• 2 days ago
Transcript
00:00I'm going to put this in the fridge for a couple of hours, then I'm going to cut it.
00:30Okay, it's kind of hard to believe, but yeah, this is a real product.
00:42What I'm holding is the new Dyson zone air purifying headphones.
00:47That's exactly what they're called.
00:48You can look it up.
00:49So when this first started popping up on actual like Dyson social media channels, I had to
00:53double check the calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1st because seriously, Dyson,
00:57are you pranking us right now?
00:58This is the thousand dollars for air purifying headphones.
01:03I wasn't really sure what to think, probably safe to ignore it.
01:06But then one by one videos started popping up on YouTube, on Twitter, on Instagram, and
01:14people actually started asking like, Hey Marques, can you check out those Dyson headphones?
01:19Can you check out the Dyson zone?
01:21So that look you see here is me realizing I just spent a thousand dollars plus shipping
01:25on something that I already believe is a terrible product, but I'm still here to do
01:29my job and find out anyway.
01:30But here's the thing.
01:31And probably the weirdest part and most important part of this whole thing, Dyson, this product
01:38could only have come from Dyson.
01:41It makes no sense, but it makes all the sense in the world.
01:43So ignoring the whole embarrassing social media campaign around the vacuums for a second,
01:47like I love my Dyson vacuum cleaner, right?
01:49A lot of people I know have bought Dyson vacuums, no regrets.
01:52We love these things.
01:53They're great.
01:54But over the years, Dyson has built up like a cult following and loyal fan base over what
01:58is basically motors and filtration.
02:03Like Dyson is a motors and filtration company.
02:06And they've built that out and turned it into some of the most amazing vacuum cleaners in
02:09the world.
02:10And they're also some of the most expensive.
02:11Like seriously, if you want to stick vacuum, you can just get one on Amazon for like a
02:15hundred bucks easy.
02:16But then you kind of get the feeling that Dyson is the brand name that they're all copying.
02:20But naturally you don't stop there, right?
02:22You're successful with one thing, but you got to branch out.
02:24So what else do you do?
02:26You've all seen the Dyson bladeless fan thing, right?
02:29I mean, this is almost a legendary product on its own.
02:31The Dyson fan slash air purifier in the corner of the room of a $500 a night Airbnb.
02:37Do other companies make bladeless fans now?
02:39Sure.
02:40But people want the Dyson one, the $700 Dyson one.
02:44Another successful implementation of motors and filtration.
02:47There's also the Dyson hairdryer, another cult classic.
02:50This thing is absolutely incredible.
02:51I don't even use a hairdryer.
02:52I actually use this thing to heat up the D brand skins to put on the back of my phones.
02:56And it's awesome for that too.
02:58Another successful implementation of motors and filtration.
03:01So Dyson is no stranger to charging a lot of money successfully for a seemingly niche
03:06product, but that doesn't mean they can't miss.
03:09You've guys have probably heard about, maybe you haven't, they made a floor lamp too.
03:13Maybe you haven't heard about it because it's less successful.
03:15It's also $850.
03:17So they can miss.
03:19You also might've heard about the car prototype that they brought to CES, which like, okay,
03:24yes, you make motors and motors are one part of an electric car, but there are lots of
03:28other parts of a car that are really hard.
03:30And trust me, a Dyson car is kind of a tough sell no matter what you're going to price
03:34it at.
03:35So Dyson has a lot of hits and some complete misses.
03:40So what's this one going to be?
03:42Okay.
03:46So this product is part headphones, part air purifier, and I know about headphones.
03:52So let's talk about the headphones part first.
03:54And these headphones are absolutely wild.
03:58First of all, they're gigantic.
04:00Like they're absolutely huge.
04:01I don't even have to tell you that now a lot of the size will make more sense when we get
04:04to the filtration part and everything that's also inside these ear cups later.
04:08But just as a pair of headphones on your head, these things are huge.
04:11They stick out a lot to the side, but honestly it's mostly the weight.
04:15Okay.
04:16So Audio-Technica's M50s.
04:17I've talked about those in the past, very familiar headphones, totally normal, 288 grams.
04:22Not that bad on your head.
04:23Then you get to like the heaviest headphones.
04:25We talked about how heavy AirPods Max are.
04:27Those are 388 grams, which is a lot.
04:32These are 588 grams.
04:35So it feels like I'm wearing a football helmet.
04:37These things are so heavy.
04:39Now, there is a lot of metal, but they do try to maximize comfort with these really
04:43soft cushions and the ear cups are super soft and the top of the headphones are soft.
04:47And then it's this purple velvet color.
