Got yourself some Dyson OnTrac headphones? These are our top tips and tricks
Dyson announced its second take on over ear-headphones with the Dyson OnTrac at the beginning of August. They step away from featuring the filtration element across your face like the Dyson Zone, and instead focus on customizaton.
They also claim to have ‘best-in-class’ active noise cancellation and while we aren’t sure it is best-in-class, it is certainly impressive, as is the sound performance. There are a couple of other tricks the Dyson OnTrac headphones have up their sleeve though. To get the most out of these over-ears, we’ve rounded up our top seven tips and tricks.
1. Personalize them
Yes, yes we know, they aren’t the cheapest headphones you can buy and that’s before you buy extra ear caps and ear cushions. If you’ve bought these headphones though, make the most out of them by giving yourself at least one option for customizing them.
You can buy pairs of ear caps and ear cushions from the Dyson website and it seems a shame to have the option to be a little different and not take advantage. We had the Ceramic Cinnabar main color in for review and we changed the ear caps and ear cushions both to Khaki. It wasn’t too out there, but it was nice to have something that stood out a little.
2. Switch between the noise cancelling modes
The Dyson OnTrac headphones have three noise modes – Isolation, Transparency and Off. Isolation is when the active noise cancellation kicks in, reducing background noise by up to 40dB from the eight microphones on board. You can double tab the side of either ear cap to switch between the modes.
If you don’t want to use the ear caps to change the mode, you can use the MyDyson app, which is the same app that controls the company’s fans and robot vacuum cleaners like the Dyson Vis Nav 360. Open the MyDyson app up > Tap on the burger menu in the top left > Select the Dyson OnTrac from the list > Choose your noise cancellation mode.
3. Turn Head Detect on
If you want your Dyson OnTrac headphones to pause audio when you take them off, and automatically restart it when you put them back on, then you might want to consider turning on Head Detect.
You can find this by opening the MyDyson app up > Tapping on the burger menu in the top left > Selecting the Dyson OnTrac from the list > Tapping on the settings cog in the top right > Toggling Head Detect on. It will go purple when it is on.
4. Change the equaliser profile
The Dyson OnTrac headphones offer good bass and a lovely balance, but you might have a different preference to what they deliver naturally. Good news for you is there are three different sound profiles you can mess around with. You can’t adjust bass and treble individually like you can on other headphones, like the Sonos Ace, but you can pick between Bass Boost, Enhanced and Neutral.
Open the MyDyson app up > Tap on the burger menu in the top left > Select the Dyson OnTrac from the list > Choose your equaliser profile. Be aware that if you have turned Head Detect on, you will need to be wearing the OnTrac headphones to do this.
5. Change the name if your headphones
The Dyson OnTrac headphones are called ‘Dyson OnTrac’ by default rather than your name and Dyson OnTrac for example. If you want to call them something different, or you want to add your name at the beginning, that’s nice and easy.
Open the MyDyson app up > Tap on the burger menu in the top left > Select the Dyson OnTrac from the list > Tap on the settings cog in the top right corner > Tap on Product Name at the top > Change the name to what you want > Hit Submit.
6. Launch your phone’s assistant
There is a joy stick on the right ear cup of the Dyson OnTrac headphones. If you push and hold it, it will launch your phone’s assistant, whether that’s Siri on iPhone or Google Assistant on Android. You can then tell that assistant what you want as you would on your phone, such as finding out the weather or asking it to play a specific track.
7. See your noise exposure
Dyson loves to add a bit of science and data to its products. The Dyson Vis Nav 360 for example, will show you how dusty your house is, while the Dyson Gen5detect shows the number of dust particles on its LCD display when you’re using it. It is no surprise therefore, that the OnTrac headphones offer up some data. It’s not dust data though, instead it is sound exposure. There is a graph in the MyDyson app that will show you your in-ear sound exposure in decibels, and the external sound too, as well as how close you are to the recommended limits.
Open the MyDyson app up > Tap on the burger menu in the top left > Select the Dyson OnTrac from the list > Tap on the Data and Insights tab.
8. Turn volume limit on
Speaking of sound exposure, if you’ve been looking at the data in the MyDyson app and you find yourself spending too much time in the ‘High’ or red zone on the graph, you might want to consider turning the volume limit on.
Open the MyDyson app up > Tap on the burger menu in the top left > Select the Dyson OnTrac from the list > Tap on the settings cog in the top right corner > Toggle ‘Keep volume at a safe level’ on under ‘Preferences’ to keep your volume under 80dB.
9. Skip a track
We mentioned the Dyson OnTrac’s joy stick control on the right ear cup for launching your phone’s assistant but it also will control volume and tracks. To go back a track, press the joystick to the left. To skip a track, press the joystick to the right. If you press once, the music will pause and another press will play the music again.
