Dyson’s Zone headphones are probably the weirdest factor I’ve examined in my 12 years at CNET. The headphones characteristic motors in every earcup that energy a filtration system constructed right into a removable face masks. I spent the final month utilizing the system, each at dwelling and outdoors, and I’ve some concepts on how Dyson can enhance the subsequent era.
As a set of headphones, I just like the Zone. The sound high quality is superb, offering deep bass and crystal-clear highs that go well with my most well-liked genres (metallic, principally) admirably. The noise canceling is nice, too, eradicating the highway noise exterior my workplace window and offering a extra tranquil expertise for me to work in.
However these aren’t simply headphones, they’re a whole private filtration system. The 2 motors constructed into every earcup make these headphones exceptionally huge and heavy on my head, and the face visor feels bizarre to put on. I attempted utilizing it out and about and I get a whole lot of bizarre seems to be, my glasses fog up and I find yourself taking it off fairly shortly. I simply can’t convey myself to make use of it in public, regardless of many individuals — myself included, typically — nonetheless carrying COVID-19 face masks in busy areas.
However then, I need not put on the visor. I stay in Edinburgh, a comparatively clear metropolis the place this sort of tech simply is not required. Possibly I might really feel completely different if I lived in a extremely polluted mega metropolis and commuted by foot — or bike — alongside busy roads every single day.
The issue is that the filtration expertise cannot be separated from the headphones. You may take the filters out to interchange them, and you’ll take away the visor, however these heavy motors nonetheless stay. Each time I’m going for a stroll with these headphones, I nonetheless have the motors strapped to my head, even though I’ve no intention of utilizing them. And that is the place I believe Dyson has gone unsuitable.
A model that permits you to take away the entire filter system would imply somebody like me who simply desires the nice sound of the headphones, may purchase simply the headphones. It will make them way more comfy to put on for lengthy intervals if you’re at dwelling, then merely connect the filter system if you’re heading into the town.
It will permit them to be bought individually, making the headphones themselves way more interesting for basic music followers. Proper now, that whopping $1,000 price ticket signifies that solely the wealthiest audiophiles commuting by the largest cities are going to contemplate them — and that is a reasonably area of interest market. Permit the headphones to be purchased individually for a lot much less, with a chance of shopping for the filters later if you’d like them? Now we’re speaking.
I am certain that is one thing Dyson thought-about through the six years it says it spent growing the Zone headphones, so there’s presumably a very good motive why that is not the product we’ve. However this first-generation Zone feels precisely that: first-generation. In want of refinements that we would count on to see in future fashions.
