I have thick frizzy/wavy hair and blow my hair out about every other day so hair dryer performance is extremely important to me. I did some extensive research on this when my last dryer died a couple of years ago. Honestly, when it came to price, the sky was the limit for me because I was really looking at performance. I read lots of reviews, read info on various message boards, consumer reports (can you tell I worked in R&D???) and ended up buying a Revlon Tourmaline Ionic dryer for under $30.
http://www.amazon.com/Revlon-R.....roduct_top
Now if I am remembering correctly, it seems that when it comes to dryer performance, the biggest factors are power (wattage) and motor life. Unfortunately, on 110 V, we are limited to about 1850 or so Watts) for power - I love blow drying my hair when I am in Europe and can use my mother-in-law's 2000+ Watt dryer because it is so fast and hot. Motor life is not necessarily better with the more expensive models (lots of people complain about the T3's crapping out after a year). The ceramic (tourmailine) and ionic features are supposed to give you more shine, smoothness etc although I think the concentrator nozzle is probably just as important. So I figured for a fraction of the price, why go with the super expensive model? I think the expensive models might have additional features such as more air flow & heat settings (the revlon only has two of each) which was not important for me because with my hair texture, I use it on hot & high all the time. They might also be quieter which again was not much of an issue for me. My only complaint about the Revlon is that the paint on the dryer seems to chip (probably because of my excessive use!) off and I get these little silver flakes floating around sometimes.
