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Dyson Launches New $399 'Supersonic' Hair Dryer

Dyson just launched a dryer so powerful that it comes with a special rubber mat to prevent it from flying off the counter.

Dyson just launched a dryer so powerful that it comes with a special rubber mat to prevent it from flying off the counter. Oh, and it’s $399.

Four years in the making — and involving 103 engineers, over 1,000 miles of test hair, and a $71 million investment — the Dyson Supersonic is being touted by its inventor as “the hairdryer rethought.”

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“We realized that hair dryers can cause extreme heat damage to hair,” said billionaire entrepreneur and company founder Sir James Dyson in a press release. “So I challenged Dyson engineers to really understand the science of hair and develop our version of a hair dryer, which we think solves these problems.”

The innovative hair dryer can be reserved online and will be sold exclusively at Sephora for $399, starting this fall. A $450 limited edition that comes with a chestnut-brown hand-finished leather case "designed by James Dyson himself" sold out online within hours.

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Naturally, the Twitterverse was all aflutter with strongly worded opinions on a hair dryer that costs more than a haircut. “You are bonkers spending £50 million developing this!” wrote one. “For £299 I would expect it to be cordless — and come with a stylist!” opined one Brit on Facebook. Detractors were silenced by Dyson devotees who compared the upmarket hair appliance to similar luxury products like Beats headphones or an Apple Watch.

One Facebook commenter suggested a simpler method for solving the age-old problem of wet hair: “Use a towel. It's even quieter and cheaper.”