Buy the Drybar Double Shot if you want a salon blowout at home and you’ve already decided the Revlon One-Step isn’t quite enough. It is a better tool than the drugstore alternative: a stiffer bristle pattern, more controlled airflow, and an oval head that shapes rather than merely dries. But be honest about the gap. The Revlon One-Step Volumizer does about eighty percent of the same job for roughly a third of the outlay, and for a lot of people eighty percent is the whole answer. The splurge, Shark’s FlexStyle, isn’t a better dryer brush at all. It’s a different category of tool that dries and curls and straightens, and if you want more than volume it makes the Drybar look narrow.
The verdict, up front
You blow-dry often, you want real salon-shaped volume, and a better tool will actually get used
You want the same one-step dry-and-style result and you’d rather find out whether you like the format first
You want curls and smoothing as well as volume, and one tool replacing three is worth the outlay
What the Double Shot actually is
It’s a hot-air brush, which means a hair dryer and a round brush fused into one handle so you can do a blowout without needing a third hand you don’t have. The oval head is the design decision that matters: it gives you a flat face for smoothing and a curved edge for bending ends, which a strictly round barrel can’t do as cleanly.
The bristle mix is the other difference worth naming. Drybar uses a firmer, denser pattern than most drugstore brushes, and firm bristles grip the hair rather than sliding through it. Grip is what creates tension, and tension is what creates a smooth, lifted finish. That’s the actual mechanism behind the price gap, and it’s more meaningful than the wattage numbers either brand puts on the box.
Does it actually work?
It does, and the difference against a cheap brush is real rather than imagined. The finish is smoother, the volume sits higher, and it lasts noticeably longer before falling flat. On thick hair, the extra airflow control means less time held in one place, which means less heat exposure overall.
The uncomfortable part is the comparison to the Revlon. That tool became a phenomenon because it works, and it works well. The Drybar is better in ways you can feel while using it, and the gap is widest on thick or coarse hair, where the cheaper brush struggles to keep tension and the finish suffers for it. On fine-to-medium hair the difference narrows considerably, and there the premium is a much harder case to make.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Excellent grip and tension, which is what really produces a salon finish. The oval head shapes ends properly. Controlled airflow means less time under heat. Well balanced, so your arm doesn’t ache halfway through. Holds volume a day longer than cheaper brushes.
Cons
- Roughly three times the price of a tool that does most of the same job. Heavier than the Revlon. No interchangeable heads at this price unless you go up to the Triple Shot. Won’t curl or straighten. On fine hair the advantage over the dupe shrinks a lot.
Who it’s for
Buy it if
Buy it if you blow-dry more than twice a week and you’ve already worn out a cheaper brush. Frequency is what justifies this purchase, not hair type. If you’re doing this every few days, the better grip and the more controlled airflow save you real minutes and produce a finish that holds a day longer.
Skip it if
Skip it when you air-dry most of the time, when your hair is very short, or when you’ve never used a hot-air brush at all. In that last case the Revlon is the correct first purchase, and not as a compromise. Find out whether you like the format before you spend triple. Skip it too if what you in fact want is curls, because this shapes and lifts but it does not curl.
How to use it for an actual blowout
Get your hair to about eighty percent dry first. This is the step people skip and it’s the difference between a blowout and forty minutes of frustration. Rough-dry with a regular dryer, or let it air-dry while you do everything else, then start.
Work in sections roughly the width of the brush. Start at the root, hold for a beat or two to set the lift, then draw the brush down the length with steady tension and roll the ends under at the bottom. Cool shot at the end of each section, because heat shapes hair and cool is what sets the shape in place. If your roots aren’t lifting, you’re probably starting too far down the strand.
The dupe: Revlon One-Step Volumizer Plus 2.0
The Revlon One-Step Volumizer Plus 2.0 is the dupe because it invented this category as a mass-market object and still executes the same core mechanism: heated airflow through a bristled barrel, dry and style in one pass. It is not a cheap imitation of the Drybar; if anything the causation runs the other way.
Where it stops is tension. The bristles are softer and slightly sparser, so on thick or coarse hair the brush slips where the Drybar grips, and slipping means less smoothing and less root lift. The housing is bulkier and the airflow is less precise. But it delivers, for a third of the money, a result that would have required a salon a decade ago, and for anyone who blows out their hair occasionally rather than habitually, it is comfortably the smarter buy.
The splurge: Shark FlexStyle Air Styling & Drying System
The Shark FlexStyle earns the splurge slot by not being a dryer brush. It’s a modular system: a proper hair dryer that bends into a styler, with attachments that curl, smooth and volumize depending on what you clip on. That range is precisely what the Double Shot cannot offer at any price.
It costs nearly twice the Drybar, and the trade-off is honest rather than hidden. For pure one-pass volume, a dedicated oval brush is still the more direct tool and slightly quicker. What you’re buying with the Shark is the ability to change your mind about your hair on a given morning, and to stop owning three separate appliances to do it. We reviewed it on its own terms in our Shark FlexStyle verdict.
FAQ
Is the Drybar worth three times the Revlon?
On thick or coarse hair and with frequent use, yes, because grip is where the cheaper brush gives up and grip is what makes a blowout hold. On fine-to-medium hair used twice a month, honestly no. The tool is better; whether it is that much better depends almost entirely on how often you reach for it.
Will it damage my hair?
Any heat tool can. The mitigation is the same as always: get to eighty percent dry first so the brush spends less time on wet hair, use the lower heat setting if your hair is fine or colored, and finish sections with the cool shot. A hot-air brush is generally gentler than a flat iron because the heat is diffuse rather than clamped.
What’s the difference between the Double Shot and the Single Shot?
Head shape. The Double Shot is oval, which gives you a flat face for smoothing and a curve for bending ends. The Single Shot is round, which is better for curling under and creating a rounder shape. Both cost the same, so pick by the finish you want rather than by price.
Can I use it on wet hair straight out of the shower?
You can, but don’t. It will take far longer, expose your hair to much more cumulative heat, and the result will be worse. Rough-dry to about eighty percent first. It is the single change that most improves how one of these tools performs.
How we picked
A dupe has to run the same mechanism, so the Revlon qualified on format rather than resemblance: heated airflow through a bristled barrel, one-pass drying and styling, the same finish attempted the same way. The splurge had to do something the hero can’t, which ruled out every other hot-air brush and pointed at a modular system that curls and smooths as well as volumizes. We weighted grip and tension over wattage claims, because tension is what produces a blowout and wattage is what sells one.
Bottom line
Buy the Double Shot if you blow-dry regularly, your hair is thick enough that cheap brushes slip, and you want a finish that still looks intentional the next morning. Dupe it with the Revlon One-Step, which is the right first hot-air brush for almost everyone and the right permanent one for a good many of them. Splurge on the Shark FlexStyle if volume alone isn’t the goal and you’d rather own one tool than three.
It loses half a point for a price gap that’s easiest to justify on exactly the hair types least likely to need convincing. More honest verdicts live in our Buy, Dupe, or Splurge archive, and the rest of our hair coverage sits in Hair.
