Breathe the Pressure - Dyson Zone Absolute+ Review

Everyone knows the vacuum cleaner company Dyson, right? A few years ago they actually made an unexpected foray into high-end audio - except they did it in a way that was so ridiculously on brand, it had zero chance of catching on. Dubbed the Zone, this goofy device was widely ridiculed, but it did have some high points. Now that they're steeply discounted, are they worth another look?

With the explosion in demand for masks and other face coverings during the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of companies saw an opportunity to create innovative solutions for PPE - though many more just saw it as a means to make a quick buck. Most just tried cheaply making more fashionable masks - something more appealing than the plain white construction site N95 that most people were familiar with. Others tried to reinvent the wheel, and their products usually ended up just being incredibly bad. 

Dyson was arguably one of the most qualified companies to be dabbling in something like this and they ended up delivering a product - albeit roughly three years too late - that fell solidly in the latter category. What they did was take a pair of active noise cancelling headphones, strap air filters and intake fans on both ear cups, then route the filtered air through a visor across the wearer's mouth and nose, thus giving birth to the Dyson Zone. It would offer it's users their own personal stream of on-demand purified air, coupled with a true high end audio experience.

On paper it's not that silly of an idea, but then you look at the actual thing and... yeah.

Source: Dyson

Good god. This thing looks like it was lifted straight out of a sci-fi dystopia; which would only just be weird if it wasn't becoming increasingly fitting.

Also consider the fact that the Zone started at a wallet eviscerating $950. Bump up to $1000, and you could get the Zone Absolute+ which came in a unique Prussian blue/bright copper colorway and included a few other accessories that the standard Zone didn't. Namely a fancier carrying case, a microfiber pouch, and a secondary 3.5mm cable and adaptor for airplane use. Either way, even if you're just buying these for the headphone portion, that's almost twice as much money as the trusted no-brainer choices in the high-end ANC category like the Apple AirPods Max or the Focal Bathys. 

But my initial impressions of the kit are this: it's really fucking nice. Normally I scoff at such things being made too extravagant as I feel like it diminishes their actual usable practicality, but I have to hand it to Dyson for clearly not giving a shit about any of that and going for maximum ostentatiousness. If I'm going to risk making an ass out of myself wearing these out in public, they better feel like they're worth it in every possible way.

Dyson clearly didn't spare any expense in terms of the overall, design presentation, and build quality of this goofy device. The headphones themselves are mostly made out of metal, with suede-like microfiber covering and eye catching details like the visible fan housing on the earcups. Even the accessories feel ultra-luxe with high quality braided cables, and a soft microfiber bag for the visor. The case is this massive bound leather thing complete with it's own cross-body strap - because you sure as hell aren't fitting it in your backpack.

Easily the cheapest feeling part of the Zone is the silly visor. It's all plastic, which is probably fine considering the headphones without them attached already weigh a headache inducing 1.31 pounds - and 1.48 pounds with them. For comparison's sake, the AirPods Max weigh 0.84 pounds, the Sony WH-1000XM5 weigh 0.55 pounds, and even my notoriously heavy wired only Beats Pro still weigh less at 0.89 pounds.

That all reveals kind of a major problem with the Dyson Zone, is that despite how frankly gorgeous the entire package is - it's all so damn massive. I don't think I've worn a pair of over-ears with so much pronounced bulk, short of a few god-awful gaming headsets. These things make me look like the King of All Cosmos, they jut out from the side of my head so prominently. 

Disregarding the visor for the time being, I don't think they look bad. Just extremely loud.

The batteries are actually stored in the left and right pods of the headband, which helps with weight distribution.

Thankfully, Dyson was quite generous with the padding. The Zone has plush earcups and an oversized crown pad on the headband that does a pretty good job of distributing all that pressure for particularly long listening sessions - but there's still no escaping that weight. With the microfiber covers not being very grippy, the headphones are quite susceptible to slipping off your head when jostled around, or when you lean forwards or back.

Yeah, so keep headbanging to a minimum. And that's despite these cans having a pretty stout clamping force. Even though a long session with the Zone is far more survivable than something like the Beats Pro, taking these off your head still feels like removing your head from a vice. A little bit of weight shedding really wouldn't have hurt these things.

On-board controls are simple and fairly intuitive. On the left earcup is one button used for controlling power, Bluetooth pairing, and fan speeds. The mini-joystick on the right cup serves as media controls: tilting it up and down adjusts volume, left and right changes track, and pressing it plays or pauses. Holding the joystick down will launch the connected device's voice assistant.

