Dyson’s bizarre new headphones have a built-in air purifier

Image: Dyson

Dyson is getting into headphones in the most Dyson way possible: the Zone, a pair of noise-canceling headphones with air purification technology built in, thanks to a weird looking magnetic face visor. It is the strangest and most ambitious product that the company has ever made.

Today's announcement is just an initial reveal of the Zone headphones ahead of a fall release date, and Dyson isn't announcing specific details like price or specifications (including how much the headphones weigh or how long the battery will last) at this time.

The goal of the Zone is to make living in an urban area more comfortable by trying to reduce air and noise pollution.

The air purification part of the Zone doesn't change the wheel for Dyson. Instead, it miniaturizes the company's existing air filters into a new form factor. The Zone pulls in air through each earpiece. The air is piped through a weird contraption, which filters it and then lets the user breathe without most of the particles and pollutants.

The visor doesn't make contact with your face like a mask would. Instead, it sits in front of your face, creating a gap where the clean air can gather and be breathed in. The company showed off a separate attachment that could be clipped on if you need a full-contact face mask.

Image: Dyson

If you just want to use the headphones as headphones, the visor can be removed if you want. It has hinges that allow you to talk to people without taking off the whole apparatus. Multiple settings for different levels of exertion are offered by the Zone. If you're trying to catch a bus or running up stairs, you'll need more air than if you're on a stroll. There is an automated setting that uses a device to adjust the air flow.

Dyson says the Zone can remove up to 99 percent of particle pollution, although the filters need to be replaced after a year. The exact amount of time will be determined by how much air pollution you encounter and how active you are with your headphones.

Despite being a new product category for Dyson, the headphones are more traditional. The company says it wanted to create faithful reproductions of a musician's original tracks. Through a series of microphones, noise cancellation is provided through a mix of passive and active cancellation.

There are three different ways to cancel noise. When the face visor is raised, Isolation mode has active ANC. ANC is disabled when the visor is lowered so you can hear the person you're talking to. The transparency mode filters out important sounds like car horns and sirens. The headphones connect to a Dyson Link app, which can provide more detailed information on the air quality around you.

I tried a prototype of the Zone a few weeks ago, and it seems to do what the company claims. It was hard to tell how much cleaner it was because I was indoors, but I could feel the jets of air in front of my face.

ANC worked well, too, but a quiet hotel room isn't the best test scenario, and the audio quality for music was good without particularly dramatic bass.

The Zone headphones are big and heavy. Dyson has done an admirable job of putting all this technology into a pair of headphones, but they are still larger and bulkier than a pair of Sony headphones. The noise cancellation didn't help the sound of the compressor, even though it was running at faster speeds and I wasn't listening to music to drown it out.

The Zone is one of the most unique products from Dyson that we will see this year. We don't know a lot of important details, including price and battery life. While mask-wearing has been normalized over the past two years, we will have to see if customers will embrace this product.