Dyson OnTrac Headphones Are Expensive but Could Be Worth the Money

What makes the OnTracs stand out? Dyson’s products are known for their high-end materials and elevated design language and the OnTracs are no exception. They’re a joy to touch with high-quality plastics, beautifully finished metal surfaces, and plush ear pads.

Color, too, is a Dyson hallmark, and the OnTracs come in a variety of color options, including Black Nickel, CNC Copper, Ceramic Cinnabar (a slightly desaturated red), and CNC Aluminum. If that’s not enough choice, the company lets you swap out the ear cushions as well as the outercaps, both of which come in seven colors, for $50 each. So it’s not hard to find a color combination that pushes your buttons.

Just as important, the Dysons are easy to use, with a solid-feeling mini-joystick-style control on the right earcup to adjust volume and advance tracks. Dyson also includes buttons, rather than touch surfaces, for Bluetooth pairing and to turn the OnTracs on and off.

Our testers find much to like about the OnTracs’ sound quality. There’s a distinct family resemblance with the Zone and that’s a good thing. They deliver deep bass with good impact in the Enhanced mode—that’s the default—but changing the tone setting on the app to a more neutral option improves the sound with most music. You give up a bit of extra low-end whomp in exchange for moments like hearing the snapping of the strings against the fingerboard on Christian McBride’s bass solo on "Fried Pies."

The OnTracs have a slightly different tonal balance than their predecessors, just a bit warmer than the coolish character of the Zones. That tweak will likely make the OnTracs good companions for long listening sessions or even all-day wear.

The OnTracs also claim superb battery life, playing as long as 55 hours between charges, according to the manufacturer. A head-detect function that pauses the audio in the headphones a few seconds after you take them off and turns the music back on when you put them on helps with that. The headphones also turn off completely after a half-hour of inactivity. 

The noise cancellation is a winner as well. Our testers find the OnTracs to be as quiet as the proverbial church mouse, acing our lab test of the function.

While the OnTracs aren’t nearly as heavy as the 22-ounce Zones, they’re not exactly light, either. At 16 ounces, they’re heavier than the AirPods Max (13.6 ounces) and the Sonos Ace (11 ounces). And weight does matter. I find, for example, that the Sonos Aces are significantly more comfortable than the Dysons over a long listening session. All of our testers noticed the extra mass, too.

Our testers report that listeners with larger heads might find that the headband doesn’t have enough adjustment range to allow the ear cups to rest properly over the ears or that it presses uncomfortably on the crown of the head.

Users with larger ears might find that the fit of the ear pads feel cramped, or that the ear pads sit on, rather than around, their ears. And this isn’t just a comfort issue: a less-than-ideal fit around the ears might interfere with the sealing of the ear pad in a way that reduces the bass response of the OnTracs, while also degrading the noise-canceling performance.

And strangely, for a product that’s so well designed, the "case" (if you can call it that) feels like a total afterthought. Neither the inner nor the outer part of the case closes fully, whether with a zipper, snap, or even a hook-and-loop, and I simply wouldn’t trust it to protect these very expensive headphones. The more robust case for the Zones, while not perfect, is much better than the one that comes with the OnTracs.

Our testers identify one usability quirk with the OnTracs that’s quite annoying. When you switch from noise-canceling mode to transparency mode (or vice versa) by touching the ear cups, the headphones deliver a startlingly loud tone. Our testers eventually learned to turn down the overall volume before switching modes, a hassle you shouldn’t have to wrestle with on a high-end product like the OnTrac. Hopefully, this is the kind of early-production glitch that can be fixed with a firmware update.

If you’re shopping for a pair high-end noise-canceling headphones, the OnTracs deserve to be on your short list, alongside the Sonos Ace, Apple Air Pods Max, and Bowers and Wilkens PX7 S2e. 

There’s a lot to like. They sound terrific. The noise-canceling feature is top-notch. And while the headphones are expensive, the styling and build quality might justify the price, if you care about such things.

On the other hand, the OnTracs are quite heavy, the case is sub-par, and that funky, unnecessarily loud warning tone when you switch modes is a pain in everyday use.

Still, if you want headphones that match your stick vac—and can drown out the drone of the motor with their high-performance noise canceling—the OnTracs might be just the thing.