Practice makes perfect — at least that’s what Nothing hopes. The latest addition to its provocative line of earbuds, the Nothing Ear brings a host of improvements to the mix that elevate these earbuds from dark horses to serious contenders for the premium wireless earbud crown. Nothing Ear offers a slew of features via its app, including a hearing test to create a personalized sound profile, a fit test to ensure optimal comfort, and a surprisingly deep bass equalizer. All for an attractive price of $149. Plus, you have that attractive, if sometimes controversial, design.
However, the intermittent call quality and battery life don’t quite live up to some of its competitors, spoiling what could have been a flawless win. Still, the Nothing Ear are an excellent pair of earbuds that casual listeners and audiophiles will enjoy.
Nothing ear
The Nothing Ear is a better version of its predecessor, offering a suite of premium app-controlled features, great sound quality with good ANC, and a futuristic design for under $200.
- Comfortable, stylish and futuristic design
- Great sound quality
- Lots of customizable features
- The disc controls are easy to use.
- Intermittent call quality
- Short battery life with ANC enabled
Pricing, Availability and Specifications
The Nothing Earbuds are available to order now for $149 from Nothing or Amazon . The price is competitive for a flagship device, especially compared to the Sony WF-1000XM5, AirPods Pro 2, and Bose QuietComfort Ultra.
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The earbuds come in white and black and ship with two extra pairs of ear tips (small and large) and a short USB-C charging cable.
Design and Fit
One thing that sets the Nothing Ear apart is that they don’t look like anything else on the market. This can be a double-edged sword, as some people don’t like the transparent plastic that Nothing uses in its design. Personally, I love it, as it gives the earphones a futuristic, minimalist aesthetic. Honestly, the earphones are almost identical to their predecessor, the Nothing Ear 2.
The bulk of the earbuds’ housing is made of glossy white plastic with two small holes for the built-in microphones. There’s a medium-sized white silicone ear tip on the earbud. The earbuds’ stem is transparent, allowing you to peek into the device’s innards. Here, you’ll see a pair of silver grilles placed at the top and bottom of the stem, respectively. A red dot adds a small touch of color, denoting the right earbud, while a white dot identifies the left earbud. Upon closer inspection, you’ll see “NOTHING Ear” printed along the stem.
The attractive design is more than just pretty, as the earbuds are rated IP54 for water resistance with limited dust resistance. The charging case is also rated IP2 for light water resistance.
The buds fit snugly in my ears, instantly creating a passive noise-canceling seal. I did immediately notice some pressure on my ear canal. But since my ears are smaller than most, this was quickly remedied by replacing the medium ear tips with the small ones. After that, I wore the Nothing Ear comfortably for over five hours.
The Nothing Ear charging case is as visually interesting as the earbuds. The entire case cover is made of clear polyurethane. The sides and about 25% of the bottom of the case are clear, while the rest of the base is white plastic; the top has “NOTHING” printed in gray. When you remove the earbuds, two dots appear on the bottom of the case: white on the left and red on the right. There’s a large white pairing button and USB-C charging port on the right, and they have a silver metal hinge and front lip of the case.
But my favorite thing about this case is the thumb-sized top, which allows me to use it as a spinner for some of those crazier moments. At 1.8 ounces and measuring 2.2 x 2.2 x 0.86 inches, the Square case is larger than most charging cases but not so big that it can fit in a front jeans pocket.
Sound and ANC
The Nothing Ear headphones feature custom 11mm ceramic drivers and support AAC, SBC, LDAC, and LHDC codecs, which should please most audiophiles. For my testing, I set the streaming quality to max and started listening to Jill Scott’s Fool’s GoldThe soundstage was a bit narrow, with the low notes almost encroaching on some of the more delicate elements of the tracks, including the harp, cymbals, and triangle. However, the soulful singer’s voice dominated the scene.
Electric guitars on the metal cover of Chaka Khan’s song by LTQ there is nobody Their voices were sweet, aggressive, and enhanced by strong rhythms. Their voices were pure and clear.
