Panasonic EH-NA98 advanced hairdryer with nanoe and double mineral technology
Buy now £129.99, Boots.com
- Attachments: One (quick-drying nozzle)
- Motor: 1800w
- Weight: 502g
A lot of hair tools seem to feel the need to match their intelligence with an aesthetic so complex it’s almost alien. For the most part, this isn’t the case for the Panasonic dryer. The barrel and handle aren’t dissimilar to any other dryer, the only big difference is the nozzle, which is much narrower than the rest of the dryer and looks almost like a duck’s beak from the side.
But even though it wasn’t too different from dryers we’d used in the past, we were still overwhelmed at first. As well as your usual three speeds, you can toggle between four different settings.
We started with hot mode, the default option which is best used on completely wet hair. This is your standard hair drying experience. At the highest speed it packs a punch far more powerful than most devices, and it dried our tester’s long, thick and wavy hair much quicker than expected.
The second, and our favourite option, is scalp mode. This gently dries your scalp while emitting nano-sized moisture ions that keep it hydrated and improve any dryness over time. We’ve struggled with a dry scalp for years, and most hydrating products that help usually also mean dealing with greasy hair. This was by far the better alternative and resulted in reduced itching and flakiness, and noticeably improved comfort. Hair also took longer to get greasy at the root.
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After scalp mode is skin mode. Like scalp mode, this uses nano-sized moisture ions, but this time it’s for the purpose of preventing your skin from getting too dry by all that excess heat from your blow-dry.
This sounded very exciting – and probably would have been more beneficial to someone with dry skin – but was probably the mode we used least. Held the recommended 20cm or so from our face, it just felt like a blast of humidity nobody wants to face first thing in the morning.
Then there was the intelligent temperature control mode. This combines a bit of everything, using the temperature of your environment to adapt the temperature of your blow-dry. The benefits of this feature become abundantly clear the moment you’re in hot weather where it manages to make the whole experience much more bearable.
A bonus mode on the dryer – hot and cold mode – also sees it switch between two extreme temperatures as you style. We weren’t sure what to expect with this at first but quickly saw the benefit. It’s supposed to recreate the styling technique of salon stylists, and definitely improved the quality of our own DIY blow-dry. Hair looked big and bouncy for hours on end – and, most importantly, never felt fried.
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This is the biggest selling point of this hairdryer. Beneath all the complex settings is the idea that your hair can not only withstand the high temperatures of a blow-dry but actually come out healthier than ever. Our tester usually only styles her hair with heat for a few days in a row maximum but felt safer putting her hair in the hands of this weird and wonderful device on a near-daily basis.
We also liked a few other functional quirks. It’s foldable, which is rare in any dryer that isn’t travel-sized. Also, it’s surprisingly light. The heat settings light up along the side, making it easy to double-check which one you’re using in the mirror.
We wish you could select your mode before turning it on rather than just jumping to “hot”, but it does adapt quickly when you do change it. Although we do like the quick-drying nozzle included, it would also have been nice to have more variety.
The verdict: Panasonic EH-NA98 advanced hairdryer
Even though this is still a tool that uses extreme temperatures to style hair, the Panasonic EH-NA98 felt like it was doing the world of good for our hair. Whether we just ran it through our hair or took time to perfect a proper blow-dry, our strands felt soft and nourished at the ends rather than fried and dry. The biggest improvement was on our scalp, which has never happened with any other hair dryer we’ve tried before.
Although there are some limitations due to the fact you’ve just got the one styling nozzle (more are available to purchase separately), it was still versatile enough to pull off any look we attempted. It isn’t the cheapest hair dryer on the market, but definitely worth it for anyone wanting to invest in the long-term health of their hair.