styling attachments for best results, and the fast dryer handled that first stage well enough on my fine, shoulder-length hair.

It's not the hottest of stylers though, and anyone with thicker or longer hair may find themselves reaching for a standalone dryer to get there faster. This was a complaint with the original Pro and hasn't been fixed, it seems.

Dreame Air Style Era soft smoothing brush (left), hard smoothing brush (center) and round volumizing brush (right) attachments (Image credit: Future)

The auto-wrap curling barrels are where the Era earns its keep. The 360-degree airflow draws hair in and wraps it around the barrel automatically, producing bouncy, defined curls without the need to manually wind sections. The results hold well, and the curls have a natural quality that can be hard to achieve with traditional tongs. The catch is that if you want the curls to go in different directions, you need to physically swap between the left and right attachment. This isn't just tricky, because the attached barrel is hot, but it interrupts your rhythm. The Dyson Airwrap handles this on a single, multi-directional barrel, and once you've used that system it's hard not to notice the difference here.

The straightening nozzle is the most interesting new addition on paper — a U-shaped head that uses dual airflow channels to smooth and straighten without heating plates. It's more intuitive than the flyaway attachment it replaced, while producing a very similar finish, but I found it more fiddly than I'd hoped. You can only smooth small sections at a time and this takes a while, which feels like a step backwards for anyone who relied on the flyaway attachment for quick touch-ups and frizz control.

The diffuser attachment is a new addition to the Air Style Era compared to the previous Air Style Pro and it's great at enhancing natural curls and waves while reducing frizz (Image credit: Future)

The diffuser does what it should. For naturally curly or wavy hair, it distributes airflow evenly without disturbing the curl pattern, and the results are noticeably better than using the fast dryer attachment on the same hair type. It's not doing anything the category hasn't seen before, but its absence from the Air Style Pro was a gap, and it's good to have it here.

The fast dryer attachment quickly removes moisture before styling; it's great for fine-to-medium hair but people with thicker and/or longer hair might get frustrated with the device's temperatures (Image credit: Future)

Finally, the brushes. The soft and hard smoothing brushes both perform well. The soft brush is gentle on fine or fragile hair, with the airflow automatically redirecting downward when attached to leave your hair feeling smooth. The hard brush handles coarser or more tangled hair well, and separates knots without pulling.

In testing, my favorite brush is the round volumizing brush. It's great for lifting roots and adding shape at the ends and it can even create loose curls.

In terms of noise levels, Dreame claims it produces 76d B, and in testing I recorded 79d B on the highest speed setting. That's slightly louder than the spec sheet suggests although not unreasonable for a tool of this type and it's quiet enough to hear music or have a conversation.

The straightening nozzle (pictured) has replaced the flyaway attachment from the previous Pro model and helps smooth hair (Image credit: Future)

Competitively priced against the Dyson Airwrap and broader than the Shark Flex Style in terms of attachments, though the performance doesn't always match the promise.

Competitively priced against the Dyson Airwrap and broader than the Shark Flex Style in terms of attachments, though the performance doesn't always match the promise.

Comfortable, well-balanced, and good-looking with an improved twist-on attachment mechanism.

Comfortable, well-balanced, and good-looking with an improved twist-on attachment mechanism.

Strong curling and volumizing results, but the straightening nozzle disappoints and temperature limits will be a factor for thicker hair types.

Strong curling and volumizing results, but the straightening nozzle disappoints and temperature limits will be a factor for thicker hair types.

You want Dyson Airwrap results without the Dyson price

At

The Era's eight attachments cover drying, curling, straightening, smoothing, volumizing and diffusing from a single device.

The Era's temperature range works well for finer hair types, producing good curl and smoothing results without the risk of excessive heat damage.

The Era's maximum temperature may not be enough to dry and style thicker or longer hair.

The straightening nozzle that replaces the Pro's flyaway attachment is more fiddly and less effective for smoothing.

Switching between left and right curl directions means swapping the barrels over manually. If you want both directions without the interruption, the Dyson Airwrap's multidirectional barrel is a better choice.

The Airwrap i.d. is king in this category, both in terms of price and features. This multistyler comes with a switch that launches an automated wrap > curl > cool shot sequence, for maximum ease. It can also do clockwise and anticlockwise curls on the same barrel.

The Air Style Pro is a stylish, well-designed multi-styler with a strong attachment lineup, but it's let down by temperatures that aren't hot enough for most hair types and attachments that don't clip on securely enough. If you can work around those limitations, it's a capable tool at a fair price.

The Flex Style is a very similar proposition to the Air Style in that it isn't as good as the original Air Wrap, but it's a solid alternative if you don't want to spend megabucks. It looks slightly less stylish than the Air Style but is all-round a more effective tool in my opinion.

I used the Air Style Era as my main styling tool for a week. During this time I used it to dry my hair, and tested all the different attachments, paying particular attention to the auto-wrap curlers.

I compared the styling results to what I managed to achieve with other similar stylers I've tested – including the Dyson Airwrap i.d. and Shark Flex Style. I also assessed how easy the styler was to use and the effectiveness of its design and features.

Victoria Woollaston is a freelance science and technology journalist with more than a decade’s experience writing for Wired UK, Alphr, Expert Reviews, Tech Radar, Shortlist and the Sunday Times. She has a keen interest in next-generation technology and its potential to revolutionise how we live and work.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

1'Can't innovate anymore, my ass': 25 classic Apple photos that show the biggest WWDC moments in history, from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook

2 How to watch Tiger Island online from anywhere in the world — stream for free

37 laptops I'd recommend to buy your Dad for Father's Day — Mac Books, cheap Chrome Books, and gaming laptops

5‘The thought behind it was great, but the execution was proving difficult': Starbucks abandons AI inventory tool after only nine months following multiple errors — coffee giant says it needs to 'focus on consistency and execution at scale'

Tech Radar is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Key Takeaways

• News, deals, reviews, guides and more on the newest computing gadgets

• Start exploring exclusive deals, expert advice and more

• Unlock and manage exclusive Techradar member rewards

• The Dreame Air Style Era is the Airwrap alternative that nearly has it all

• This 8-in-1 multi-styler has the attachment lineup to rival Dyson – but a few frustrating oversights hold it back