ANC is controlled by double-tapping on the center of either earcup (though tapping literally anywhere on the device will work too). And by a double-tap, I don't mean the kind of half-assed little tap you'd normally use to control your earbuds or whatever. You rap on the side of this thing with some authority - which is good because it'd otherwise seem like a really easy thing to accidentally trigger.

I also love the little sound effect Dyson used for indicating when the ANC is turned on or off. It sounds like an airlock crossed with a cork getting popped. I want all ANC headphones to have this sound.

If you want to charge the headphones while listening through a 3.5mm jack, you have to chain up this abomination.

On the connectivity side, wireless audio is handled by Bluetooth 5.0, supporting SDC, AAC, and LHDC, while app-side connectivity is handled through Wi-Fi. This means that you can still control the Zone with the app even though you aren't using it over Bluetooth. Wired audio is done over USB-C and the Absolute+ kit comes with both a USB-C-to-USB-C cable, a USB-C-to-3.5 mm cable with a passthrough for charging, and an airplane adaptor. It's worth noting that the Zone will not work passively, so the battery needs to be charged in order to use them wired.

Dyson advertises the Zone as having an impressive 50 hours of battery life when used just for audio and ANC. The headphones are put into a sleep state when they're taken off, but both the app-side and Bluetooth connections remain connected. It can be a little annoying sometimes when I forget to fully power down the headset before storing it, and I find my phone is still trying to blast audio through them. Some kind of case detection feature or an option to just disable Bluetooth while in sleep would be very useful.

As for the ANC performance itself: it crushes. I can't speak on all the nitty gritty details, but these are easily right up there with some of the most powerful noise cancelling on a pair of headphones I've ever tried. Dyson evidently uses ten microphones on the Zone to handle ANC but I think another major contributor to why these things cancel out noise so effectively is the sheer amount of material between your ears and the outside world. Even with the ANC completely off, these things passively deaden a great amount of sound.

Passthrough mode is similarly well executed and I find it doesn't diminish your ability to hear outside the headset in the slightest bit. In fact, it somewhat accentuates higher pitches so conversations might actually be a little more clear sounding than with just your ears alone. Both ANC modes also have almost no audible background hiss or noise of any kind. Slamming car doors and similar exterior sounds also don't trigger the annoying booms I've experienced using ANC on some other devices like the Bose QuietComfort II Earbuds, which is just fantastic.

That brings us to the sound quality and I've gotta say, Dyson did a really fine job for their first outing in the world of premium audio. The Zone's 40mm drivers sound splendid and the overall soundstage is incredibly detailed, rich, and dynamic. Dyson apparently put a ton of work into identifying a good default EQ curve for these cans that satisfies the needs of most genres, and I think it works out for them quite well. The low end sounds tight and not overpowering, while the highs are crisp and musical. I have yet to find anything I don't like listening to through these.

There's only other two EQ modes available in the MyDyson app: "bass boost" which is virtually identical to the default "enhanced" preset apart from a slight bump in the lower frequencies, and "neutral" which flattens the frequency response into something more akin to open-backed headphones, albeit with a slightly more pronounced higher end. Personally, I find the default "enhanced" preset to be kind of the jack of all trades for daily use, although "neutral" is quite the pleasant listen and plays nicely with external EQ applications.

But a very good pair of headphones is just half of the Dyson Zone's equation. Let's try the stupid air filter.

I'm going to start by saying that I'm not going to bother wandering around town with that stupid visor strapped to my face - even though these are probably perfectly weird by Bay Area standards. These were already three years too late and stupid looking even by the lax standards for appearance during peak COVID-era. 

Strapping this thing on your face makes you look like Bane dressed for a cyberpunk gala. If you already thought the look of the headphones by themselves was a little much, putting the visor on pushes them into downright silly and pretentious territory. The big, shiny copper front on this thing is just impossible to ignore even for the most forgiving of people watchers.

Okay, maybe I'll find a good excuse to do it when wildfire season ramps up - if they even work.

I hate to say it, but they actually do... kinda. It's just the filtration system for the Zone just doesn't really work quite the way you'd expect as a PPE-type device released during the waning stages of the pandemic. Air is sucked in through two conical air filters mounted to the earcups and funneled through the visor before expelling it in front of your mouth and nose. 

That's all well and good - the filtered air offers a genuinely pleasant sensation - but the visor doesn't actually seal against your face, so your mouth and nose aren't actually isolated from any pollutants outside of the headset. It's like building a house, but forgetting to install the windows. The Zone's air filtration system only really feels like it's getting half the work done and considering that was what this entire device was designed around. That's a huge asterisk, especially at it's original MSRP.

