You’ll soon be able to wear a Dyson out on the streets. Known for their range of household appliances such as vacuum cleaners, air purifiers, lights and bladeless fans as well as cult-favourite hairstyling tools like hair dryers and multi-stylers, Dyson is launching their first ever “wearable purifier”: the Dyson Zone.
First announced earlier this year in March, the Dyson Zone is a set of high-fidelity over-ear headphones that offers active noise cancellation (ANC). But unlike other ANC headphones currently in the market, the Dyson Zone has a notable addition: an air-purifying detachable face visor for purified airflow to the nose and mouth.
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Designed to “simultaneously tackle the urban issues of air quality and noise pollution”, the Dyson Zone was created after six years of research and development.
The headphones will first be released in China, where they are expected to hit the stores starting January 2023. Singapore, which will be the first within Southeast Asia to unveil the Dyson Zone, as well as the US, UK and Hong Kong, will have to wait till March 2023 for the headphones to be available.
Wondering how the noise-cancelling headphones will work? We break it down, below.
The Dyson Zone has been engineered to deliver high fidelity, immersive audio with ultra-low distortion and a broad frequency range for clarity across bass, mids and highs. Driven by scientific metrics and research, the headphones reproduce frequencies from 6 Hz – 21 kHz; this ensures that every note or word is heard when the headphones are on.
The ANC system uses eight of the 11 microphones in the Dyson Zone to reduce the sound of the city up to 38 dB; these microphones monitor surrounding sounds 384,000 times a second.
The Dyson Zone offers up to 38 dB (decibels) of noise cancellation from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. In comparison to other ANC headphones in the market, the Apple Airpods Max offers up to 26 dB, and the Sony 1000XM4 offers up to 29 dB (higher values indicate greater noise reduction). But as for how the ANC truly weighs up against the other headphones, we’ll have to wait for its release to do a full comparison.
Dyson’s expertise in airflow and filtration shines here. Each earcup has compressors, which draws air through dual-layer electrostatic filters. After cleaning, the purified air is then piped through the detachable visor to the wearer’s nose and mouth to breathe in.
The electrostatic filters are able to capture 99% of ultrafine particle pollution, which can be as small as 0.1 micron. Other city gas pollutants like nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and ozone will also be filtered through the K-Carbon, potassium-enriched carbon filters.
A pair of filters is said to last up to 12 months, depending on geographical location and usage levels. Dyson notes that the Zone is not a replacement for surgical masks, a staple worn during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The visor, which has drawn much interest from the public when the headphones were first announced, sits in front of but does not touch the face. A series of magnets allow it to be snapped onto the headphones, and it can be flipped down or removed easily.
The Dyson Zone incorporates an additional microphone specifically for telephony, allowing users to take phone calls, voice recording and voice control. Embedded sensors allow music playback to automatically start or stop when the headphone is worn or taken off.
The visor airflow has a similar feature. Embedded accelerometers allow for automated airflow for different activities and levels of exertion. For example, if the user is exercising or climbing up a flight of stairs, the airflow will be adjusted up. Airflow will automatically pause when the visor dips, activating ‘conversation mode’ where music will also be paused in order to optimise battery life.
Powered by advanced lithium-ion batteries and USB-C charging, the headphones offer 50 hours of audio-only run-time. The impressive battery life drops to four hours when the headphones are used for both audio and air purification simultaneously. Charging the headphones up to 100% will take only three hours.
Users will also be able to control the Zone with the MyDyson app. Airflow speed and noise-cancellation mode can be adjusted within the app, as well as audio equalisation and preferences. You’ll also be able to track real-time environmental noise levels, and the app is also able to provide actionable, understandable information about the user’s environment to inform healthier habits.
Text: Cheryl Lai-Lim/HerWorld