04:48The side pieces are more for stability to keep them in place on your head.
04:52And honestly, if you're just sitting in one place, not moving around too much, listening
04:55to music in a chair or on a train or something, I guess then they're not terrible.
04:59It's just the second you start moving around or looking up and down or walking that you
05:03really feel the weight.
05:04It seriously feels like a helmet.
05:05Material wise though, it is nothing but the premium materials.
05:08I got to say, the headphone band is metal.
05:10The cushions are super soft.
05:12The ear cups are metal through and through.
05:14You can see the microphones very clearly around the bottom, the USB-C port and the controls
05:19are actually very, very clever.
05:22Everything is on the right ear cup and it's mostly via this little joystick here.
05:26So instead of trying to swipe on a finicky touch surface or something like that, you
05:29literally tap up and down on the joystick for volume, tap left or right for the next
05:34track and previous track.
05:36And amazingly, you can actually hold down the joystick to the right or left to scrub
05:41forward or backward in whatever audio you're in.
05:44And it worked in a bunch of apps for me too, to my surprise.
05:47Worked in Apple Music, worked in Spotify, my podcast app.
05:50It didn't work in YouTube or SoundCloud, but even, yeah, just the thought of being able
05:54to fast forward a little bit to the middle of a podcast or something on Spotify is kind
05:58of sick.
05:59I've never seen that before.
06:00But of course with the super high price tag, you hopefully care about how they sound.
06:03So how did these sound?
06:05Big, premium, expensive, active noise cancellation, 40 millimeter drivers.
06:10How did these...
06:11Do they sound as high end as they cost?
06:15No, they don't.
06:18But they sound okay.
06:19I mean, they sound like some $200 to $300 headphones that I've heard, even though they're
06:24built like $400 headphones, but I'll say the sound overall is pretty balanced and reasonably
06:29bassy and punchy in the low end.
06:31There's a pretty good passive seal with these ear cups, and then the active noise cancellation
06:35does a little extra work for you.
06:37It is just a Bluetooth headphone.
06:38There's no wired connection and nothing fancy as far as lossless audio or special codecs
06:42or anything like that.
06:43But, you know, they sound crisp with a little extra brightness in the highs.
06:46What's more impressive is, so the active noise cancellation is pretty good, but the transparency
06:50mode is actually excellent.
06:52This is the best I've heard from anything that isn't AirPods.
06:55And you can double tap the right ear cup to switch between transparency mode and noise
06:59cancellation.
07:00The battery life of these is about 50 hours, which is right at the top of this class for
07:05noise cancellation headphones with ANC on.
07:08They also don't have an on-off switch.
07:10So they do on head detection, kind of like AirPods Max.
07:13So when you take them off your head, they go into this idle mode and you put them back
07:17on.
07:18They play this nice chime.
07:19They turn back on and now you're listening to music again.
07:21Ergonomically, they're not anything special, but we know the joystick for the controls,
07:26the transparency mode.
07:28These are pretty good headphones.
07:30So that brings us to part two.
07:32So like I said, this is a two-in-one product, part headphones, part air purifier.
07:37Let's just completely ignore the why for a second, just so we can just understand what's
07:43happening and how this works.
07:45So these headphones come with this little plastic visor thing.
07:50So inside the ear cups of the headphones, you can pop off the outside cover and that's
07:54where these filters go that came in the box.
07:57And those filters are covering these air intakes and tiny micro compressors that suck in the
08:02air from the outside world.
08:04These filters help purify the air by cutting down 99% of pollutants as small as 0.1 microns.
08:09Then they pass that clean air through these slots.
08:13The visor connects the headphones via magnets to these slots and creates a seal so that
08:17the air is channeled down through it and passes over your nose and mouth through the mesh
08:21at the front.
08:22So this is a pretty intricate setup, but the idea is pretty straightforward, basically
08:27like, oh, okay, you've got noise pollution, noise canceling headphones, got you covered.
08:31Oh, you've got air pollution too, fresh air all the time, we got you covered.
08:36Now the timing of these was actually super unfortunate because contrary to what you might
08:40be thinking right now, this has nothing to do with the pandemic, nothing to do with COVID.
08:45It happened to be announced right around the same time, but this is really directly advertised
08:51at people who live in or commute in cities with bad air quality, dust, pollen, smog,
08:59gas fumes, grass clippings, whatever it is, just bad air quality.
09:03So the idea is you're about to go out on your commute with the polluted world around you.
09:09So you put the headphones on, you snap the visor on, and now you're getting the fresh
09:14air the entire time you're outside with these fans spinning.
09:19It's the idea anyway.
