Dyson OnTrac Review: Delivering a Sonic Punch with Top Design

“What headphones are those?”

“They’re the new ones from Dyson”

“Dyson? Like the vacuum cleaner?”

The person sitting next to me on my flight to Delhi made no effort to hide his disdain. But I couldn’t blame him. When your brand has created a product so incomparably iconic, it would be hard for people to take you seriously when you decide it’s time to segue into new frontiers.

Kicking things off – Dyson takes product design very seriously. Everything it creates is masterfully engineered and is built with an intent – the intent to provide the consumer a sense of pride of ownership, the intent for every aspect of use feel like luxury and most of all, the intent for the product to last for longer than anything the competition can produce.

The Dyson OnTrac headphones are no different. Though; coming off the previous generation of Dyson Zone headphones where more jokes were produced than sales, you’d think they’d want to completely avoid producing another audio product — but they’ve produced something that is in no way a sonic slouch. The OnTrac delivers quite the sonic punch.

Testing the headphones has been a unique experience from the time the OnTrac showed up. They’re massive, and the case they come in is gigantic too. So if you’re used to carrying around a smaller pair of headphones, you will definitely feel the difference. They’re also very heavy. You’d feel your head tilting after some time of heavy use. They’ve done the best they can to distribute the weight in such a way that you don’t feel all of it, but even with all the cushioning, you definitely can.

Once you go over the incredible build quality and see all the high-grade aluminum that they’ve used to engineer the product, you start seeing why they’re as heavy as they are. Everything from the clicky buttons to the soft cushioning on the ear cups lets you know you’re getting what you paid for.

There’s a customizing option for these – the back plates of the ear cups as well as the ear cushions can be swapped out, allowing a consumer to make the headphones their own, to some degree.  “The world is filled with headphones that are black and silver and have no personality,” says chief engineer Jake Dyson. He’s not wrong. I can’t think of a brand (other than Beats, maybe) that has attempted to produce headphones that aren’t the colors of low-grade depression. Dyson also has an incredibly well-made app that allows a consumer to play around a little (doing my best to not stress too hard on the little) with the equalizer settings that help tweak the sound ever so slightly.

Now to the important stuff. How do they sound?

The noise cancellation is insanely good. I had the pleasure of testing how good on the same Delhi flight as a baby made the entire aircraft her bitch as she cried her little eyes out. Two (hard) taps on the side of the headphones kicked the active noise cancelation (ANC) in and the baby became a really sad mime doing a bit about food and sleep. If you’re around loud colleagues and your current headphones aren’t cutting it, these will.

If you’re used to a pair of loud headphones that shred your eardrums every time Angus Young tears through his guitar, though, you’re probably going to be underwhelmed. The sound is rich, but much like guests at a country club on a sunny Sunday afternoon, they’re soft. You keep wanting the high notes to come pounding through and they just… don’t. The sound is best described as neutral. Every genre, every song is delivered in fantastic quality, but the highs aren’t high enough and the lows aren’t low enough. What you leave with is a feeling of not having your itch appropriately scratched.

Should you buy them? I’m torn. On one hand, the brand promises updates that will help your headphones “evolve” – which is a great promise to make, if they can deliver on it. On the other hand, there are about 10 other competitive products that cost half as much and deliver about 85 percent of the sound range that Dyson OnTrac headphones do. So if you’re one of the people that are looking for a really well-made pair of sturdy headphones with adequate sound delivery and the ability to customize per your personal style, look no further.

Dyson OnTrac headphones are currently selling for ₹44,900 via the Dyson website.