Nothing Ear (a) Review: The Flagship Minus the Equaliser

The compromise, named precisely

9to5Google tested these alongside the more expensive Nothing Ear and came back with a number: 99 percent of the flagship for 30 percent off.

What the missing one percent turns out to be is the equaliser. The flagship has granular control; this has presets and a three-band adjustment. Their assessment is that the subtle detail the flagship uncovers is somewhat lost here, but barely.

SoundGuys reaches the same criticism from a different direction, calling the equaliser basic and listing it among the drawbacks.

If you are the sort of person who builds a custom curve, that is a real loss. If you pick a preset and forget about it, you have just saved a third of the price.

What SoundGuys measured

Noise cancelling peaking around 25 dB, with average environmental noise reduced to roughly 57 percent of its perceived loudness. Three levels to choose from.

Battery: 8 hours 49 minutes on a charge, 42.5 hours in total with the case, and ten minutes of charging returning about ten hours of playback.

Frequency response: sub-bass boosted more than ideal, a dip between 200 and 500 Hz, and a noticeable fall above 8 kHz.

How-To Geek's listening impression sits comfortably with those numbers, calling the sound well-balanced but enthusiastic, strong on bass-heavy tracks, and better than $200 earbuds they have heard.

The rating mismatch nobody mentions

The earbuds are IP54. The case is IPX2.

IP54 means dust protected and safe from splashes. IPX2 means protected against dripping water at an angle and essentially nothing else.

So in rain, the parts in your ears are fine and the part in your pocket is not. It is the kind of specification split that only shows up when you read the numbers rather than the marketing, and it is worth knowing before you take them to a beach.

Calls, and a disagreement

SoundGuys rates the microphone as excellent, crediting Nothing's voice isolation with performing well across environments.

How-To Geek calls call quality the weakest area of the product, describing transmitted audio as compressed and a little choppy, with background noise filtering that struggled when a door opened.

Both can be right. A microphone can capture a voice cleanly and the processing and codec that carry it to the other end can still make it sound thin. Treat these as earbuds for listening rather than for meetings.

The small things that add up

The Nothing X app, which How-To Geek rates as one of the best audio apps available, with a bubble-based equaliser, a fit test and Find My Earbuds.

LDAC, at this price, alongside AAC and SBC.

A case 9to5Google prefers to the flagship's because it is smaller and fits a pocket better, with the pairing button moved inside where it belongs.

Against that: no wireless charging, and SoundGuys reports connection stutters in busy urban areas, which is the sort of thing that only becomes apparent on a crowded platform.