09:20Now I went through the painful exercise of going out and testing these things so you
09:24don't have to, okay?
09:25So I'm looking kind of ridiculous on public streets because, hey, I want to see if this
09:30will actually work.
09:31I walked past roadways to see if I could smell gasoline.
09:34I walked past landscaping to see if I could smell pollen and lawn clippings.
09:38I walked into a public port-a-john to see if I could survive, you know?
09:44And bad news, I could still smell a lot of everything.
09:47I mean, there was a nice little stream of fresh air going over my nose and mouth.
09:51It's a nice little breeze.
09:52But yeah, you can still smell everything.
09:54I think right off the bat, there's really actually two main problems that hit me immediately
09:57with this setup.
09:59One is when you put all these together and you put them on, the fans, which are in the
10:03ear cups, start spinning up and the air compressors turn on.
10:06And you can hear that because it's right on your ear.
10:09And so you're hearing that through your music.
10:10So you can kind of drown it out by turning the audio up.
10:13But that right off the bat was kind of annoying.
10:16But then the second is there is no seal.
10:19Like you can still have air passing over your nose and mouth, but things can also slip in
10:23above and below, even if it's close to your mouth.
10:27So they want you to have as little of a gap as possible.
10:29And it's adjustable.
10:30So you can shrink that visor down as much as you want to basically have it touching
10:34the tip of your nose.
10:35But stuff will still get in as long as there's no seal.
10:38And nobody wants to walk around breathing from a literal tube, like a scuba diving mouthpiece.
10:42So yeah, this is just a built-in flaw of the fact that nobody wants that.
10:46That's the way it's designed.
10:47Plus, there's a bunch of other quirks, like once the filtration gets going, the battery
10:51life goes from 50 hours to two hours.
10:54The visor is super light and flimsy because it's completely plastic, presumably to be
10:58lightweight and keep it balanced on your head.
11:00But then it also has all kinds of weird scratches and poor finishes on the mesh and rubber and
11:04plastic and just feels really cheap.
11:07And none of that, none of that even touches just how ridiculous you look.
11:11And then there's the whole medical problem.
11:14So I'm not a doctor, but I do have a friend who is.
11:16Mike also happens to have a YouTube channel.
11:18You might've heard of him, but he explained to me exactly why this product is even more
11:22flawed than I realized on the surface.
11:24Yeah.
11:25So I see a product that actually confuses me more than anything, because I don't know
11:30who the intended customer is because they very clearly say this is not a medical grade
11:34product.
11:35There's no seal that exists here on like a traditional N95 mask.
11:38I look at the marketing material and I see somebody out in a city, in a subway station
11:44and on the streets and there's pollen, there's smog, there's all kinds of other things.
11:49And they put this on and suddenly the air they're breathing is clean.
11:52They don't smell or inhale any of it.
11:55Is that a dream or am I missing something?
11:57They say that the product cleans up to 0.1 microns particles out of the air, but it's
12:03not HEPA rated because a HEPA rated filter will actually filter particles with a 99.95%
12:10efficacy.
12:12It's not as good as an N95 mask, which has a seal.
12:16And this is where a lot of misinformation actually spreads with N95 masks.
12:19Because when we say N95, what we're saying is they have a 95% efficacy at filtering particles
12:26that are 0.3 microns.
12:28And you might say, well, a COVID particle is 0.1 microns.
12:32So does that mean they get through N95 masks?
12:35That's what some people who are anti-maskers said.
12:38Most COVID particles that travel in the air are attached to things, water droplets, respiratory
12:43droplets, that kind of thing.
12:45So they're already bigger than 0.3 and they end up being captured by the mask.
12:48But they specifically choose 0.3 microns because when you go smaller than that, like a COVID
12:54particle at 0.1, it follows something known as Brownian motion.
12:58And this is where these small particles move so randomly around when they're dissolved
13:02in a gas, like our air, that they end up being trapped by the N95 mask even better
13:08than the 0.3.
13:09Okay.
13:10There's a lot of things to why this doesn't make sense.
13:12I also saw a tweet about how if you are specifically thinking about COVID and you are someone who
13:18has COVID and you wear this, now when you exhale, all that air blowing is now just being
13:26ejected out into space where it normally stay in the mask?
13:29Yes.
13:30Like this device is not designed to keep your air and your particles to your face like a
13:35mask would.
13:37So what the company has said in response to this, that there's enough room to wear a mask
13:42in between, but to me, if you have room for an N95 masks, this eliminates the need for
13:47this product because the N95 mask is more effective at filtering the air and creating
13:51a seal in this product.
13:52So why in the world would you wear a mask that filters better than this and then this
13:57thing on top of it?
