None Headphone Review: Something worth considering

After release Headphone 1 Last year – its first over-ear headphones – the company returned with the Headphone A. It’s a miniature over-ear option that maintains the Nothing’s design aesthetic and excellent controls while reducing weight and increasing battery life to a maximum of 135 hours. There are some perks — average call quality and a carrying case instead of a holster — but it’s also cheaper at $199. The Headphone A makes more sense to me than the Headphone 1 ever did, and is a great second offering from Nothing.

The design of Headphone A is incredibly similar to that of Headphone 1. Each earbud has the same rectangular shape with an oval housing on top. But where the oval casing of the Headphone 1 is transparent, on A it is opaque white, yellow or pink against the white casing (there is also an all-black option), and the ear cup is the part with the transparent casing. There’s a red square on the right earcup and a white square on the left earcup — the same color indicators as the old RCA cable.

As with the Model 1, the A-shell and headband feel rubbery, but the swivel hinges are sturdier than before. The memory foam-lined ear cups are comfortable for a while, but I found that I needed breaks every once in a while due to the pressure of the fit on the lower front of my ear and how the headphones sit on the top of my head. Although Headphones A are IP52 rated, many headphones are more expensive than nothing, e.g Sony WH-1000XM6, Bose Ultra headphonesand Apple AirPods Max headphones They do not have an IP rating – earmuffs do not breathe well. I tested them during the Los Angeles heat wave in February and had sweat around my ears within 20 minutes. IP52 isn’t a particularly high rating, but A is dust-resistant and safe from sweat or light rain.

The controls on Headphone A are exactly the same as Headphone 1, and that’s a very good thing. Nothing uses mechanical controls rather than capacitive ones, with a roller to control volume, a paddle for track navigation, and a button to activate the voice assistant. The paddle can be pressed to fast forward or rewind through a track, though it doesn’t work with every app (as was the case with Apple Music, but not with Qobuz). The volume wheel is also a play/pause button, and a long press will switch between ANC and Transparency mode. The button in the app can be customized to control your phone’s camera shutter, mute the microphone, activate noise control, or select an equalizer preset. I wish the drum had a little more resistance so I didn’t go overboard while adjusting the volume while walking, but it’s a minor issue.

The default balanced sound profile is too sibilant and buzzy in the upper registers, and the bass is heavy for my taste. The cymbals and screams during Yoshimi’s battle against the pink robots captured the texture of the music. I enjoy a little excitement with my 90s alternative, but Matt Cameron’s thunderous chimes on “Spoonman” were too boomy for the track, while the chimes of Radiohead’s “There There” had too much resonance.

I was fortunately able to address these issues using EQ in the Nothing That’s a lot of customizability for a $200 pair of headphones. It allowed me to dial back frequencies that I found too high (between 100 and 250 Hz for the low end and over 6000 Hz for the high).

But the process took some trial and error. While most equalizers will boost the frequency when you move the slider up, it sounds like nothing instead Decreases All other frequencies. I expect this to keep the volume at a reasonable level while changing the sound profile and prevent anyone from blowing out their ears. But as someone who adjusted the EQ a lot Headphones and someone who is used to adjusting parametric equalizers while editing audio, this is counter-intuitive to me.

ANC performance is good for the price – better than Sony ult The headphones are as good as the Soundcore Space One Pro – and they manage to block low frequencies well. However, they can’t compare to the $300-plus flagship noise-canceling headphones available from Sony, Bose, or Apple. There are three levels of ANC plus an adaptive option. I’ve found that increasing the level improves the blocking of the low end, but also makes the higher frequencies appear a little louder.

Unfortunately, the noise cancellation on the microphone end is poor. The Headphones A have three microphones — one fewer than the Headphone 1 — to adjust for background noise and focus on your voice, but they have trouble keeping voices clear and intelligible. They kept traffic moving with a quiet, high-pitched voice while I talked to my wife while walking down a busy street in Los Angeles, but sometimes my voice was severely compressed. Words got lost and I became difficult to understand, forcing her to focus and guess the missing words to complete my sentence. I listened back to the recording of the conversation and there were times when I couldn’t understand what you said, and I was the one who said it. The Nothing Headphone 1 had similar issues in our initial tests, before we realized it was lagging. But I checked again; The A headphones were on the right track. They just struggle with ambient noise. You can get better call quality from non-pros Soundcore Space One Headphones are $100 cheaper and about three years old.

Headphone A has no passive listening mode; It still needs to be powered on when using the 3.5mm jack. When the headphones are connected to a device with either a USB-C cable or a 3.5mm cable (both included), Bluetooth connectivity and the app are disabled, so you won’t be able to make any adjustments to the EQ or ANC strength. Instead, they will continue to use whatever settings were selected when they were connected. You can charge them using USB-C connected to the charger and still use Bluetooth.

As long as dual connection is enabled in the app, Headphones A can connect to two devices at the same time, allowing for easy switching between devices in a few seconds by pausing on one device and starting playback on another. It has worked flawlessly with mine iPhone 15 Pro and Sony Xperia 1 V. You can have more than two devices in the list in the Nothing It’s a seamless integration and keeps you from having to go through multiple Bluetooth menus to connect and disconnect.

There’s nothing special about the design aesthetic, so much so that I wondered how many people would be comfortable wearing the Headphone 1 when they go out. Opaque covers make the Headphone A more subdued, although the yellow and pink colors still make a statement. However, the best improvement is that it’s $100 cheaper than the Headphone 1 while retaining some of its best features.

It would be nice to have a carrying case and a less flexible feel on the outside, and the lackluster call quality is a letdown. But if those aren’t deal-breakers for you, the $199 Headphone A offers solid style and sound, which is better (and more adjustable) than similarly priced headphones, like the Sony Ult. If you replaced Headphone 1, Headphone A is the thing you’ve been waiting for.

Photography by John Higgins/The Verge