Premium features at a mid-tier price

Practice makes perfect –– at least, that’s what Nothing is hoping for. The latest addition to its provocative earbud line, the Nothing Ear bring a host of improvements to the mix raising these earbuds from dark horse to a serious contender for the premium wireless earbud crown. The Nothing Ear offer a deep well 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 equalizer. All of that for an attractive price of $149. Plus, you’ve got that eye-catching, although sometimes polarizing, design.

However, spotty call quality and battery life fail to match some of its competitors mar what could have been a flawless victory. Still, the Nothing Ear are an excellent pair of earbuds that casual listeners and audiophiles will enjoy.

Pricing, availability, and specifications

The Nothing Ear are now available to order at $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.

The earbuds are available in white and black colorways and ship with an additional two pairs of ear tips (small and large) and a short USB-C charging cable.

Design and fit

One thing about the Nothing earbuds is that they don’t look like anything on the market. This can be a double-edged sword, as some people don’t like the clear plastic Nothing incorporates into its design. I, for one, love it, as it gives the earbuds a futuristic, minimalist aesthetic. Honestly, the earbuds are nearly identical to the Nothing Ear 2, its predecessor.

Most of the earbud casing is made of glossy white plastic with two small vents for the integrated mics. A white medium-sized silicone ear tip sits on the speaker. The earbuds’ stick is transparent, giving a peek into the device’s inner workings. Here, you’ll see a pair of silver grilles positioned at the top and bottom of the stick, respectively. A red dot gives a small pop of color, signifying the right bud, while the white dot identifies the left earbud. Upon closer inspection, you’ll see ‘NOTHING Ear’ printed down the stick’s length.

The eye-catching design is more than pretty good looks as the earbuds are rated IP54 for water resistance with limited dust resistance. The charging case is IP2-rated for light water resistance.

The buds fit snugly in my ear, immediately creating a passive noise-canceling seal. I immediately noticed some pressure on my concha. But since I have smaller ears than most, this was quickly remedied by swapping out the medium ear tips for the small ones. After that, I wore the Nothing Ear comfortably for over five hours.

The Nothing Ear’s charging case is just as visually interesting as the buds. The case’s entire lid is made of transparent 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. Removing the earbuds reveals two dots at the bottom of the case: white for the left and red for the right. A big white pairing button and a USB-C charging port are on the right, and they have a silvery metal hinge and front case lip.

But my favorite thing about the case is the thumb-sized divot at the top, which lets me use it as a fidget spinner for some of those more frenetic moments. At 1.8 ounces, 2.2 x 2.2 x 0.86 inches, the square case is bigger than most charging cases but not so big that it can fit into a front jeans pocket.

Audio and ANC

The Nothing Ear have ceramic custom 11mm drivers and supports the AAC, SBC, LDAC, and LHDC codecs, which should satisfy most audiophiles. For my testing, I set the streaming quality to Max and started listening to Jill Scott’s Fool’s Gold. The sound stage was a little cramped, as the lows were just on the edge of encroaching on some of the tracks’ more delicate elements, including the harp, cymbals, and triangle. Still, the soulful vocalist’s alto was front and center.

The electric guitars on LTQ’s metal cover of Chaka Khan’s Ain’t Nobody roared. They were nice and aggressive and accentuated with bombastic percussion. The vocals were clean and conveyed the expected grittiness.

Thanks to its companion app, the earbuds have several levels of active noise cancellation to choose from (High, Mid, Low, Adaptive), in addition to a Transparency mode. While not as powerful as the Sony WF-1000XM5 or Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, the Nothing Ear held their own against the never-ending din of New York City. Can the three mics in each bud and the AI noise-reduction algorithm completely drown out the subway without playing music? No, but it significantly muted the A train. To drown out the city’s sounds, I had to play some music at 60%.

Now, if you want to hear oncoming traffic and be aware of your surroundings, you have Transparency mode, which lets in the ambient noise. It allowed me to carry on a conversation with my boyfriend without taking out my earbuds, which is convenient.

Nothing has upgraded its Clear Voice Technology to improve call quality. However, the company has some more bugs to work out before it lands on the best earbuds for calls list. I made several calls while writing the review; some were better than others. My mom sounded like she was underwater during our 20-minute call, although she said she heard me loud and clear. The roles were reversed during a work call, with the caller declaring he could tell I was on a smartphone while they sounded great.

Software and features

The free Nothing X app is just as sleek and minimalist as the earbuds it supports. It has several helpful utilities designed to enhance your listening experience, including an equalizer with built-in presets and an advanced mode where you can tweak the gain, frequency, and equalizer curve. For gamers, there’s a low lag mode to cut down on audio latency.

The app also has a Find My Buds feature, an Eartip Fit Test, and even a hearing test to create a custom sound profile. Other quality-of-life features include switches for Noise Cancellation, In-Ear Detection, Dual Connection, and High-Quality Audio, where you can choose your lossless audio codec.

Instead of tapping to enter commands on the Nothing Ear, the company has opted for pinch controls. A quick pinch can play or pause whatever you’re listening to, answer a call, or end it. Double pinching the stem will either skip forward on a track or reject a call, while a triple pinch skips backward. Pinching and holding the stem will switch between ANC and Transparency modes.

Battery and charging

The Nothing Ear are rated for 5 hours and 12 minutes with ANC on for up to 24 hours using the charging case. The time increases considerably with ANC disabled to the tune of 8.5 hours and up to 40.5 hours with the case.

I was two minutes shy of Nothing’s estimate before I had to recharge. During this time, I made a few calls, jumped on a video chat, streamed music from Tidal, and watched a few YouTube videos. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait too long to get back into the groove when it was time to recharge since it only takes 10 minutes to get 10 hours of charge.

However, the Nothing Ear have relatively short battery life compared to the WF-1000XM5 and QuietComfort Ultra, which have 8 and 6 hours, respectively. The Nothing Ear also supports wireless charging up to 2.5W. If that wasn’t enough, the case can also charge compatible devices such as the Nothing Phone 2, making them some of the best earbuds for phones.

Competition

The Nothing Ear aren’t going to dethrone Sony or Bose in the ANC market. But they can go toe-to-toe with the AirPods Pro. Regarding audio quality, there are a couple of flaws in the Nothing Ear’s ear tuning, but making some dedicated EQ tweaks or creating a personalized sound profile will iron out most of the wrinkles. Tweak it to your liking, and you’ve got a great-sounding pair of earbuds.

Should you buy them?

The Nothing Ear are a revelation. Nothing is definitely on the road to perfection, from the slick design to the deep feature set. Sure, there are a few bumps in the road from the short battery life and shaky call quality. But all that can be overlooked once you slide the super comfortable buds into your ears and craft your personal sound profile.

While they aren’t the best noise cancelling earbuds you can get, the Ear do a solid job of quieting down the world around you. Plus, with those high-end codecs, you get great audio quality, especially for the price point. All in all, Nothing instituted some necessary refinements to get the company ever closer to toppling some of the heavy hitters in the wireless buds arena. It’s a big win for music lovers who want a high-quality product but don’t necessarily have the budget to match.