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“Zone was the result of six years of modeling and testing, of making maybe dozens of tooling models. Even if you just assume a team of 10 people, working on this project for six years, you’re talking about a lot of expense,” Lam says. “Sound tuning is expensive, prototype testing is very expensive. It’s hard to calculate exactly, but I’m sure it will have cost tens of millions of dollars. And the result is a product with no revenue, no profit margin, and no visibility. I haven’t seen a single pair being worn in Hong Kong.”
And Hong Kong is not the only Asian territory where the anecdotal evidence for Zone is uninspiring, despite the fact that Dyson is a revered brand name in Asia, with huge presence. No major retailer can help you. At the Gain City Megastore, which at 11 stories is Singapore’s largest consumer electronics retail store, they’re not in stock. At e-Earphone, Japan’s largest headphone retailer, they’re not available either.
Yodobashi is the world’s largest chain of electronics stores, but when WIRED visited the Kyoto branch recently the Dyson Zone was conspicuous only by its absence—and this is an electronics store with a “wireless headphones” department that has a footprint comfortably larger than that of the average Japanese apartment.
Dyson launched its OnTrac regular over-ear noise-canceling headphones with no wider innovative/unnecessary/bizarre (reader’s choice) functionality in July 2024, just over a year after the Zone. And as a way of entering the market with a product that doesn’t actively scare people, and of competing with established brands on a like-for-like basis, it looks like a sensible move.
Certainly, our review of the OnTrac discusses the excellent noise-canceling, the nicely balanced sound, and the interesting industrial design. We gave them an 8 out of 10, along with a coveted “WIRED Recommends” badge—a far cry from the Zone’s rating, and quite the turnaround. Jake is justifiably proud of them. Also, the move from Zone to OnTrac shows a definite path despite the poor fortunes of Dyson’s first swing at audio.
“We’ve learned a lot of lessons. It would be stupid not to take things further in audio,” says Jake. “Looking at other headphones out there, they all just look the same: black plastic, not very nice forms. Aesthetically, there’s something deeply missing in terms of headphones. We thought we could achieve the best noise-canceling out there, and also bring something more interesting in terms of design. Engineer a beautiful product, bring customization, and more of a fashion element.”
As OnTrac has clearly sold significantly more than Zone, does Dyson consider Zone to be a product that didn’t work, and OnTrac one that did? “[We’ve sold] ten-fold [more]—and we launched OnTrac last July, although you could say September was when it came to life. It normally takes about six months before people realize there’s something there. OnTrac worked. [As for the Zone] we never deem anything to be a failure, because we always learn something.”
