Revlon SmoothStay vs One-Step Volumizer Plus

Side by side, published only

Neither sheet is full, and the blanks are almost mirror images. The dryer publishes a wattage and no warranty. The brush publishes a warranty and no wattage. Whichever row you would have shopped on, Revlon has left it off one of the two pages.

They are not rival dryers

Before any spec row, the shapes decide this, and they do different jobs.

The SmoothStay is a hair dryer. It moves hot air, you aim it, and any shape comes from a brush in your other hand. The One-Step Volumizer Plus is a dryer built into a round brush: one object, one hand, and the barrel does the shaping as the air dries.

So the question is not which is better but which problem you have. If your blow-dries come out the way you want, the dryer is more flexible and more powerful on paper. If they come out flat, uneven, or simply do not happen because coordinating a dryer and a round brush is a skill you have not acquired, the brush removes that skill rather than asking you to learn it — which is the entire reason the hot air brush category exists. Hot air brush vs hair dryer is the generic version of this trade, across every brand.

What the brush costs you is airflow and attachment choice. What it saves you is the technique, and the ten minutes you spend failing at it.

Four years against nothing

This is the strangest row on the page and the one worth acting on. Revlon publishes a four-year limited warranty on the One-Step Volumizer Plus and no warranty on the SmoothStay dryer.

Four years is the longest fixed-term cover in this registry. Dyson, Shark and T3 publish two. ghd publishes two or three. L’ange and Calista publish one. Only the Hot Tools lifetime limited warranty beats it, and that is on a different brand entirely. So the cheapest kind of tool on this site is covered for twice as long as tools costing six times more — what a hair tool warranty is actually worth has every figure, and this is the clearest instance of the inversion it describes.

It also means the two Revlon tools are not comparable on risk. One gives you four years in writing. The other gives you a wattage.

The detachable head matters more than it sounds

The One-Step Volumizer Plus publishes a detachable brush head. The older Salon One-Step — still sold, also four years of cover, cheaper — publishes a head that does not come off.

A hot air brush pulls air through its own bristles, which means it collects hair exactly where you cannot reach. A clogged intake on a hot tool is the most common way one dies, so a head that comes off is a head that can be cleaned, and that is a lifespan row dressed up as a convenience. The within-brush comparison is at One-Step Volumizer Plus vs Salon One-Step, and cleaning and maintenance has the method.

1,875 W against no figure at all

The SmoothStay publishes 1,875 W, which ties the highest draw on this site. The One-Step Volumizer Plus publishes no wattage.

Two honest consequences. First, the brush cannot be costed: our running cost arithmetic needs a published watts figure, so it renders the formula rather than a number — running costs explains the rule. Second, nothing here should be read as the brush being underpowered. A hot air brush is finishing hair that is already most of the way dry rather than drying a head from wet, so a lower draw would be appropriate rather than a shortfall. We just cannot tell you what it is.

And 1,875 W on the dryer is not the advantage it looks like either, because the ghd Helios publishes the same figure at several times the price. The head-to-head that makes that point is at SmoothStay vs Hot Tools Pro Artist.

One of them publishes a cool setting

The brush publishes four heat settings including cool. The dryer publishes three heat settings and two speeds, and no cool shot.

Hair takes its shape as it cools, not while it is hot, so a cool setting is what turns a blow-dry into something that lasts past lunchtime. On a round brush it is more useful still: you can hold the section on the barrel while the air runs cold, which sets the bend exactly where the barrel put it. How to use a blow-dry brush properly has the sequence.

Which one to buy

• Buy the One-Step Volumizer Plus if your blow-dries disappoint you. One object, one hand, four settings including cool, four years of cover. It is the most forgiving tool shape in this category.
• Buy the One-Step Volumizer Plus as a gift. You do not need to know the recipient’s hair type for a hot air brush to suit it, and the four-year warranty is the longest fixed term here — the best hair tool gifts ranks on exactly that logic.
• Buy the SmoothStay if you already blow-dry well. A dryer plus your own round brush is more flexible than any fixed barrel, and it is the cheaper object.
• Buy the SmoothStay if your hair is long or dense. 1,875 W published, against no figure at all, and a brush dryer runs out of airflow on volume — dryers for long, thick hair.
• Buy the Salon One-Step if the price gap decides it. Same four-year cover, cheaper, sealed head — the Salon One-Step review.
• Neither, if you travel. Revlon publishes no voltage for either, and an absent voltage reads as single voltage. Exactly one hot air brush in this registry publishes dual voltage — the travel brush list.
• Neither, if you want to know the temperature. Revlon publishes settings names, not degrees. The L’ange Le Volume publishes all three of its temperatures — the Le Volume review.

What we could not compare

Weight, on both: Revlon publishes no figure for either tool, so you cannot know what you will be holding. Cord length, on both. Voltage, on both. Noise, on both, and on everything in this registry. Wattage on the brush, which also means it cannot be costed. Speed settings on the brush. And drying time on both, which is the comparison people actually want — no maker publishes one and there is no standard test, so we will not estimate it.