This is my first "nozzle-less" dryer and I have to admit I won't be going back to my old fashioned hair dryer! The problem that I was having with the "7" shaped dryer is that it was heavy and unbalanced, sometimes even heavier on the nozzle end making my wrist hurt when drying my waist length hair. Depending on the brand of hair dryer, some nozzles were extra long and my hair would often get sucked into the dryer and I would have to painstakingly pull my hair out.
This dryer solves a lot of my problems. It is a lot more ergonomically friendly and I would compare it to the feeling of holding a jumbo hair brush to my hair. No awkwardness whatsoever. Compared to my "7" shaped dryer, this is much lighter. I really love the fact that the electrical cord swivels in a circular 360 degree motion (not just rotates) and also is made to bend at the base so there are no tangles in the cord. It produces ions and even has an LED light at the top of the dryer to tell you that it's on...(although I'm not sure the whole ion thing is a little overrated). Because of the wide opening for air flow this dryer tends to not blow your hair all around like the regular nozzle does. You can get quite a bit of control of your hair styling with the dryer set on Hi which is great (no diffusing required)..the other nozzle dryers just blow your hair all over the place.
This dryer would be 5 stars for me if the cool shot button would stay down when I push it. It creates a lot of fatigue on my hand (carpal tunnel) when I have to keep my finger on it while maneuvering the dryer at the same time. The control switch would be better if instead of the sliding up and down, they changed it to a toggle switch intead..that way I wouldn't have to stop what I was doing or use two hands to switch the speed. The air flow can get EXTREMELY hot...at 1875 watts it is equivalent to a lot of the other dryers out on the market. However, with a wider air flow, unlike the nozzle type dryers which direct hot air to a concentrated area, the wide air flow can direct hot air to a wider area and you start to get very hot and uncomfortable quickly as if you were standing in front of a heater. It effectively dries hair much more quickly but you have to keep the dryer moving to avoid feeling like you are on fire. My last suggestion would be for better attachments. This dryer comes with 3, but the teeth on each of the attachments are spaced so far apart that it is useless for me. The brush attachment doesn't do much to style my hair and the straightener and detangler requires a lot of effort on my part to keep my thin, straight, hair from slipping out of the attachment.
Overall this was worth the price that I paid and a welcome addition to my beauty arsenal.