Nothing Ear (a) review

The Nothing Ear (a) earbuds are great for listening to music or movies but they're not the best for gaming. As a pair of earbuds for the average user—especially for those who care about style—they're great, but for a PC gamer I unfortunately can't give them a resounding recommendation.

Style points are valid points, though, and on this front the Nothings come in clutch. I have the yellow version, but honestly the black and white versions both look wonderful in their own way, too—white looks the nicest to my eyes. Things are helped especially by the part-transparent stem and fully transparent case lid.

Not only do the earbuds and case look worthy of the $99 MSRP, but they feel worthy, too. Although plastic, the case feels solid and it snaps shut with an unignorable clack, and the similarly solid earbuds get pulled magnetically and snapped into place with ease. I don't feel embarrassed getting the case out. Quite the opposite, using these earbuds make me feel like a completely ordinary modern person, right at home in a Starbucks.

For travelling and listening to music they serve very well, too. Battery life is decent, though nothing to write home about, with 9.5 hours in the earbuds and 42.5 hours including the charge in the case. And unfortunately there's no wireless charging, just USB-C, which is something I'd like to have seen for this price point. Even the cheaper EarFun Air Pro 4 earbuds (which I rate highly) have wireless charging. It does have an IP54 rating, though, which should mean it's safe from light rain and a little dust.

I like the on-ear controls, as they work by squeezing the stems rather than the usual touch controls, which is a little easier to get right and less prone to accidental presses.

Audio is very impressive for this price point, too, although you will of course find better audio in slightly more expensive audiophile buds, not to mention ones that can do more than just Bluetooth since this compresses audio.

The main thing I noticed upon trying out the Nothing Ear (a) for the first time was that the soundstage feels very wide and full. With the Bass Enhance setting enabled and set to level three (out of five) the bass is plenty punchy, and the audio in general feels more open than it does from some competitor earbuds such as the (admittedly cheaper) Air Pro 4.

It's not quite as crisp or as lively as the EarFun buds were after I tinkered with the EQ, and the amount of tinkering you can do with the Nothing's EQ is limited, to say the least (the 'custom' option only allows you to change three bands: bass, mid, and treble).

(Image credit: Future)

But despite this, I find myself preferring the audio from the Nothing Ear (a) to the audio from the Air Pro 4. And that's both for music and for games—in the latter, the full and wide sound combined with the more punchy bass (from gunshots, for example) helps with immersion.

Listen to the above to hear the microphone quality of the Nothing Ear (a).

Saying this, I still tend to return to the EarFun Air Pro 4 rather than the Nothing Ear (a), and that's for several reasons. The first is one that probably won't apply to most people: the Nothing earbuds fall out of my weird little ears quite easily. I reckon that's just because my ears are very small and so the buds don't have enough space to rest comfortably, but it's something to be aware of if you struggle with similar. I didn't have the same problem with the Air Pro 4 earbuds, and I think that's because the part of the earbud that sits outside your ear canal is smaller.

(Image credit: Future)

The second reason, though—and the most relevant to PC gamers—is that even with 'low lag mode' enabled, there's still noticeable latency over the Bluetooth connection. It's pretty unplayable without that mode enabled, but even with it enabled the delay is a little noticeable in a way that it's not with the EarFun buds. And it seems to turn this setting off every time you put the earbuds away, meaning you have to go back in-app each time to enable it.

The final main reason I reach for other earbuds rather than these is that the mic is pretty rubbish on them. People I spoke to over the phone noticed my voice audio had gotten worse as soon as I started using these instead of the EarFun buds or the SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds. My voice is audible, but it's not ideal, even for earbuds.

I should also note that these earbuds do feature ChatGPT integration via voice assistant, but I turned that off pretty much straight away because I'm wanting to plug in earbuds, not Big Brother's annoying Little Brother. Okay that's a lie, I disabled voice control because it called someone random in my phonebook when I asked it for the weather.

For just listening to music or other non-interactive things where latency and voice doesn't play a part, these are fantastic earbuds. They're stylish, easy to use (plug-n-play, pretty much), with simple and sleek software, and they sound fantastic. They even have good ANC and transparency modes. But for gaming, the poor latency is hard to look past, and even some cheaper earbuds with better latency will be a better option.