Nothing Ear (3a) review: perhaps the best earbuds for 100 euros

Nothing Ear (3a): thoroughly tested

When you start looking for new earbuds, you’ll find yourself in a vast jungle of options. Samsung and Apple are well-known names, but Xiaomi, Oppo, OnePlus and Huawei are also keen to compete in this segment. Nothing has also released audio products in the past and recently unveiled the Nothing Ear (3a). A set of colourful earbuds (in a range of colours to suit your taste) with extensive features and, according to the manufacturer, good sound quality. Now, we’re not easily swayed by brands’ marketing spiel, but we are curious about the product itself.

Unboxing

We received the Nothing Ear (3a) in bright yellow. It’s a nice change from the usual colours in which earbuds are often released. Still, it’s good to know that Nothing offers a choice of colours. As well as yellow, you can choose from bright pink, white and black.

Both the packaging and the case containing the earbuds are instantly recognisable as Nothing. The packaging has room for just the essentials. This means it comes with some basic paperwork, along with three sizes of ear tips, so there’s always a perfect fit for your ear. It’s worth noting that the USB cable, which manufacturers often still include, is missing here. As you can simply charge the case via USB-C, just like your smartphone, you’ll probably still have that charger lying around, so it’s not a problem.

The stylishly designed case is finished entirely in the same colours as the earbuds. A handy feature is the LED indicator with three settings. When you take the earbuds out or put them back in, it shows how much charge is left in the case. The LED lights are immediately reminiscent of Nothing’s smartphones. The earbuds themselves have a partially transparent housing and look really good.

Features

Under the proverbial bonnet is a 12 mm driver with support for Hi-Res Audio. In addition, the Ear (3a) offers active noise cancellation of up to 45 dB, Spatial Audio and a striking recording function. We’ll come back to this later in the Nothing Ear (3a) review.

The earbuds support Bluetooth 6.0 and allow you to switch between different devices and operating systems. The earbuds are IP54-certified and are therefore resistant to dust and splashes. The supported codecs are AAC, SBC and LDAC. A smartphone running Android 8.0 or Apple iOS 13 or later is required for them to work. Of course, they also work via Bluetooth on, for example, your laptop or computer. Switching between devices is no problem at all.

Nothing X app, gestures and recordings

The Nothing X app is optional to download, but is actually highly recommended. This is because it allows you to personalise a lot of settings and access even more features. The home screen displays the most important information and lets you adjust some settings straight away. The app also features the equaliser, which we’ll come back to in the next section. You’ll also find the ‘controls’ here – in other words, the gestures. By tapping, pinching and holding, you can perform various actions. This works reasonably well, although you’ll certainly need to get the hang of it at first. Otherwise, things don’t always happen as you’d like. In total, there are six controls, five of which can be customised.

Recording is another unique feature offered by Nothing on the Nothing Ear (3a). You can record both music/sound played through the earbuds and phone calls. We tried both, using Spotify and a phone call. Although the squeeze gesture can be a bit fiddly at times, the audio quality is fine. Not quite as good as the live conversation, but perfectly audible. The same applies to the music, which is slightly quieter but still perfectly usable. The recordings are saved to your Nothing account, but you’ll need to create an account first.

You can have recorded phone calls transcribed automatically. Depending on the length, this takes anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. You’ll then receive not only a full transcript, but also an AI summary that clearly distinguishes between the different speakers. The feature works very well with the Dutch language. You can rename and share recordings using the usual methods.

Sound quality

In terms of sound quality, the Nothing Ear (3a) delivers a lovely sound, especially when compared to other in-ear headphones that are sometimes even in a higher price bracket. The bass tones are warm and never sound over-modulated. The mid-range and treble are also nicely balanced, ensuring you can still hear voices clearly. Personally, I’d give the mid-range and treble a slight boost, so that the bass remains warm whilst the mid-range and treble stay nice and crisp. Although that might just be a personal listening preference.

Incidentally, there’s plenty of scope for fine-tuning in the Nothing X app, as mentioned above. After all, you have a wide range of audio settings to choose from, including a comprehensive equaliser. In simple mode, you can adjust a few settings to emphasise treble, vocals, bass or achieve a balanced sound. In advanced mode, you can adjust eight bands yourself. In the third tab, you can use profiles created by Nothing. This allows you to easily tailor the sound to your own preferences.

The noise cancellation works exceptionally well. Ambient noise is significantly suppressed as soon as it’s switched on, and the earbuds themselves seal the ear canal effectively. This works well whilst running too, allowing you to enjoy your own music to the full. For noise cancellation, you can choose from three settings (low, medium or high) or ‘adaptive’, allowing you to further adjust the level of noise cancellation. In our tests, the adaptive mode performed reasonably well, although it sometimes tends to make the music sound a bit flat. We therefore often had the noise cancellation set to ‘high’. You can also opt for transparency mode, which allows ambient sound to come through.

Battery

Nothing has equipped the Nothing Ear (3a) with a 500 mAh battery in the case. Each earbud also has a 55 mAh battery, which together should provide a total listening time of 42 hours. Thanks to the large battery in the earbuds themselves, you should be able to listen for up to ten hours on a single charge. These figures do, however, exclude the use of ANC. With ANC switched on, the combined battery life of the earbuds and the case is a maximum of 25 hours, and 4.5 hours for the earbuds alone. Several other earbuds, such as the (more expensive) Galaxy Buds 4 Pro, offer a slightly longer battery life. In practice, however, we haven’t experienced any issues with short battery life ourselves.

Verdict

What can you expect from earbuds costing 100 euros? Admittedly, they look really nice, but we didn’t have earth-shattering expectations. Nevertheless, the Nothing Ear (3a) has completely exceeded our expectations.

The Nothing Ear (3a) proves that, for around 100 euros, you no longer have to make any major compromises. The sound quality is impressive, the ANC performs surprisingly well and the Nothing X app really adds something extra. The battery life isn’t among the best on the market, but proved more than adequate in practice. If you’re looking for fully wireless earbuds for around 100 euros, the Nothing Ear (3a) is one of the most interesting options available right now.

Buy

You can buy the Nothing Ear (3a) yourself at:

• Coolblue
• Bol
• Amazon
• Belsimpel