Is Shark HD430 FlexStyle Air Drying And Styling System Worth It?

There are a lot of good hair styling products by well-known brands these days and the latest obsession for us beauty gadget junkies is styling tools that can take care of multiple needs in one device. Case in point the Shark FlexStyle, this air drying and styling system which includes a blow-dryer, styling brush and curling device all in one. It’s almost the same with Dyson Airwrap but it is much cheaper than it.  in this review I’ll check what this device can do, and how well it blow dries and styles hair as well as how it curls too. I’ll wrap up by showing you my opinions.

When i open the box, I got one main motor wand, round brush, styling nozzle, 2 X auto-curlers, as well as a manual book. The main motor wand is unique in that it can adjust its position with the click of a button turning from a small but powerful directional blow dryer into a wand that can also be used with all the attachments. On the handle are the controls. There’s a power button plus three airflow speeds. There’s low, medium and high and three temperature settings plus a cool shot button.Some attachments are added or removed by clicking the release button which some attachement is magnetic like hair dryer and the drying nozzel. Each of them simply snaps into the end of the wand. If you want to use it for blow drying just remove the styling attachment then release the lock to transform the Flex Style into an L-shaped blow dryer. The Shark Flex Style uses heated air to dry and style your hair.

Hair Dryer:

As the main motor wand has built in intelligent temerature control, and the system will monitor and regulate the high temerature, so there’s no heat damage.The Shark Flex Style handle here measures about 11 and a half inches and it does balloon to about 17 and a half inches with some of these attachments so it is not small and the device itself weighs about one and a half pounds. We’ll start with the hair drying. The Shark Flex Style has a 1300 watt motor. One of the first things I noticed about using the Flex Style as a dryer is that the nozzle is quite small. Size-wise it’s more akin to a travel hair dryer than a full-size hair dryer but the wattage keeps it powerful. Initially I thought the narrow size of the barrel opening here would mean it takes longer to dry my hair but I was surprised to find just the opposite.

Hot Brush:

The oval brush did a great job of giving me bounce and it dried my hair quite effectively. I also really began to appreciate those smaller hairbrush fibers since they seem to grip my hair a lot better resulting in a slightly slower pull-through and more effective drying with fewer passes. I also found those cool touch knobs to be quite handy to take some of the pressure off my wrists and shoulders since after styling my entire head the flex style did start to feel a bit heavy. The paddle brush doesn’t have a similar nib and I found myself wishing it does. With this brush I did find it was a little easier for the powerful motor to kind of blow the hair off the brush as opposed to holding it against the heat output.

2xCurlers:

Let’s get to check those two auto wrap curlers, they’re labeled left and right and the operation is simple. Use the one marked left on the left side of your head and the right on the right. This will give you a more balanced look than simply curling your whole head with curls all going in one direction. Each of these curling attachments also has a cool touch knob which does make it easier to operate, which essentially sucks your hair onto the barrel, wraps it around and holds it there with hot air creating the curl,it is so amazing. To use the auto wrap curler attachments properly you want to work in smaller sections, smaller than you might with a curling iron or a wand for example, more like half an inch to one inch. Turn the styling wand on and bring it around behind the ends of your hair and then let the ends get caught up in the vortex and wrap themselves around the barrel. This should happen automatically. Once the ends have wrapped you can let go of the rest of your hair section and then slowly bring the barrel towards your head.  Your hair should continue to wrap itself around the barrel and you don’t need to twist the wand to help it, though I did end up trying this early in my testing. Shark recommends you hold the barrel in place for about 10 seconds then blast it with the cool shot button for a further 10 seconds to lock your curl into place. The wand will really only hoover up as much hair as it can manage so if you grab too much it just won’t take it and it’ll kind of fall off the barrel. In my testing I found that creating the looser waves were able to get in six to eight seconds and without needing the cool shot button, although the seller claims that cool wind can help me styling better,but my hair indeed looks well and a bit smooth.

Overall, though the blow dryer is small is but powerful and effective. While the larger oval brush was my preferred attachment the paddle brush attachment worked quite well too if it did require a few more passes. I am not familiar with auto wrap curlers but i think they are quite effective.

I think this Shark air drying and styling system is also an ideal styling option to bring with you if you’re traveling since it can be broken down or folded into smaller parts that would even hide in a carry-on. The only downside is that i feel a bit heavy after a while. Although the Shark Flex style could use some small improvements, i still think it is more affordable. For that reason I can definitely recommend the Shark Flex style to you.