Nothing Ear (3a): What $99 Buys

SoundGuys' verdict is the case for the pair: “competent earbuds, though the stock tuning requires a heavy hand”, with “very little about the earbuds that can be viewed as a shortcoming — which is extremely notable at $99.” TechRadar agrees about the sound and the price. The qualifier every source shares is the tuning. RTINGS measured the stock bass 8 dB above its target and the treble 2 dB below. SoundGuys' simulated listening panel scored the Balanced and More Treble presets above 4.6 out of 5, but when the comparison was limited to earbuds and headphones, timbre fell to between 3 and 3.4. TechRadar heard the kick drums in Fleetwood Mac's The Chain crowd out the upper harmony. All three treat it as a setting rather than a flaw, because the app's eight-band parametric equaliser, with an adjustable Q factor, can undo it; TechRadar's reviewer eased the bass and settled on a Q of 3.2. TechRadar's reviewer also found the pair quiet, and often listened above 50% volume.

• +8 dBstock bass above target, measured by RTINGS
• 50%+the volume TechRadar's reviewer often needed for ordinary listening

The second qualifier is a number that changes depending on where it is read. SoundGuys and Nothing's launch material give 10 hours per charge and 42 with the case, noise cancelling off; TechRadar's specification table gives 6 hours and 25, and its reviewer finds the stamina one of the pair's weaker points. Nothing's own specification sheet contains both figures: 10 hours is playback over AAC, measured at 50% volume, and 6 hours is playback over LDAC, the higher-resolution codec that is one of the pair's selling points. This article's reading of TechRadar's case totals, 25 and 18 hours, is that they match the sheet's talk-time line rather than LDAC playback, which the sheet puts at 28 and 20; no source says so. SoundGuys' four runs confirm only the AAC figure with noise cancelling off, because its test rig could not keep the wear sensor satisfied with noise cancelling on. TechRadar, listening over LDAC for two weeks, calls Nothing's 4.5 hours with noise cancelling on “bang on” — accurate, and still disappointing.

The third qualifier is the feature Nothing led with. The buds carry 32 MB of storage: pinching both stems saves an Audio Snapshot of up to 60 seconds of whatever is playing, and Call Recording stores up to two hours of calls, which sync to the Nothing X app for playback and transcription. Transcription and recording need a Nothing account, which SoundGuys flags for anyone uneasy about a company seeing how they use a product; beyond that it lists call recording among “very uncommon user-centric features” that stop the pair feeling cheap. TechRadar's reviewer makes it the centre of her review. On a UK phone call the other party hears “a brief beep”; phone to phone there is no spoken notice; the tone still plays when the wearer's microphones are muted. Nothing's app shows a tutorial asking users to get permission, and its reviewers' guide cites ISO 27001, ISO 27701 and EN 18031. Her objection is to the burden landing on the buyer, and to the marketing — Nothing's own page opens the feature with “Keep forgetting what your therapist says?” Both reviews agree on what it cannot do: record conversations around the wearer, or the wearer's own voice. This article's reading is that the two do not disagree about what the feature does, only about whether it belongs among the selling points.

Two footnotes on Nothing's own product page are worth reading before its headline numbers. The 45 dB of noise cancelling is “the theoretical maximum limit”, from Nothing's laboratory — so the one independent figure, 80.9% of perceived loudness, is not a check on it: the two measure different things. And the 10 hours assume noise cancelling off, 50% volume and AAC. TechRadar's reviewer listened above 50% and still found the 4.5-hour figure for LDAC with noise cancelling on accurate, though disappointing. Against its predecessor, TechRadar puts the Ear (a) at 9.5 hours per charge with noise cancelling off and about 5.5 with it on, and each Ear (3a) bud at 4.53 g against the Ear (a)'s 4.8 g. For stamina it points to the Cambridge Audio Melomania A100: 11 hours per charge, up to 39 with the case, with aptX Lossless.