Dyson, the model greatest identified for its wi-fi vacuums and much-adored hair dryer, simply introduced a brand new product set to launch quickly on its web site: customizable, over-ear headphones.
Known as the Dyson OnTrac, the $500 headphones include 55 hours of steady run time, an eight-microphone system that ranges from frequencies as little as 6Hz to as excessive as 21000Hz, and an accompanying app that enables customers to customise their stage of noise cancellation.
Past that, the headphones are a fairly stylish type assertion. They arrive in 4 coloration choices: aluminum, copper, black nickel, and ceramic cinnabar. And for an actual style assertion (and one other $50), you may get ear cushions and outer caps in quite a lot of colours, supplies, and finishes to combine and match and create your individual personalized look—from a Bauhaus-esque explosion of hues to a simplistic pairing of black and silver.
“Customization, after all, was a key design consideration,” Dyson principal industrial designer Phil Douglas said in an interview with Dezeen. “Every cap and cushion mixture has been designed to look lovely, really feel nice within the hand and when being worn.”
Dyson enters the headphone market
This isn’t truly Dyson’s first headphone mannequin. Those that had been following the wearable tech world again in spring 2023 may bear in mind the Dyson Zone: a $1,000 headphone-and-air-filtration masks combo that, frankly, had an unsettling look about it.
Whereas it’s unclear how properly the Dyson Zone carried out financially, it should’ve had sufficient promise to push the corporate into additional exploring a headphone line. The OnTrac comes throughout a tough second for Dyson—simply final week, the corporate introduced that it planned to cut around a third of its U.K. workforce (about 1,000 staff) resulting from “redundancies.” It appears possible that each the job cuts and the brand new launch are linked to Dyson’s bigger plans to diversify its income streams by investing in tech innovation. The corporate reportedly boosted investment into research and development by 40% in 2023, and is now funneling about $10 million per week into growing AI tech, next-gen batteries, and software program.
The OnTrac headphones look like particularly geared towards youthful shoppers, who’ve pushed a burgeoning demand each for over-ear headphones and, extra usually, higher customization of their wearables. Again in Might, the speaker firm Sonos additionally debuted its first-ever pair of headphones within the type of the Sonos Ace, an extra-chunky over-ear design.