13:59What I worry about is it actually creates risk and it creates risks in two ways.
14:03One is that it blows air directly onto your nose and mouth, which are your mucus membranes.
14:08Anytime you have air circulating areas that have a natural level of moisture, you dry
14:12them out.
14:13Dry mucus membranes are a problem because they crack and create openings for pathogens
14:18center your body.
14:19Then it's cold outside.
14:20This thing is blowing cold air at your mucus membranes, which actually causes vasoconstriction,
14:25meaning less blood flow, less white blood cells in the area protecting you.
14:30Another problem.
14:31And then the real problem is I'm going to really hammer it home right now.
14:35They say this is like urban environments where pollution is high.
14:38There's brake dust, car pollution, all very valid, all big problems we should address.
14:44But in urban environments, based on CDC data, the rate per 100,000 of deaths from chronic
14:49respiratory disease is around 35.
14:52But you know what's 33% higher than that?
14:57Unintentional accidents.
14:58Yeah, that goes up all the way to 47 per 100,000.
15:01Yeah.
15:02And you know what's increasing rates of unintentional accidents?
15:05Are you saying that these noise canceling headphones might actually cause more problems
15:10than they solve?
15:12Yeah.
15:13So why did they do this?
15:14Dyson is a weird company.
15:16Like I said at the beginning, they're they're a motor and filtration company, but they've
15:20had so many hits.
15:22They've made these niche products like stick vacuums and air purifiers and hairdryers into
15:28like cult favorites, which is crazy.
15:30I can actually see how this product came to exist and how it ended up being a thousand
15:35dollars.
15:36Actually, honestly, the thousand dollars part is the easy part.
15:40Like when you just look at the materials and the cool tech and the packaging that went
15:45into this thing, it's kind of silly.
15:46These headphones themselves are super heavy, but yeah, they're all metal.
15:50The cups are metal.
15:51The bands are metal.
15:52And there's obviously a ton of tech in here.
15:53The packaging is hilarious.
15:55There's not just the headphones and the visor, which look like a smiley face, but there's
15:58also a super high quality carrying case with felt lining.
16:03There's a thick braided elastic strap for that carrying case.
16:06There's an extra set of filters.
16:08There is the softest velvet headphone carrying pouch I've ever seen.
16:12There is a dual color braided USB-C cable with a headphone jack adapter.
16:16There's a metal airplane adapter.
16:18There's what I assume is a reusable filter cleaner with a handle and another carrying
16:22pouch for just the cables and the accessories.
16:25Also super soft.
16:26And then there's this Dyson app that connects the headphones that lets you not only change
16:29the settings, but also gives you a live look at a summary of the air quality in your area.
16:34And then gives me a live readout of the audio levels of my environment and how much sound
16:39the noise cancellation mode is preventing from getting to my ears.
16:42I've never seen anything like this with headphones and like live real time data visualization
16:47like this.
16:48It gives you a summary of your fan speed usage, your noise cancellation usage over time, and
16:52gives you an estimate of your filter life and a direct link to buy new filters for once
16:56you run out of the ones that come in the box.
16:58If you showed me all this for a pair of headphones and never even told me about the filter thing
17:02or what brand it was from, I would assume that these are at least $400 headphones.
17:08But at the end of the day, most of this, like so many other things in the tech world can
17:13be explained by branding.
17:16Like it's only Dyson that could have pulled this off and gotten this thing as far as it
17:21has to get into this video.
17:24But there's a sort of a term that you've probably heard in the business world before that a
17:28lot of companies use called the loss leader strategy.
17:33Barbara Corcoran was on my podcast from Shark Tank and she taught me about this concept
17:38called loss leader.
17:40And basically she believes that products that are gimmicky in this vein will actually not
17:45make company money, but they'll draw enough press that they'll sell other products.
17:48Perhaps that's what's going on.
17:50They earn press.
17:51Yeah.
17:52Yeah.
17:53Because there's loss leaders that are like, Oh, we can afford to sell you this hardware
17:56for cheap and lose money on it because you will buy the software and make the money back.
18:00This one is a loss leader because no one should buy it.
18:04And probably no one will, but it'll generate enough buzz that people talk about Dyson.
18:08We're doing it right now.
18:09And they'll be on that.
18:10Hmm.
18:11You win this round.
18:12Dyson.
18:13I'm talking about your stupid headphones with your stupid filter and it's not, you didn't
18:17even have to pay for an ad like you wanted to.
18:19So yeah.
18:20Well played.
18:21Thanks for watching.
18:22Catch you guys in the next one.
18:23Peace.
18:25Catch you guys in the next one.
18:26Peace.