Source: Dyson

Weirdly enough, Dyson actually made a washable mask attachment that snaps over the back of the visor and seals against your face. Why wouldn't they just include that? It takes arguably the most dubious part of this design and makes it a lot more functional. Unfortunately you can't buy this attachment anymore and Dyson doesn't seem to know if it'll ever be back in stock. Maybe I'll try and fashion one myself with the help of the 3D printer, when I find the time.

The Zone's dual fans are also quite noisy. While the noise is manageable on the lowest setting, they become incredibly audible on the medium to high settings, even with ANC turned on. Even worse than being able to hear it while your music is running is being a bystander and having to listen to the constant high pitched whirr of the fans for any extended period of time. To me, the exterior noise that comes out of these things at full tilt sounds more distracting than any sound leakage and that sucks.

The visor can be easily taken apart for cleaning.

The visor is also kind of an annoying thing to deal with from an ergonomics standpoint as well. It's a bit of a pain in the ass to put on while you're wearing the headphones and I find that the lower part of the visor actually rests against the top my chin. This also means the feature of being able to open the visor in order to speak to people means I'm dragging the thing across my skin just to clear the lower half of my face. Maybe it's just the size of my head, but it certainly doesn't feel right.

And worst of all - remember that monster 50 hour battery life that Dyson advertises for the Zone? Running air filtration knocks that all the way down to just four hours. Holy crap. So not only does the Zone's token feature wreck the headphone's noise cancellation capabilities, make you look absolutely silly, and potentially annoy people around you in the process - it utterly tanks it's one true class beating feature by ninety-freakin'-two percent. This thing is it's own worst enemy.

Lastly, the rest of the MyDyson app experience is a bit of a mixed bag. It displays some genuinely neat information such as the local air quality and pollutants, filter life, external noise levels, and internal noise levels (aka. how often you're destroying your eardrums while wearing these). A lot of this feels a bit like superfluous information though and the actual app functionality is pretty limited.

Other than the sparse EQ settings, you can change the behavior of tilting the visor down, adjust the fan control, and also set an 85 dB hard limit so you don't run the risk of blowing your eardrums out. Beyond that, there's no additional settings. You also need to create an account to use the app which is a little unfortunate.

With all of that in mind, the Dyson Zone is a really difficult device to come to a reasonable conclusion on given it's vast mix of positives and negatives.

Just as headphones, I love this stupid thing. They're built to completely overkill standards, sound great with powerful noise cancelling, and the battery life for audio is incredible. While I think they're too heavy and bulky to comfortably travel with, I find they're a genuinely great at-home pair.

But the air filtration system still really drags the Zone down. It just doesn't work as well as you'd expect given how much of the device is designed around it. And yeah, you can - and probably should just remove the visor and stow it away never to be seen again, but as a direct consequence of that feature even having been conceived, these are still some of the heaviest headphones out there. Despite the ample cushioning, you're still going to feel every bit of that weight after some extended use.

Source: Dyson

Further complicating this conclusion is the existence of the Zone's successor: the Dyson OnTrac. The OnTrac is basically the same device, minus the air filtration system and with some additional tweaks to the sound and ANC profile. They look a whole lot more fashionable and feel much nicer on the head thanks to all that weight shedding, but the sound performance is similar enough to the Zone that there really isn't much else justifying them other than the new design.

If you're just buying the headphones for the sound, are flexible with how they feel and don't really give a damn about how they look, that puts the newer OnTrac into a weird position. They cost $500 as of writing, while you can often pick up the Zone for less than that - sometimes much less if you go used. I picked up my Absolute+ kit for $195 shipped, which I think is an absolute steal.

In my opinion, the Zone is almost worth a look if you just want to see what Dyson can do with a premium pair of headphones without having the pay the new product "tax". At their original MSRP, it was quite easy to discount them as overpriced and silly, but now? If you're willing to take a chance on something in this category that doesn't have Sennheiser, Apple, or Focal slapped on the box, you might be pleasantly surprised. 

What's Good

• Great sound quality - especially for a first outing.
• Powerful ANC with a high quality passthrough mode.
• Impressively overkill construction and aesthetics.
• Monster battery life when not running air filtration.

What's Crap

• Insanely heavy and bulky.
• Looks absolutely bougie as hell - especially with the visor.
• Fans are quite noisy at full tilt and tank the battery life.
• Air filtration system feels a little half-baked.

Verdict

Disregarding the silly air filtration system, these are an incredibly premium pair of headphones that might win you over if you can accept a few caveats.