Dyson Zone Review: Clean sound

Dyson’s Zone is one of the most unique, category-defying products you’ll have heard about in a seriously long time. It may look like a pair of wireless headphones, which it very much is, but behind those larger than usual earcups lies an air purification and delivery system that makes the Zone one of a kind. 

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Unpacking the Zone from its packaging – there is a pricier (INR 64,900) Absolute+ bundle which includes additional electrostatic carbon filters along with some travel accessories – and placing the filters within the stylishly perforated earcups, the Zone is ready to pair with your phone and the MyDyson app over Bluetooth. Slipping the Zone on, there’s no getting past the nearly 600g weight, despite the generous, soft padding around the ears and on top of the head…and the weight will be felt if you wear them for hours on end.

Of course, one cannot ignore the sub-100g visor, which attaches through magnets in front of your nose/mouth to direct the purified air flow – it's a divisive Ant-Man/Bane/Darth Vader look that will be the subject of conversations and enquiries from everyone around you. As with any Dyson product, the Zone is built well, with responsive buttons and multi-function knobs that feel premium to the touch.

Dyson really leaned into the acoustic qualities of the headphones at launch, indicating that the purification is intentionally designed for travel scenarios, hence the visor’s easy detachability. No surprises then that the Zone is equipped with 11 mics, eight of which are responsible for noise cancellation, with the others for voice and call noise reduction.

The noise cancellation is impressive, almost to the high standard of the Sony WH-1000XM5, although there is the whir of the air purifier motors to contend with if you’ve got the visor on and are out and about in the polluted parts of town (you can switch the purifier off, of course). The Zone supports SBC, AAC and LHDC codecs atop Bluetooth 5.0, and you can manage the noise cancellation and pick from three equalizer settings from within the app. No manual EQ settings, though. 

Now, this is Dyson’s first pair of headphones, so the engineering-led company did what it does best: engineer the heck out of these headphones. You get 40mm neodymium drivers which do a fine job of rendering an expansive soundstage and a sonic signature that’s balanced and neutral across the frequency range, the latter achieving a faithful reproduction of the original artist audio but one that oftentimes lacks the people-pleasing depth of bass or dynamism that more mass-market-tuned headphones deliver. Purists will appreciate the balanced sound the Zone delivers, track after track.

Yet, audio is only part of the story, and the cool draft of clean air that hits you when the visor is up is certainly welcome in several cities in India, particularly when you step out of the bubble of your air purified cars and homes. My nook of Bengaluru notwithstanding, air quality levels are hazardous elsewhere in most major cities, and the Zone pulls in outside air and serves up clean air sans ‘99 percent of pollutants as small as 0.1 microns’.

Bear in mind, the visor doesn’t form a tight seal around your nose/mouth, so it’s really not keeping all pollutants at bay. Battery life expectedly takes a hit when you switch on air purification, dropping from about fifty hours with ANC to under two hours with the high purification speeds.

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If you’re the sort who hates sound and air pollution with a vengeance, you could consider the hefty price of admission for the Zone, so long as you have the confidence to wear it in public. There’s nothing quite like it, a solid first attempt…just not for everyone. If Dyson does iterate second generation Zone, with a slimmer profile and a less “in your face” visor that fewer folks find polarizing, it may find more takers. 

Rating: 7/10

Price: INR 59,900