Dyson Has Killed Its Bizarre Zone Air-Purifying Headphones
'One of the things we've learned is people really do care about what it looks like when it's on your head.'
'No, this is not an elaborate April fool'. This is how WIRED first reported on the Dyson Zone at the end of March 2022. The Zone was a wild reimagining of an established product type—a big, bulky pair of headphones with an integrated air-purification mechanism that presented rather unfortunately like a high-tech gimp mask. A solution to a problem no consumer seemed willing to acknowledge existed in the first place.
Worse was to follow. December 2022: 'Dyson's hellish-looking air-purifying headset will cost $950.' And in May 2023, our review made liberal use of words like 'embarrassing', 'troubling' and 'derision,' and suggested the reviewer felt like 'a Fisher Price Batman villain' while wearing them. 'You can finally buy this bizarre, head-mounted contraption—but for pity's sake, don't'.
Zone marked the first time Dyson's chief engineer (and son of James) Jake Dyson had been project lead for a product since he folded Jake Dyson Products into the Dyson portfolio. At the time, he was bullish about the Zone's chances: 'After six years in development, we're excited to deliver pure air and pure audio, anywhere.' Since then, Dyson has gone eerily quiet on promoting the Zone, and now your chances of acquiring a pair are close to nil.
In the United States, everyone from SportPursuit to Best Buy is out of stock, and retailers show no sign of doing anything about the situation. At the time of writing, Walmart's website reckons there is one pair left throughout the entirety of the retail giant. In the UK, meanwhile, retailer John Lewis is unequivocal: 'We will not receive more stock of this item'.
In fact, it seems the only place where you can still buy the Dyson Zone is at Dyson.com—and even here, the product is far from front and center. Should you find yourself able to navigate to the relevant page, you'll have to scroll down a long way to get to an image of the headphones with their air-purification muzzle attached. Indeed, 'black sheep' seems a reasonable enough way to describe the Zone's position in the Dyson product family.
In an exclusive interview, WIRED sat down with Jake Dyson, who was disarmingly open about the fate of the Zone. So it seemed only right to discuss the Zone's fallout, look at Dyson's altogether more successful (and de facto replacement model) OnTrac headphones, and, considering that Jake's first swing for the company has turned out to be such a high-profile miss, find out Dyson's future plans in the audio world.
Jake Dyson at the 2023 London launch of the now discontinued Zone, a project he spearheaded. Courtesy of Dyson
'[With the Zone] we thought we could bring something better to the table than what's currently out there," says Jake Dyson. "You get pure delivery of undisturbed air, and join that with headphones because you have to wear it on your head. So combine the two, you make it a more attractive proposition … there's added value. It brings a bit of fun and spirit to the product. And, of course, the visor is detachable—it can be something you wear in your hour of need, and then take it off and you've got an audio headset.'
But it is this leap with the air-purifying Zone that many could not quite fathom: 'You've got to wear it, so let's make it headphones.' What made Dyson go there in particular? And, moreover, when it became clear this would be such a hard ask, many brands would rethink things—yet Dyson plowed on anyway.
'I'll be completely honest, quite often we work in an obsessive nature," says Jake. "We want this product. We want to make this thing. Sometimes before actually evaluating what the market response might be. And the market didn't exist. So you've got to take those risks.'
Those risks are thrown into stark relief when you consider the market response to Zone. A product that is only two years old, yet you seemingly can't buy it anywhere now apart from on Dyson's site. Has Dyson quietly killed the Zone?
'First thing: Zone was completely ahead of its time," says Jake. "It's solving a problem that is quite niche—the amount of people that are neurotic about air pollution, that want to solve that problem, and are willing to spend an amount of money; coupled with the fact that it's headphones, means your market is small. We have sold thousands. And we still have the tooling—but we've stopped manufacturing it. We haven't thrown the tools away. It's something we believe will come around in the future. It's a brilliant product.'
It's worth noting at this point that, outside of Dyson, the Zone isn't universally regarded as being a brilliant product. According to one major retailer in the US, 'most people read it as a gimmick or another Google Glass–type product. For price, aesthetic, and performance, the space already has highly compelling offers from brands established as experts. Why would Dyson want to do 'that' when what it is good at is 'this''?
Alan Sircom, editor of globally respected Hi-Fi+ magazine, goes even further. 'The Zone is too odd, in my opinion. Anything that reminds people of wearing masks during Covid is dead in the water. I'd forgotten about it—that's how little market penetration Dyson has [with the Zone].'
