Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Dumb name, good product – Nothing Ear (a)”.
If you have no idea what these products are, I don’t blame you. I mean obviously they’re headphones and they’re clearly made by nothing, but the naming scheme guys the naming scheme. You can’t have a product called the nothing ear and then nothing ear to and then follow it up with the nothing ear and then nothing ear a. How does this fit in the product stack? They say this is supposed to help improve Clarity, included. Accessories are a little tiny, USBC, cable, three different sizes of ear tips, but silly names aside, there’s a lot to like here priced at $ 99 and $ 149.
These things supposedly pack a ton of performance into a very reasonable size package. If I was nothing I’d be saying it’s going to be a whole new era. Okay, in all, seriousness, though hold on a second hold on a second before we play around too much with these things. Let’S talk about the differences between the two SKS.
They both offer over 8 hours of playback if you have active noise cancellation off and only about half of that, if you have active noise cancellation on and it’s even less if you’re on the phone. So, while the active noise cancellation has been described as pretty darn good, although not on par with the airpods pros, it is going to come at a significant cost for battery life, both of them run for about 40 hours. If you include the batteries in the case – and you don’t havec enabled and both are compatible with the nothing X app which can be used to tune the EQ profiles, which is by the way something you’re probably going to want to do, given that they’re a little On the base heavy side out of the box, even if their overall Clarity is actually quite nice and very competitive, with even higher end audio brands for the price by the way shout out headphones.com for putting together these frequency response. Curves for us, if you guys want to check those out we’re going to have them linked down below now.
Let’S talk about some differences, the ear A’s, the less expensive ones, are available in this fun, yellow color. So you could look fun like this. While the ears are only available in their classic colors, although I got to say I am loving their industrial design on these things, they’re apparently using a super super clear plastic, some kind of polyurethane material that gives it a very glass-like transparency of about what is it? 89 % also inside it’s got ceramic drivers rather than the more traditional drivers in the E A and in practice.
We did find that this improved Clarity and the Sound Stage, though by 50 % cuz we’re going from $ 99 to $ 150 n. That’S a lot tougher of a sell, but definitely some improvement. Of course I haven’t listened to them. Yet this is all notes from the labs and from headphones.com so far got to say I am not finding the case to be the most intuitive thing in the world, but it’s not bad. I think I could get used to it and it’s pretty packable. It’S bulkier yep, definitely bulkier man. If it was me just for the size of the case alone, I think I would be leaning toward the ear A’s speaking of cases.
The ears are ip55 rated, which honestly I find kind of hard to believe like this doesn’t seem to have any kind of meaningful seal in it. I don’t see how it’s going to keep any water out uh, whereas the ear 2 H, whereas the ear is see. I don’t know what to call these things.
Oh you had a perfectly good naming scheme sort of is and then you’ve made it even worse. Sorry, the ear A’s are ipx2 anyway. They both have USBC charging and will get you about 10 hours of playback on 10 minutes of charging, which is pretty good as far as fast charging goes, and the ears have wireless charging at 2 and 1/2 Watts.
So if you want to vampiric sap power off of your phone, then you can absolutely do that or you could just use a wireless charger. I guess that’s also an option can I just say shout out having a pairing button like seriously I hate. Obviously it works. Fine, but I hate having to go dig up the manual for my freaking wireless headphones every time I want to connect them.
I have to have them in the case and you have to like press on one of them or something I can never remember. Like apple has made it clear, they will eliminate buttons whenever possible. Even they have a pairing button. So just include it.
Oh wow that active noise cancellation is not bad um hold on a second first. Let me just have a look at oh, oh there’s squeeze. It makes a little breathing noise. Oh that’s weird! Like someone breathing in your ear, noise uh! Hopefully that’s something you can configure nice clear indicators for the sides are nice to see too.
Look at that big red dot, big white dot, Big Red Dot, big white dot; actually, they wow those really stay in very comfortable for me, although some folks did complain that they didn’t have enough assortment of ear tip sizes, I’m finding the mediums perfect. For me, though, you can configure the controls for them, so single pinch is not configurable. That’S how you answer calls and all that, but you can long press you can double press and hold oo. You can configure that to some action on the right.
