Much ado about something

Hands on review of the first product from the new brand, Nothing

Nothing is an odd name for a brand that plans on making something. However, the Nothing, in this case, refers to the design philosophy of the company. The object was to make something that is effortless, embodies transparency and is not in your face. They have achieved this goal to a large extent with their first product the ear (1), which is both beautiful and functional.

On unboxing, you will find an unmissable silver box inside the rather run-of-the-mill external cover. Inside the silver box resides a tiny square and transparent earphone case. You can see the magnets that hold the earphones in place and a central opaque white unit that I assume hides the electronics and battery. The case is magnetic, again the magnet and the hinges are visible here and they look beautiful. The case is also surprisingly sturdy; I dropped it a few times and it came out unscathed. It would be interesting to find out how many drops this can survive.

On opening the case, you see the earphones and notice the colour-coding, a red dot for the right one and white dot for the left ear. This is carried into the case to indicate where the earphones sit in the charging box. 

The earphones themselves are a combination of transparent and black and white. I am a big fan of the design and colours here. Though I wish they had an all-transparent version as well. The inner stem of the earphones has all the electronics visible. According to the company, they spent extra time and effort designing and manufacturing all the components because they had to look beautiful while being essentially naked. I feel it was well worth the effort.

Opening the charging case immediately triggered a response on my phone asking me if I wanted to download the ear (1) app and connect my earphones. Again, effortless here, no need to find the earphones and connect them, it was all done automatically. This happened regardless of the phone brand as long as the product was not already paired. It produced a pop-up on the closest phone. While this worked with Android, I couldn’t test the same on an iPhone. The connection to most phones was effortless the first time, shifting connection from one phone to another takes a bit of an effort requiring the user to push a white button on the right side of the case to re-pair.

The earphones with the charging case offer up to 36 hours of battery charge. The charging case connects to power using a USB C cable on the right-hand side of the product. The ear (1) earphones are dust and sweat-resistant, have active noise cancellation and an impressive set of 11.6mm drivers with graphene diaphragms. 

The Nothings sit nicely in the ear, I didn’t feel like they were blocking my ear canal in any way or causing any sort of discomfort. I would go as far as to say these are probably one of the most comfortable in-ear earphones I have used. I had a bunch of people try the fit and it worked across a variety of ear sizes without any need to swap out the tips. In the box, Nothing has provided small and large tips along with a very short charging wire.

The active noise cancellation can completely block out all external sounds, especially if you are listening to music. It can be turned off or put in transparency mode that lets you hear the things around you while listing to your music. The stick on the earphones is touch-sensitive along with the top unit. Sliding up and down the stick can reduce and increase volume but you have to do it multiple times to reach the desired volume. The touch on the top can let you go previous or next song by triple tapping and a long hold turns on noise cancellation from the default transparency mode. You can change the touch action on the app, however, the selection is limited for now.

The sound is probably the most important feature of any pair of earphones and the ear (1) is up there alongside the Air Pod Pros. Nothing claims the sound is flat, however, I felt the sound was on a little on the bass-heavy side. It was still very clear and crisp while having enough room to ramp up both the bass and treble frequencies. The in-built equaliser on the app needs more work to let users put in custom settings. For now, you can only select Balanced, More Treble, More Bass and Voice. All of these settings work well, but I found an external equaliser with user-defined settings brought out the best in the ear (1).

If the question is, are a pair Nothing ear (1) the best earphones money can buy, the answer would be no. However, if you consider the R5,999 price tag, the Nothing is probably one of the best earphones you can buy in this price range. It offers a whole lot of features, they are comfortable, they look good and most of all they sound great. So, if you are looking for a great pair of earphones with active noise cancellation on a budget the Nothing ear (1) is the perfect pair.
 
Nothing ear (1)
Price: Rs 5,999

Pros
>> Stunning looks
>> Effortless Bluetooth connection
>> Well-priced

Cons
>> The app needs more options to customise
>> Charging wire is very short
>> Sound not as balanced as claimed

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