British brand Dyson, known for vacuum cleaners and bladeless fans, has filed for a patent describing a pair of headphones. But, as you’d expect from the brand, there’s an appropriate twist to the headphones. It also comes with an air purification system.
The headphones has two bands, but one of them is actually a mouthpiece of sorts. The cups each come with a motor with 35-40mm impeller blades. These go at about 12000 rpm, sucking in air through a filter.
The filtered air from both sides then go down the mouthpiece and meet at the middle, before being ejected out towards the wearer’s mouth. When not in use, the mouthpiece band can be pushed upwards, tucked away over the headband.
Overall, the entire thing looks pretty sleek. The headband looks alright when it’s alone, or when it has the mouthpiece over it. It’s also quite impressive that the motors and audio drivers can be squeezed into such small cups.
But on the practical side though, the clean air being blasted from the mouthpiece will be mixed with unfiltered air before it hits its wearer’s mouth or nose. If Dyson does make an actual product out of this, it will likely also need ANC to deal with the motor spinning at 12000 rpm. The patent also does not seem to depict batteries of any sort.
According to Bloomberg, Dyson has been working on wearable air purifiers for over a year. This does increase the chance of the company releasing a consumer product based on this patent. While that could be nice, and timely with to the recent novel coronavirus outbreak, it’s still no guarantee of an actual product.
