So very many products claim to be a game changer in their field but very few actually deserve the acco­lade. The Dyson Su­per­sonic hair dryer is one prod­uct that has been toot­ing its own horn ever since it de­buted last year, and with good rea­son: This blow dryer is un­like any­thing else avail­able in the market. 

Let’s start with the de­sign: It’s a sleek piece of sculp­tural art. Gray, with a splash of fu­tur­is­tic fuch­sia, it is lighter than most sa­lon-grade dry­ers. Blade­less, it has the same so­phis­ti­cated vibe as other pop­u­lar Dyson home prod­ucts, such as their elec­tric fans. Un­box­ing this baby is a plea­sure on its own. Don’t be sur­prised if you spend a few min­utes ad­mir­ing the pack­ag­ing, where ev­ery piece has a ded­i­cated compart­ment in the box. 

But aside from good looks, it is one tech­no­log­i­cally ad­vanced piece of ma­chin­ery. The heart of the ma­chine, the Dyson dig­i­tal mo­tor V9 is not much larger than a one peso coin, and yet it can achieve in­sane amounts of air­flow, spin­ning at 110,000 rpm.

It’s in­tel­li­gent. The V9 is the first Dyson dig­i­tal mo­tor to use “sen­sor­less” de­sign: The con­trol­ling elec­tron­ics care­fully mon­i­tor the elec­tric cur­rent trav­el­ing through the mo­tor and de­ter­mine when to switch the dig­i­tal pulses, which keep the mo­tor spin­ning. Be­cause of this, your usual 10-minute morn­ing blow dry rou­tine con­denses to five.

The Su­per­sonic comes with three at­tach­ments—two for smooth­ing and a dif­fuser—that mag­net­i­cally stick to the body of the dryer for easy ac­cess and han­dling. It is also the qui­etest hair dryer you’ll ever own. At the Su­per­sonic launch in Bangkok, a good dozen of th­ese hair dry­ers were go­ing at full blast in the mid­dle of a cock­tail party and we barely heard any­thing above a small hum.

The true ge­nius, how­ever, as with all Dyson prod­ucts, lies in the tech­nol­ogy. Dyson spared no ex­pense in re­search and de­vel­op­ment—spend­ing four years and 50 mil­lion pounds—which in­cluded a state-of-the-art Hair Lab­o­ra­tory where they tested all 600 pro­to­types of the Su­per­sonic on a to­tal of 1,010 miles of human hair, cov­er­ing seven dif­fer­ent hair types from around the world. This hair dryer is so in­no­va­tive that there are over 250 patents pend­ing, 16 of which are for the ac­com­pa­ny­ing at­tach­ments alone.

Some con­ven­tional hair dry­ers can reach very high heat tem­per­a­tures, es­pe­cially when held close to your head. This can cause ex­treme heat dam­age to your hair. The Su­per­sonic has some­thing called in­tel­li­gent heat con­trol, help­ing to en­sure hair isn’t ex­posed to ex­ces­sive tem­per­a­tures. A glass bead ther­mis­tor mea­sures the tem­per­a­ture 20 times a sec­ond and trans­mits this data to the mi­cro­pro­ces­sor, which in­tel­li­gently con­trols the patented dou­ble-stacked heat­ing el­e­ment. In a nut­shell: Bye-bye frizz and hello sleek sa­lon shine!

But, I’m a man, you say. What pos­si­ble use could a man have for such a fancy hair dryer? 

That’s what I asked renowned Thai hair­styl­ist, Kong, in Bangkok. Kong, with a small grin, de­clares, “Be­cause if you have this in your bath­room, your wife or girl­friend will never leave you.” Can’t ar­gue with that.