Dyson surprised everyone in 2022 when it took its first steps into audio and wearable technology with a strange experiment, the Dyson Zone, over-ear headphones that also functioned as a personal air purifier. With COVID-era masks in the rearview for many of us now, however, the company is discontinuing its Bane-like device.
Many retailers have already stopped sales, though you can still pick one up on Woot for $259.99, a pretty big price cut from its original selling price of $949.99.
Jake Dyson, Chief Engineer at Dyson, tells Wired that the “Zone was completely ahead of its time.” It solved a “niche” problem at the time. However, 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.”
Ultimately, sales of the Zone were in the “thousands,” Dyson says, which isn’t sustainable. Still, “We haven’t thrown the tools away,” he says. “It’s something we believe will come around in the future. It’s a brilliant product.”
Of course, the device also looked pretty strange. So, last year, Dyson introduced its OnTrac headphones, which don’t feature any air-purifying technology and are instead designed to compete with the world’s best over-ear headphones. They fared better in PCMag’s testing, receiving a four-star rating; the Dyson Zone only hit the 3/5 mark.
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Dyson tells Wired that the OnTrac headphones have seen 10x the sales of the Zone, which is not a huge surprise given that the OnTracs are much cheaper at $499.99.
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