BaByliss 'Eco Dry' hair dryer halves energy use

Anyone with a home energy monitor will tell you hair dryers are electricity hogs. Many hair dryers consume a whopping 2,000 watts -- close to the 3,000 your kettle munches -- but now a new 'Eco Dry' model from BaByliss has arrived saying it only uses 1,000. Surely a dryer with half the power just takes longer, right? Wrong, say BaByliss' boffs, who claim it performs as well as a conventional one.

BaByliss tells me most dryers use around 95 per cent energy for heat and 5 per cent for air flow, which both combine to dry your hair. The Eco Dry works by using a new motor that concentrates on increasing the air flow. In other words, it boosts the least energy-intensive way of drying your hair.

According to BaByliss, its 'independent' tests say people using the Eco Dry found it performed as well as a normal 2,000 watt model. It didn't say how many people were polled.

If your hair dryer's just gone kaput, the Eco Dry certainly looks worth a look. As a guy with short hair, I can't tell you if it looks like a well-specified dryer, so you'll have to evaluate that. It's on sale for £20 at Argos now.

Of course, if you want to be uber green, there is hair dryer that saves even more energy. It's a five letter word that begins with 't' and ends in the sound of a nocturnal bird.