After air purifiers, vacuum cleaners, and hairstyling devices, Dyson is taking a new step forward to create something that looks like it was fished out from a closet of the future.

The device, called the Dyson Zone, is a noise-cancelling headphone with air purifiers built-in. There is also a magnetic face visor that keeps it all together and somehow, bizarrely, it fits right into Dyson’s design language. As The Verge calls it, this is both the “strangest and the most ambitious product” Dyson has ever made.

Dyson’s initial announcement is just a product reveal of the Zone ahead of its fall release date and the company has not announced any details regarding price or specifications yet. There is no information about how heavy the Dyson Zone is going to be or how long its battery is going to last.

Dyson products are not known for their battery life, but since these are headphones, that essentially need to work longer than a round of cleaning or hair drying, Dyson probably has something figured out.

So, what is Dyson trying to do with the Zone? The company is trying to cut out noise and air pollution from the user’s vicinity.

Dyson has taken its existing air filtration technology and put it into this unique form factor to create the Zone. The Zone “pulls in air through each earpiece using a pair of tiny compressors. The air is then filtered and piped through the ‘visor’ for the user to breathe in - sans most of the particles and pollutants”.

Now, the visor on the Zone doesn’t make contact with your face. It sits right in front creating a little gap where this clean air can be pushed in for you to breathe. Dyson also has a separate attachment that can be clipped on for situations where one might need a full-contact mask.

The visor on the Zone snaps on with the help of magnets so you can also use this device just as headphones if you want. It also has hinges so the visor can be pushed out of the way if you want to talk to people without taking the Zone off entirely.

The apparatus’ filtration system also has multiple settings for different levels of exertion so if you are breathing heavily after climbing a flight of stairs, it can be adjusted. There is also an automated setting that uses accelerometers to automatically adjust this airflow.

Dyson said in the announcement that the Zone is capable of filtering out up to 99 per cent of particle pollution. However, the filters on the Zone are not reusable, they will need to be replaced after a year, ideally, though this will depend on how much air pollution the user encounters and how often the headphones are being used. Of course, if you were using it in Delhi, you might just need to replace it in six months, there’s no knowing for certain.

On the headphone front, the Dyson Zone promises to create “faithful” reproductions of musicians’ tracks and the noise cancellation is going to be provided “through a mix of passive cancellation from the overall design and active noise cancellation through a series of microphones”.

The company has explained that there are three different noise cancellation modes on the Zone - “Isolation mode has active ANC when the face visor is raised. Lowering the visor automatically shifts into conversation mode, which disables ANC so you can hear the person you’re talking to. There’s also a transparency mode, which filters out important sounds like car horns and sirens”.

The Zone will charge through a USB-C charger and connect to your smartphone via the Dyson Link app. The Verge tried a prototype of the Zone and their verdict was that one could feel the jest of air being pumped in front of the face though there was no knowing how much cleaner it was from the air around it. The ANC worked well on the trial though it was tested in a quiet hotel room and “audio quality for music was good without particularly dramatic bass”. Also, the Dyson Zone is big, bulky, and heavy and “the whirring of the compressors was still slightly audible when the motors were running at faster speeds” without music being played and despite noise cancellation.  

Despite these drawbacks, Dyson Zone is interesting tech. It remains to be seen exactly how expensive Dyson makes it.

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