The best hot brushes if you can't stretch to an Airwrap – tested and reviewed by our experts

RRP: £99

I was blown away by how good this tool is and I have to say, I am quite taken with the Barbiecore colourway. The first thing I noticed (besides the pink) was how light it is; I didn’t get the usual armache while blow-drying.

As with similar tools, your hair should be mostly dry before styling with this, but the drying attachment quickly ensured my hair was ready to be smoothed in five minutes. The 60mm oval barrel then did so nicely; it is quite large but still managed to curl my hair under at the ends. I was slightly worried that the bristle tufts, despite being flexible, would tangle in my hair, but it didn’t knot up at all – neither did they in my daughter’s slightly finer hair.

Of all tools on this list, I achieved the best ringlets with the 32mm curling attachment – they were so bouncy and didn’t drop as quickly. Sure, this tool doesn't swirl hair around the barrel like the Airwrap does for you, but the cool tip is a good enough size to avoid burning your fingertips as you wrap sections around the barrel. The result is a great bouncy blow-dry in a box, with a silky-smooth finish that won't have you reaching for the best hair straighteners afterwards.

RRP: £99

Until this feature, I’d never mastered the art of the bouncy at-home blow-dry, but the Hot Tools Volumiser changed that. Completely foolproof, the titanium surface and soft bristles glide through hair with ease. It's also equipped with two oval attachments – a standard size and a smaller version – and three heat settings.

Truthfully, there’s not a big difference between the 71mm and 61mm brush heads. I like to create movement when blow-drying, but even the smaller attachments struggled to create bends in my long hair. That said, it did create a smooth, frizz-free finish very quickly. My hair was dry and polished in around 10 minutes (usually it takes me that long to blast dry with a hair dryer). Also impressive was its ability to create a style with staying power.

Other features include a 3m salon-length swivel cable, reducing the risk of tangling, while the rubbery cool tip is generous, allowing you to create tension without catching your fingers on hot vents. Like the Beauty Works Hot Brush and Revlon One-Step Volumiser, attachments are designed for volume rather than curls, which is worth noting if you're after more of a multi-styler. But if speed-drying is your goal, this could be the best hot brush for you – especially if you have long, thick and/or frizzy hair.

RRP: £62.99

It may not be as high-tech as the Dyson Airwrap, but TikTokers are obsessed with this 2-in-1 tool for its body-boosting results. This is Revlon’s second One-Step iteration (see our Revlon Hair Dryer Brush review for more on its predecessor), with a detachable head and a 30% smaller barrel than the original Volumiser, making it an ideal 2-in-1 travel hair dryer. What that means for your hair is that you can get the oval barrel even closer to your roots for extra lift. It also makes it easier to create movement, particularly for shorter styles or when styling layered hair.

The 2.0 version also has a ceramic titanium tourmaline coating for even heat distribution and, therefore, inflicts less damage. It is quite heavy and chunky, though, so after styling all my hair my arm needed a rest. However, it’s one of the lower-priced options here and about eight times cheaper than the Airwrap, so ideal for those on smaller budgets. The results were brilliant and it delivered the most volume and bounce of any tool here.

The downside was that it didn’t completely smooth my frizz, so I did need a quick pass of my straighteners over those annoying flyaways at the root. There’s no pomp to this styling tool, which is kind of refreshing; it’s so quick and easy to use and if you haven’t got room for several attachments, its simplicity is bliss.

RRP: £69.99

Thanks to the rotating barrel, Remington's Airstyler mimics the technique used by stylists to simultaneously curl and smooth the hair dry. It also rotates in both directions, which is very helpful for curling hair away from the face on both sides. As well as the four attachments, it comes with a pretty sturdy storage case, so it certainly feels like you’re getting bang for your buck.

While it’s not a heavy tool, the handle and attachments feel long – not dissimilar to the Airwrap, which is similarly bulky. It offers a good range of attachments and styling versatility like the Airwrap and was definitely quieter than Hot Tools' and Babyliss models. The curling barrel has a clip, like a traditional curling tong, but I found it a bit redundant and that it made the process more laborious.

While it did a good job of creating looser curly hairstyles, these were quick to drop. (Again, this is likely down to my hair type – even the best curling irons can’t create lasting ringlets on me.) It was with the 40mm soft bristle brush that this tool really excelled. It kept hair taut without yanking and smoothed out frizz. It’s a slightly smaller barrel than the BaByliss Air Style 1000, which makes it a great option for mid-length hair or those with long hairstyles looking to create a blowout with bends.

RRP: £242.99

If you’ve used the Shark Hair Dryer you’d probably be just as excited as we were to try the FlexStyle. After all, it's the only tool here that uses the Coanda effect – the same hair-wrapping airflow technology as the Airwrap. It also has the largest number of attachments of any rival we’ve tried (five, to be precise). So, it will come as no surprise that it's also the most expensive Dyson Airwrap alternative in our selection.

