Dyson, the company that loves to over-engineer things, has turned its attention to pollution. Specifically, noise and air pollution that gets all up in your personal space. The Dyson Zone is the company’s first attempt at a wearable air filter you can listen to.
If its approach to this is anything like its approach to moving air around, then the Dyson Zone might not be that bad. That is, if you don’t mind paying through the nose and looking like Bane from The Dark Knight Rises on his morning jog.
Airflow and acoustics are powerful agents
As Dyson’s engineers explain, the Zone aims to protect its wearer from both air and noise pollution. It does the first of those with the front visor-looking thing that extends around your nose and mouth. Air is sucked in through electrostatic filters in the ear cups. It’s then pumped down to the visor and delivered to the wearer’s face. It’s removable, thankfully, so you needn’t look like a cyberpunk cosplayer all the time.
Dyson says you’ll get enough clean air whether you’re sitting and in a ‘low-breathing mode’ or running for your bus in a ‘high-breathing mode’. It knows this because the company developed Frank, a mannequin head and shoulders with a set of fake lungs, to simulate human breathing.
You think ANC is your ally?
Judging from the company’s track record of working with airflow, we’re inclined to believe that this will function as well as it says. It’s the “noise-cancelling, high fidelity over-ear headphones” part of this whole affair that we’re a bit skeptical of.
Firstly, they look a touch on the large side. We’ve seen big headphones. These look bigger. This isn’t surprising given they have a whole audio driver and an air compressor in both ear cups. There’s probably a battery or two hidden somewhere too. It makes our necks hurt just thinking about wearing them.
Then there’s active noise-cancellation. Dyson comes off like it’s just invented the technology. It hasn’t. It might be doing it differently, but that’s over-engineering for you. It’ll need to approach ANC differently because no other audio company has air compressors to deal with. Those have spinny bits and spinny bits tend to make noise.
If this product appeared on our radar and it was made by any other company we would’ve dismissed it without a second thought. But because it’s Dyson, we’re willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, however small that might be.