Thanks to their companion app, the earbuds have several levels of active noise cancellation to choose from (high, medium, low, adaptive), as well as a transparency mode. While not as powerful as the Sony WF-1000XM5 or Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, the Nothing Ear held up well to the endless noise of New York City. Could the three microphones in each earbud and AI noise reduction algorithm completely drown out the subway without music playing? No, but they did a great job of drowning out the A train. To drown out the sounds of the city, I had to play some music at 60 percent volume.
Now, if you want to hear oncoming traffic and pay attention to your surroundings, you have Transparency mode, which lets ambient noise in. This mode allowed me to have a conversation with my friend without having to take out the earbuds, which was convenient.
Neither company has updated the Clear Voice technology to improve call quality. However, the company still has a few bugs it needs to fix before it makes it onto the list of best earbuds for calls. I took several calls while writing this review; some were better than others. My mom sounded like she was underwater during our 20-minute call, though she said she heard me loud and clear. The roles were reversed during a business call, with the caller announcing that she could tell I was talking on a smartphone while she sounded great.
Software and Features
The free Nothing X app is as sleek and simple as the earbuds it supports. It has a number of utilities designed to enhance the listening experience, including an equalizer with built-in presets and an advanced mode where you can adjust the gain, frequency, and equalizer curve. For gamers, there’s a low-latency mode to reduce audio latency.
The app also features Find My Buds, a fit test for ear tips, and even a hearing test to create a personalized sound profile. Other quality-of-life features include noise-canceling switches, in-ear detection, dual connectivity, and high-quality audio, where you can choose the lossless audio codec.
Instead of tapping to enter commands on the Nothing Ear, the company opted for tap controls. A quick tap can play or pause whatever you’re listening to, or answer or end a call. Pressing the stem twice will either skip ahead a track or reject a call, while pressing it three times will skip back. Pressing and holding the stem will toggle between ANC and Transparency modes.
Battery and charging
The Nothing Earbuds are rated for 5 hours and 12 minutes with ANC on and up to 24 hours with the charging case. That increases dramatically with ANC off to 8.5 hours and up to 40.5 hours with the case.
I was about two minutes away from appreciating Nothing before I had to recharge. During that time, I made a few calls, got into a video chat, streamed music from Tidal, and watched a few YouTube videos. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long to get back to work when it was time to recharge, as it only takes 10 minutes to get 10 hours of charge.
However, the Nothing Ear have a relatively short battery life compared to the WF-1000XM5 and QuietComfort Ultra, which have 8 and 6 hours of playback respectively. The Nothing Ear also supports wireless charging at up to 2.5W. And if that’s not enough, the case can also charge compatible devices like the Nothing Phone 2, making them some of the best earbuds for phones.
a race
The Nothing Ear won’t be able to dethrone Sony or Bose in the ANC market. But they can compete with the AirPods Pro. In terms of sound quality, there are some drawbacks to the Nothing Ear’s in-ear tuning, but making some custom EQ adjustments or creating a custom sound profile will fix most of the shortcomings. Tweak it to your liking, and you’ll have a pair of great-sounding earbuds.
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Should you buy them?
The Nothing Earbuds are an amazing find. They’re definitely on a roll, from the sleek design to the deep feature set. Sure, there are some bumps in the road like short battery life and shaky call quality. But that’s all negligible once you get the super-comfortable earbuds in your ears and design your own personal sound profile.
While they’re not the best noise-canceling headphones you can get, the Ear does a good job of quieting the world around you. Plus, with such high-quality codecs, you get great sound quality, especially for the price point. Overall, Nothing has made some necessary improvements to bring the company closer to dethroning some of the big names in the wireless earbud space. It’s a big win for music lovers who want a quality product but don’t necessarily have the budget to match it.
Nothing ear
The Nothing Ear is a better version of its predecessor, offering a suite of premium app-controlled features, great sound quality with good ANC, and a futuristic design for under $200.
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