The Dyson OnTrac Are A Luxurious Pair of Headphones
The new Dyson OnTrac exudes luxury. These are headphones you wear while pretending to care about your vinyl record collection. These are headphones you wear next to your private pool but not too close because they are your precious babies and no amount of water should ever threaten them.
The first thing you’ll notice about the Ontrac’s is their solid weight, not enough to make your head tired, but enough to let you know that this is a luxury item, not a throwaway headset for wearing during a zoom call. Weight is distributed evenly via the headband which also contains the battery cells. Multi-pivot gimbal arms ensure the high-grade foam cushions always fit snuggly and firmly with very little discomfort during long sessions. The earcups also have capacitive capabilities, so whipping them off to talk to someone will instantly pause the music. I found that wearing it around your neck while you talked to someone would make them a bit fussy, making bonk sounds occasionally thinking I was putting them on. This is about my only note or critique about an otherwise beautiful piece of tech.
Connecting to your phone and customising your experience via the MyDyson app is a breeze. Settings include noise control preferences as well as full equaliser settings to get the perfect audio profile for you. Double tapping the replaceable outer cap will switch between isolation and transparency modes. 8 microphones on the outside make sure they can help successfully tune out 40db of outside sound. There are also dual beam-forming microphones that pick up your voice clearly and isolate it from background noise while you chat to people on the phone via bluetooth.
Apart from that one example I appreciate that most controls are left up to physical buttons and an audio joystick, a small nub on the right ear you bump in various directions to control pausing, volume, and skip. Moving back to physical controls made of premium materials feels more opulent and reassuring than having to rely on fiddly gesture controls that look like I’m trying to fight a bug on my head.
One charge delivers around two weeks of use, up to 55 hours. On the technical side 40mm, 16-ohm neodymium speaker drivers reproduce frequencies from as low as 6 Hertz to as high as 21,000 Hertz, providing deep sub-bass that you can feel, and clear highs at the upper end of the frequency range. All I know is that it sounds good to me.
You can get a range of mix and matchable colourways which can be easily switched out, but personally I adore the copper shell which looks appropriately lux.
Dyson.co.nz RRP$849
