Nothing has changed with Nothing’s latest $149 Ear noise-canceling earbuds. At least, not at first glance. In fact, you’d be forgiven if you thought the buds had taken a step back; while they’re the successor to Nothing’s Ear (2) earbuds they don’t have a 3 anywhere in their name. Nor do they employ Apple’s generational naming scheme. They’re just the Nothing Ear, and they look the same as the Ear (2). However, there are some changes on the inside that deliver legitimate improvements, particularly to sound quality, noise canceling and battery life, though I did encounter some small issues that brought down their rating slightly.
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The Nothing Ear earbuds have the same case as their predecessor.
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The Nothing Ear (a) has a new smaller case but is missing wireless charging.
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The Nothing Ear comes in white and black.
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Testing the buds in the streets of New York.
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7.8
Nothing Ear
Same eye-catching design
If you haven’t heard of Nothing, it was launched back in 2021 by Carl Pei, who cofounded OnePlus. Design-focused from the get-go, its products, which included smartphones and earbuds, featured a partially transparent exterior and other slick accents that initially made them stand out from their competitors — at least aesthetically — and earned them a lot of media exposure. Performance-wise, Nothing’s earbuds were decent for what they cost ($99), though arguably nothing special.
The Nothing Ear earbuds have the same case as their predecessor.
This $149 iteration of the Nothing Ear buds uses noise-isolating ear tips (the company also makes earbuds with an open design called the Ear Stick that sell for around $60) and have the same design as the previous model and includes the same case, which does offer wireless charging and is both water-resistant and dust-resistant with an IP55 rating.
A new step-down model, the $99 Ear (a) come in a new yellow color as well as white and black. It has different drivers and includes a smaller charging case (it has a lower IPX2 water-resistance rating and leaves off wireless charging), but otherwise has very similar features.
The Nothing Ear comes in white and black.
You get big, bold sound with decent depth and openness. Comparing them to the AirPods Pro 2, the Ear were a little warmer with bigger yet slightly less defined bass. With some tracks, particularly bass-heavy tracks, I preferred the Ear’s sound to AirPods Pro 2’s sound. But with others, I preferred the AirPods Pro 2’s sound. The mids, where voices live, are more forward and slightly more natural sounding with the AirPods Pro 2, which appears to be slightly better balanced.
As far as audio codecs go, you get AAC, SBC, LHDC 5.0 and LDAC. I tested LDAC playback on the Pixel 7 Pro using the Qobuz music streaming service, which features high-res audio tracks. There was a very slight uptick in sound quality from what I heard on my iPhone using the AAC codec, but it was quite subtle.
The long and short of it is that while the Ear buds may not sound fantastic, they do sound fairly impressive for a set of earbuds in this price range. There’s some question whether it’s worth spending the extra money on the Ear versus the Ear (a), but the Ear sounds about 10% better to my ears.
Noise-canceling and voice-calling performance
I spent time testing the buds on the streets of New York and on the subway and found the noise-canceling was reasonably good, but it’s just not in the same league as what you get with more expensive top noise-canceling earbuds like the Bose QuietComfort Ultra, Sony WF-1000XM5 and AirPods Pro 2.
Nothing says the noise canceling on both the Ear and Ear (a) “can offer noise elimination that’s up to 1.8 times stronger” than the Ear (2), with the ability to muffle up to 45 dB. There are high, medium and low settings for ANC, along with an adaptive noise-canceling setting. Nothing describes high as “airplane/subway,” medium as “street/cafe” and low as “office/indoor.” I mainly kept it on high except when I was indoors. There’s also a transparency mode that allows sound in from the outside world. It’s not quite as good as the AirPods Pro 2’s transparency mode, but it’s pretty natural sounding.