Beauty channel editor Fiona McKim has tested the Shark FlexStyle and says she could achieve pretty much everything that she can do with the Airwrap. "From a bouncy blow dry with the oval brush to beachy waves with the auto-wrap curlers, it's all here," she says. "There is a bit of a knack to it, but if you know how to use the Dyson Airwrap, you'll have this down in seconds. I found styles were just as easy to create and lasted a similar amount of time." Though it's a bit heavier and noisier than the Airwrap, McKim notes that you won't get much closer from a more affordable option.

RRP: £179

Unlike many hot brushes, the ghd Rise heats up like a traditional curling tong rather than using air to style. This means it can only be used on dry hair, so you’ll need a hair dryer, too. You can use it in several ways, all of which require practice. Adding lift was probably the easiest; wrap a small section of hair around the barrel close to the roots, hold it for five seconds and rise up as you release.

For body and bounce, you use the Rise in a similar way to the best heated rollers, wrapping it up from the ends to the roots and holding it there for five seconds. This technique didn’t seem to do much for my hair, which I put down to its sheer length and thickness. Curls were the trickiest to master as you have to glide the barrel down the hair, then roll up towards the root, hold it and unwind. (Luckily, ghd has pre-empted this with some great online tutorials.)

As with other ghd tools, the Rise beeps once it’s heated up and is ready to use, which takes 15 seconds. There are no settings here – it styles at the brand's optimum temperature of 185ºC, which is consistently maintained across the barrel while styling. The bristles are short, which allows you to get right into the root without tangling. I’ve seen some amazing "after" pictures using the Rise on long hair, so although that didn’t happen for me, I think it would be great for those with short hairstyles or medium hairstyles who want a tool that adds "oomph" to hair quickly.

RRP: £44.99

If you’re after a styler that looks similar to the Dyson Airwrap, turn your attention to Evie's 3-in-1 Hair Styling Brush. In a similar grey and pink colourway to the original tool, it certainly looks the part, but it does differ considerably. Firstly, there are only three attachments, all of which are brushes; there are no curling barrels here.

These include a 12cm round brush for curling, a 14cm brush head for straightening and a 15cm brush for drying. They're all easy to attach (simply push and twist), but do note that they get extremely hot. We recommend letting a brush head cool down before removing it from the main tool. There are three heat and two speed settings to cater to different hair types and we were seriously impressed with the highest speed setting when drying – it took a matter of minutes.

As for the styling brushes, we found both smoothed hair easily. The results of the straightening one were natural-looking, rather than poker straight, while the curling brush was a little tricky for us to manoeuvre. Results weren’t as impressive as those of other tools – expect more of a wavy hairstyle over a voluminous blow dry.

RRP: £75

With four attachments, not only is this similar to Dyson's styler, it’s a great value option, too. The downside? It’s a lot louder – but, then again, not many can rival Dyson’s quiet motor. It doesn’t feature the Coanda effect either. Instead, the Babyliss Air Style acts like a traditional blow-drying tool that requires wrapping the hair around the barrel yourself. This can be tricky, especially when you want to direct curls in different directions away from the face.

BaByliss advises hair is 80% dry before styling. It’s more time-consuming than all-in-one tools like Revlon's One-Step Volumiser, which styles hair from wet, but it does come with a drying nozzle, so you have everything you need to take hair from sopping to smooth. Attachments also click in and out of the base with ease. The paddle brush nozzle didn’t do as much as I’d hoped in terms of smoothing the frizzy hair at my roots, but it did get my hair in a better position to use the conical curling tong. Attachments do get hot during styling, so the heat-proof glove proved very useful in switching heads without scalding.

Overall, I think this tool is excellent value for money. It’s lightweight and fairly simple to use, and one that pro hairdresser and BaByliss ambassador Syd Hayes often recommends. “If you blow dry often, this styler makes it so much easier as you don’t have to hold a dryer and a brush,” he says. “It does the hard work for you and gives the perfect result."

RRP: £75

Beauty Works' Speed Styler is arguably one of the best hair straightener brushes around, delivering the same smooth results that you’d expect from the Airwap’s firm brush head. Unlike the Airwrap, however, there are no extra attachments and it can only be used on dry hair.

Though it's heavier than most (I found it weightier than my ghd straighteners), it is the only one on our list to have a digital temperature display – a nice touch – and you can adjust this. It takes a while to heat up (two minutes to reach 180ºC), so it’s not the best for those who are often in a rush. Despite the large paddle design, I found it best to style in small sections with this tool. It straightened and smoothed my hair well and made it look healthier, though it's worth noting that the results were more natural than the poker-straight finish of straighteners.

Its curved design and ionic-coated bristles help to detangle strands as you style – but despite this, I struggled to get it through my thick, coarse hair at times. I therefore think it’s better suited to finer hair; of the five-star reviews I read, many described how well it worked styling these hair types.