I’Ve got noise control and then on the left. I’Ve got Voice Assistant, which can apparently include chat. Gpt, that’s been preconfigured for me on the white one, so maybe we’ll try that in a minute – and this is a funny one headphones.com pointed out that turning Bas enhance off doesn’t seem to work for now, but turning it on and all the way to the lowest. Will serve to turn the base down a little bit compared to what is the default? Low leg mode will apparently enable by default when you’re in game mode and achieves about 100 milliseconds of latency.
It said 112 that sounds like a because it is, but realistically Bluetooth, 5.3 hasn’t got any magic bullet to solve audio latency once and for all. This is cool. Their ANC includes a fit test, so it can actually compensate if there’s louder noises or even if you don’t have as good of a seal and with the ears. If you pay the extra 50 bucks, they’ve got a personal EQ configurator that will kind of play test. Sounds and then try to create a curve that will match your hearing and actually Gary from the lab said that it worked quite well for him. They had to really chop out a lot of the high end he’s getting kind of up there in age. So he’s right here I wouldn’t say that about him except right to his face. Oh, but first we should probably listen to this message from our sponsor and it’s dbrand. All I’ve been told is that it’s something to do with nothing’s ear earphones. Imagine if they use the resources that they dedicate to pranking me for something constructive. Maybe they could build a clear phone case that doesn’t have problems? Oh my God. How many boxes do I need to open another box? Yo lonus? We heard you like unbox, so we put an unbox in your unbox, so you can unbox while you unbox, you know, I don’t think it says anywhere in my contract that I have to play along with these jerk offs.
Oh my God. This is truly riveting television. Packing peanut, we don’t make anything for this device go to short.com to see what they do, make H YouTube music. Here we go. Is this loged in his Jake? Can I mess with him? Well, he seems like probably a Coco melon Enthusiast.
I mean crazy frog for sure definitely Nicki, Minaj Leonard Cohen. You know what sure done be like who are you? Oh wait. Welcome, lius! Oh no, whose account am I in no all right? Well, I guess we’re we’re going to we’re going to be listening to some stuff.
Then wow Live From The Ed Sullivan Show. Do you remember this performance can’t hear a word you’re saying got thec on one moment. Please did you find at any point that it felt like there might be too much stereo Separation on these things? Good gravy, it sounds like half of the singers are way over there and half of them are over. There I mean most people wouldn’t complain about a wide, Sound Stage.
Let’S find something a little more modern, though just so I can have some idea what the clarity is like. I definitely see what you mean about the base. Heaviness though, it’s a lot, it’s kind of beatsy, decent Clarity, especially compared to some of the early beat stuff, but it’s a little much, I got to say even in the non andc mode.
These don’t have pass through. Do they that’s a big missing point cuz, even though I can kind of hear through them, they still isolate really well, and if I wanted to be able to have any situational awareness while I’m wearing my earphones, this would be a knock against them. Oh no.
I have transparency on right now I couldn’t even tell this is cool. They have adaptive noise cancellation, though so it can detect if you’re, in a really heavy environment like on an airplane or a lighter environment like a coffee shop, for example, and amp it up or down yeah that transparency man is uh. I’D want to be able to turn the base enhancement off entirely, but they sound really good. Obviously it’s been a couple of years and the industry’s made a lot of progress on on active noise cancellation, but that that pressure sound that you used to get with the older implementations. I get none of that on these. What’S the general consensus on the nothing ear headphones, hilarious, the nothing ear one headphones were released in July 2021.
They got a ton of attention for their unique design and features. That is what I’m talking about your own assistant on your own. Headphones has no idea what product I’m asking about, because your naming scheme makes no sense. Nothing.
Okay, they’re also super base heavy. This seems like even more maybe I haven’t adjusted the EQ yet base enhance, oh God, it’s already at level one yeah that doesn’t seem to do anything. Does it it’s a shame because, like her vocals sound great, if they weren’t being overpowered, if you weren’t Side by siding them, though honestly, I think you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the sound signature of these two headphones. So, unless you’re really into the wireless charging, the additional battery life, the better IP rating of the case and and the more comprehensive tuning controls, man, the ear A’s kind of looking killer, subscribe to Short Circuit.
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