Dyson, of course, is a privately owned company and consequently not obliged to release any information regarding the success (or otherwise) of the Zone. But Ivan Lam, senior analyst at Counterpoint, doubts anyone can be happy with its performance.
Zone prototypes map the internal development of the air-purifying headphones. Courtesy of Dyson
'Zone was the result of six years of modeling and testing, of making maybe dozens of tooling models. Even if you just assume a team of 10 people, working on this project for six years, you're talking about a lot of expense,' Lam says. 'Sound tuning is expensive, prototype testing is very expensive. It's hard to calculate exactly, but I'm sure it will have cost tens of millions of dollars. And the result is a product with no revenue, no profit margin, and no visibility. I haven't seen a single pair being worn in Hong Kong.'
And Hong Kong is not the only Asian territory where the anecdotal evidence for Zone is uninspiring, despite the fact that Dyson is a revered brand name in Asia, with huge presence. No major retailer can help you. At the Gain City Megastore, which at 11 stories is Singapore's largest consumer electronics retail store, they're not in stock. At e-Earphone, Japan's largest headphone retailer, they're not available either.
Yodobashi is the world's largest chain of electronics stores, but when WIRED visited the Kyoto branch recently the Dyson Zone was conspicuous only by its absence—and this is an electronics store with a 'wireless headphones' department that has a footprint comfortably larger than that of the average Japanese apartment.
Dyson launched its OnTrac regular over-ear noise-canceling headphones with no wider innovative/unnecessary/bizarre (reader's choice) functionality in July 2024, just over a year after the Zone. And as a way of entering the market with a product that doesn't actively scare people, and of competing with established brands on a like-for-like basis, it looks like a sensible move.
Certainly, our review of the OnTrac discusses the excellent noise-canceling, the nicely balanced sound, and the interesting industrial design. We gave them an 8 out of 10, along with a coveted 'WIRED Recommends' badge—a far cry from the Zone's rating, and quite the turnaround. Jake is justifiably proud of them. Also, the move from Zone to OnTrac shows a definite path despite the poor fortunes of Dyson's first swing at audio.
'We've learned a lot of lessons. It would be stupid not to take things further in audio," says Jake. "Looking at other headphones out there, they all just look the same: black plastic, not very nice forms. Aesthetically, there's something deeply missing in terms of headphones. We thought we could achieve the best noise-canceling out there, and also bring something more interesting in terms of design. Engineer a beautiful product, bring customization, and more of a fashion element.'
As OnTrac has clearly sold significantly more than Zone, does Dyson consider Zone to be a product that didn't work, and OnTrac one that did? '[We've sold] ten-fold [more]—and we launched OnTrac last July, although you could say September was when it came to life. It normally takes about six months before people realize there's something there. OnTrac worked. [As for the Zone] we never deem anything to be a failure, because we always learn something.'
To affirm this point, Jake Dyson says that OnTrac is not merely the same headphones as Zone but with the fan system removed. 'We've taken the advancement of the noise-canceling and enhanced it even further,' he says. 'We've increased the software capability, so the range of sound, from the treble to the bass, is expanded.'
Compared to the polarizing Zone, Dyson's OnTrac headphones have supposedly been a relative success. Courtesy of Dyson
If WIRED knows anything about the market for premium wireless over-ear headphones, though, it's that the space is crammed with products from profoundly well-regarded brands—brands that have won their credibility through decades of experience in many areas of the audio market. Dyson, which is starting from a base of just about zero (if you accept that the relative success of OnTrac balances out the catastrophe of Zone), will need to establish a reputation for audio excellence pretty fast if it's going to compete.
The impressive and numerous customization options for OnTrac are a start (and more are on the way), but in the area of the market in which Dyson seems determined to compete, thoughtful industrial design is a minimum. Reputations are won and lost in every department: sound quality, obviously, and the standard of active noise-cancellation, ergonomics, extended functionality, and headline technologies are all important, too. It is a sad fact that many brands with greater audio chops than Dyson have floundered.
That's not to say Dyson can't make it happen, though. The company will have taken a lot of learning away from its (ultimately fruitless) N526 electric car project—and let's not overlook the fact that Dyson is a brand that usually gets where it intends to go. The company's hits hugely outweigh its misses—and there seems no reason to assume the combination of engineering expertise and sheer persistence that has made James Dyson a billionaire is about to desert the brand any time soon.
And perhaps most importantly of all, the whole Zone experience has led Jake Dyson to an extremely important realization—at least when it comes to headphones: 'One of the things we've learned is obviously people really do bloody care about what it looks like when it's on your head.'
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