The Nothing Ear 3A offers great, but sometimes buggy, performance for the price

Nothing has had such a strong visual identity since Ear 1 It was released in 2021 for $99 and challenged the idea that high-quality headphones command a high price. The Ear 3A has the same transparent look as the previous Nothing earbuds, with a clear case and stem design accented by a solid-colored body – this time adding a striking pink colorway alongside yellow, black and white options. And nothing continues to improve on ANC and audio performance. But the Ear 3A also shares the buggy performance that plagues the Nothing earbuds. While $99 is an attractive price for them, be prepared to deal with some minor adaptive ANC and call quality issues.

The Ear 3A has 12mm dynamic drivers and supports the high-resolution LDAC codec, along with SBC and AAC. Their default sound is quite heavy on the bass, and while it gives the bass lines extra punch, the midrange – which includes the vocals and guitars – is covered in over-the-top low-end. The villains might enjoy it, but it’s a little too much for my taste, and I expect it will be the same for most people. Where I might make some points for this on other earbuds, the Nothing 3A saves itself from this due to the strong equalizer in the app. There’s a simple interface with four presets and a custom 3-band EQ, a nice 8-band parametric EQ that gives you more advanced adjustments, and some additional equalizer profiles from users sponsored by Nothing.

In less than a minute, I was able to adjust the equalizer to something more balanced to my ears (I added a downward ramp to the bass below 115Hz, a mid-boost between 220-540Hz, another slight cut for loud frequencies between 2-3.5kHz, and some extra highs above 6.6kHz for a more open sound). He gives Chris Robinson’s voice a greater presence on “Thorn in My Pride” and his brother Rich and Mark Ford’s gentle guitars crunch and bite as the song builds through the solo. Even with the cut to the low end, Johnny Colt’s voice supports the band throughout.

ANC performance is improved compared to previous Nothing earbuds, with strong cancellation especially in the lower midrange and bass range, so low drones like air conditioners or airplane cabin noise are filtered out very well. For $99, they also do a good job at higher frequencies, but if you plan to use them constantly at a coffee shop, you’ll still hear requests called out a bit. And if the high ANC setting is too much for you, there are medium and low settings that let more of the low end in to actually frame you.

There’s also an adaptive ANC setting, but this is where some minor issues I ran into started. While walking around the neighborhood, sometimes (maybe two or three times during an hour of walking) the ANC intensity will quickly adjust to let in more ambient noise and then return to its previous level. The whole experience lasted maybe two seconds at a time and was awkward. I tried to write down what might be causing this, but I couldn’t find a consistent situation that would cause this to happen. In general, whenever adaptive ANC makes a change in intensity, it is sudden rather than the gradual change it makes Apple AirPods Pro 3 or Sony WF-1000XM6 Do – for hundreds of extra dollars.

The only issue I was able to discover, which also had to do with lowering the volume, was with the quality of my calls. While talking to a friend I call regularly when testing earbuds, if I was just listening to him, he couldn’t hear anything from my side at all. No movement, no wind, no breathing, nothing. At one point he wondered out loud if the call had been dropped.

When I spoke, it seemed clear and natural to him if I started talking when there wasn’t much noise around me. As the sound around me became louder — such as more cars passing by — less of that sound leaked out, though my voice still sounded normal. But if I started speaking while there was a lot of noise around me, my voice sounded dark because the earbuds aggressively filtered out the upper, mid, and high frequencies, including doing a great job of cutting down loud ambient sound.

Both the ANC and call quality issues can be addressed with future firmware updates (my testing was with firmware 1.0.1.59), and if you’re using one of the fixed ANC settings rather than adaptive ANC, or don’t plan to make calls in noisy areas, it’s not an issue anyway.

The Nothing Ear 3A also includes 32MB of on-device storage, allowing it to record up to two hours of a call or capture an audio snapshot (nothing’s term) of up to one minute. When you then access the app, you can transfer the recordings to your device. When you start recording a call, a message is played to notify everyone. I can easily see using a recording of an important call to make sure you don’t miss any information (although this can easily be done through your phone), but I’ve yet to find a reason for this audio snippet. It only records up to a minute of what you’re listening to, not anything around you using the earbuds’ microphones, with a lower resolution. It’s unique to Nothing 3A, but it’s also weird.

I’m glad the Nothing Ear 3A is back under $100 after the $179 Ear 3. Nothing is at its best when it challenges what can be done more cheaply – and I’m more forgiving of its minor flaws. Although the sound wasn’t to my taste out of the box, the fact that you can make meaningful adjustments and fine-tune it to your preferences makes them more versatile than most earbuds at the same price.

Photography by John Higgins/The Verge