WTF are these “noise-cancelling, air-purifying” Dyson headphones?

Dyson has unveiled something called the Dyson Zone, which are noise-canceling… air-purifying over-ear headphones? It looks like an incredibly silly response to COVID-19, but according to Dyson, it was designed before the pandemic.

“For six years, Dyson engineers worked on a way to purify your air. Not just indoors but outdoors as well,” said Dyson on their website.

The Dyson Zone is basically noise-canceling headphones with a detachable visor for the bottom half of the wearer’s face. The visor itself blows filtered air to your nose, mouth, and chin—sort of like a portable fan dedicated to the lower portion of your face. Dyson also integrated a smaller version of its air-filtration system into the earcups, so that people can “protect themselves from pollution while out and about”.

There are four air purification modes are available—low, medium, high, and auto. You can use the maximum level when you need a higher purification speed if you’re jogging outside. For the Auto mode, the Zone will use onboard accelerometers to determine which setting to choose.

As for its headphones aspect, it is Dyson’s first audio product. There are three ANC modes are available: Isolation,—which provides the highest level of muffling, Conversation—which kicks in when you dip the visor away, turning off the filtration motors to let you better hear who you’re talking to, and Transparency—which allows certain sounds to pass through, so you can be aware of your surroundings.

The Dyson Zone has three cushions on the headband. The central one is slightly curved to distribute the load through “contact areas”. According to Engadget, wearing it “felt balanced and didn’t feel heavy”, and its earcups were “spongy and soft”.

Dyson hasn’t yet shared pricing and availability information for the Zone. However, the company did share that it’s coming this year. I’m a fan of what Dyson has come up with, especially with its air-related technology—so I can bet that it would be extremely fun to try out and wear. But I cannot imagine wearing this out.

It doesn’t look cool to wear, and it looks rather bulky. But what we’re looking at is the possible future of what people would wear on a daily basis. Companies are already coming up with air filtration systems as face masks already. I also really want to try it out to see if we could really live in a future where we all wear something like this out and about—because right now, I have a hard time believing that people want this.

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