Dyson's First Headphones Double as a Personal Air Purifier
Looking for a new pair of headphones? Worried about outdoor air pollution? You may be interested in Dyson's latest innovation: headphones that purify the air directly in front of your face.
Announced on Wednesday, the Dyson Zone headphones have an attached face visor that dispenses purified air in front of your mouth and nose. Dyson says the Zone will be available this fall, but there's no word yet on pricing.
Dyson has been selling indoor air purifiers since 2015, but this marks the company's first venture into both audio and wearable technology. And unlike other noise-cancelling headphones, these aim to tackle not just environmental noise, but also outdoor air pollution.
Within each of the Zone's earcups is a tiny compressor motor and a dual-layer air filter. The first layer, a negatively charged electrostatic filter, promises to capture 99% of inhalable particles down to 0.1 microns in size, particularly brake dust emitted from cars, as well as pollen and bacteria. The second layer, made of potassium-enriched carbon, absorbs dangerous city gases, such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). A duct on each earcup allows clean air to flow into the visor, which sits around the lower half of your face without touching it.
The compressor in each earcup—the smallest motor Dyson has ever manufactured—serves as "the heart of the machine," pulling outside air through the particle/carbon filter to the visor, creating a "breathing zone of clean air" for the wearer, Dyson's engineering manager Vicky Gibson-Robinson tells PCMag.
In development for the past six years, the Zone headphones/air purifier were preceded by more than 500 prototypes, Dyson says. To test filtration efficacy, the company developed a mannequin
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