Enter the Zone, Dyson's newest and most interesting product yet: a sleek pair of noise-canceling over-the-ear headphones with an attached air purifier intended on limiting air pollution. Little in the way of specs have been released by the company, including the MSRP range, the overall weight of the product, and battery consumption, but the premise is utterly fascinating and wholly Dyson.
For any other company, the Zone seems more akin to an April fool's joke as opposed to a tangible piece of hardware, but for Dyson, it's yet another intriguing concept for the ages. This is coming from the brazen minds behind the Dyson ball and Airwrap. The Zone is aimed primarily at urban consumers, emphasizing most prominently on diminishing both noise and air pollution.
Dyson has integrated its long history in air purification products into the Zone's visor-like half, which is meant to ride over the wearer's mouth and nose. It almost looks like a full-on headset from the distant future. The air purifying visor portion of the product doesn't touch the wearer's mouth or nose but rides comfortably from their face, literally filtering in the air from small compressors attached to the two earpieces, alleviating nasty pollutants along the way.
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While the visor portion doesn't specifically touch your face, Dyson does show off attachable components that would allow for users to clip on a more traditional face mask counterpart, but the point of its non-contact design is so that a full pocket of clean air can formulate just outside from where the wearer is breathing.
The Zone's purifier has a multitude of different settings, each of which corresponds to specific levels of breathing necessity. The levels can be adjusted manually or allotted automatically via the product's own airflow accelerometers, which can change the levels depending on if a user is running or walking.
While the air purifier is certainly a neat and very Dyson touch to the audio-fueled product, the company likewise designed the piece with magnets so that consumers could really make their purchasing decisions solely on its base headphone allure. There are also hinges on the visor so that users can easily slide it down for simple conversing.
According to Dyson, the Zone has taken a total of six years of research to fully develop, with 500 varied prototypes on the chopping block, many of which it showcased on the Zone's announcement page. Utilizing its 30 years of air purification designs, the Zone supposedly can filter up to 99% of particle pollutants in the air. However, the air filters will have to be replaced following about a year, depending on how much the Zone is utilized.
The Zone likewise has three varied noise cancellation levels for its audio portion: Isolation, transparency, and conversation. They are mostly self-explanatory, as conversation mode cancels out the Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) when the user has the visor lowered. Isolation mode is simply normalized ANC used when the visor is active, and transparency is for hearing necessary surrounding sounds, such as an ambulance or fire truck siren.
The Zone is used in tandem with Dyson's Link App, which can also tell users the air quality around them in full detail. It's charged over USB-C, as most electronic devices are nowadays. Dyson has given no word yet on when the Zone might be released, but it's aiming for a Fall 2022 official debut. Keep up to date on all things the Zone via Dyson's own newsletter sign-up.
