Laifen's First New York Launch Event Launched Nothing That Was Not Already on Sale

Laifen held a press and creator event called "Ready to Glow" at Penthouse 45 in Manhattan this month and put three products in front of the room: the Swift 4 high-speed hair dryer, the AutoCurl curling iron and the Glowy vanity mirror. Its release calls the evening the brand's first event in North America, and describes three zones: a scent station, a styling area worked on wigs and extensions, and a mirror reveal staffed by stylists.

None of the three products was new. Laifen's own United States storefront product feed, read on 23 September, records the AutoCurl published on 17 August, the Swift 4 on 31 August and the Glowy on 4 September. Every one of those dates sits ahead of the event. What happened at Penthouse 45 was a party for a catalogue that was already shipping.

The release cannot agree with itself on when the party was. Issued on 22 September at midday Eastern time, it says Laifen "yesterday hosted" the event, which would put it on 21 September, and then four paragraphs later states that it ran on 17 September. Nothing in the company's own documents settles which is right. No person is quoted anywhere in it, not an executive, not a stylist, not an attendee, and no price is given for anything.

What a buyer actually pays

The prices are on the company's own storefront. The Swift 4 is $199.99 in Polished Platinum and in Polished Titanium, both in stock, and $209.99 for the Polished Burgundy gift box. The AutoCurl is $99.99 in pink or white. The Glowy is $129.99 in purple or white.

The number that gives those figures meaning sits on a competitor's site. Dyson's Supersonic Nural is $449.99 on Dyson's own United States product page, a figure taken from that page's own machine-readable product record. Against the Swift 4's $199.99 that is a gap of $250.00, on the two companies' own storefronts.

The Swift 4's specification, taken from Laifen's own technical page rather than from any retail listing: a motor rated at 115,000 RPM, airspeed of 23 m/s, 1500 W at a rated voltage of 110 to 120 V, 407 g without the cord, 59 dB, and an ion output given as 400 million negative ions plus 70 million positive ions. Six temperature settings, two airspeed settings, and a temperature reading taken 1,000 times a second. Third-party write-ups of this dryer circulate 1600 W; 1500 W is what the manufacturer publishes for the 110 to 120 V unit, and 1500 W is the figure this desk is using.

The comparison the release invites and cannot support

Dyson publishes 1,600 W at 120 V for the Nural, a weight of 1.8 lb, four heat settings and three speed settings, a two-year limited warranty, and five attachments in the box. On weight the contrast is real: 407 g is 0.90 lb, so the Swift 4 is roughly half what the Dyson weighs in the hand.

Two other comparisons look obvious and are not available, and a reader deciding what to buy is better served knowing that.

Dyson does not publish a motor speed for the Supersonic Nural at all. Its specification table lists cable length, air flow, negative ions, power, voltage, weight and dimensions, and no rpm figure of any kind. So 115,000 RPM, the figure Laifen leads with, has nothing on the incumbent's own site to be measured against.

The airflow figures are in different units. Dyson gives 13.3 l/s, a volume. Laifen gives 23 m/s, a velocity. They are not the same measurement, and neither converts into the other to show that one machine moves more air.

Three household counts in one month

Where the price holds up, the marketing arithmetic does not. Laifen's 22 September release says the brand is "trusted by more than 35 million households across over 60 countries." Its release of 1 September put the same claim at more than 30 million households across more than 60 countries. Its own About page says the products "can be found in over five million households worldwide," a figure seven times smaller than the one the company was issuing in the same month. Three of its own documents, three different numbers, and none of them is usable as a fact.

The headline market claim is thinner than it reads. The release says Laifen is "Recognized by Euromonitor International as the World's No. 1 High-Speed Hair Dryer Brand." Euromonitor is named; nothing else is. There is no category definition, no measure, meaning neither units nor retail value, no territory, no period, and no report cited. It is a claim attributed to a research firm rather than a ranking a reader can check. The release's "600+ patents and 100+ international design and technology awards" gives no patent numbers, no jurisdiction and no award names, and the patent count could not be verified here at all.

What the record does establish

The corporate document is the part of this that is fully nailed down, and it names what the release never does. The mark LAIFEN is a live United States registration held by Dongguan Laifen Electronic Technology Co.,Ltd. of Humen, Dongguan, Guangdong, China. Serial number 97794941, filed 14 February 2023, registered 5 March 2024 as registration number 7321797 on the Principal Register, in international class 008, with first use and use in commerce both given as 1 February 2023. The registration lists no attorney of record; the company is its own correspondent. Laifen is the brand on the box, and the Chinese company is the entity behind it.

The company's own account of itself, on its About page, is that it was founded in 2019 by Hongxin Ye and built a brushless motor capable of 110,000 rpm, which powered its first fast-dry hairdryer, the LF01, in 2020. On that account the Swift 4's 115,000 RPM is a 5,000 rpm step up on the motor the company started with.

Several things are not established. Nobody is on the record: no named spokesperson is attached to any statement in the release. The stated attendance of more than 50 media guests is the company's own count, with no guest list and no venue statement. The company says the Swift 4 and AutoCurl were used backstage at the TWP show at New York Fashion Week on 10 September by lead hairstylist Joey George and his team; there is no statement from him. No unit sales, revenue, United States market share or shipment figures appear in any of these documents, and the company is privately held in China. Nothing here is a product test: whether these machines do what the specification says is a separate question from what they cost, and only the second has an answer.