Outside its lineup of uniquely-designed Android smartphones, London, England-based Nothing has also been busy foraying into the world of wireless audio products. The company’s Headphone 1 continues to stand out with its see-through aesthetic and its tactile physical controls, while its Ear Open remains a comfortable open-ear set of earbuds without much added audio leakage.

Nothing also offers the Ear 3, which can be best described as a one-to-one AirPods competitor. Sitting at $180 USD / $265 CAD, these buds are comparable in price to Apple’s AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation (ANC), while also offering AirPods Pro-like ear tips, a compelling exterior design, and a novel ‘talk button’ within their charging case.

I’ve been using the Nothing Ear 3 since its launch in September of last year, and, over the course of several months, I’ve come to love a lot of what the product brings to the table. Here are my thoughts on the Ear 3, as well as how it stacks up to its competitors in the true wireless earbuds scene.

4/5

The Nothing Ear 3 is a pair of true wireless earbuds that features a fashion-forward physical design, active noise cancellation, support for the LDAC codec, and a unique ‘talk’ button.

Pros & Cons

• Eye-catching design
• Useful ‘talk’ button
• Excellent companion app

• Middle-of-the-road ANC
• Bass-heavy default EQ
• Included cable is too short

A pair of fashion-forward earbuds

The Nothing Ear 3 is dripping in style

With the Ear 3, Nothing has refined what has quickly become an iconic brand aesthetic. The see-through elements across both the earbuds and the charging case add a pop of personality to the product, with both the white and black colorways embracing this retro-style translucency.

I appreciate that the right earbud features a red dot, which acts as both an accent piece and as an indicator of which ear it pairs with. The buds lie sideways within the charging case, which looks visually pleasing, but also makes it more difficult to plop back in for charging through muscle memory alone.

Speaking of the charging case, it’s made primarily of aluminum, including the hinge section. The metal feels premium to the touch, though I do find the case less satisfying to snap shut than, say, the OnePlus Buds 4. I also find the clear plastic top panel of the case scratches easily, and so I’d have much preferred tempered glass here (even if it’d make the unit heavier and more delicate).

On the whole, in terms of adopting the stem-style bud design pioneered by Apple AirPods and melding it together with the Nothing design language, the Ear 3 is a slam dunk on just about every front that counts. Plus, it’s fairly robust against the elements with official IP54 water and dust resistance across both the case and the earbuds themselves, so there’s little worry when using them for workouts or when out in the rain.

Comfort wise, I had no issues with the Ear 3, and I stuck with the pre-attached medium-sized ear tips during my testing period. Each earbud is lightweight enough that I forgot it was in my ear after just a few minutes, though your mileage will of course vary. Thankfully, Nothing includes extra small, small, and large ear tips in the box for added flexibility, though it’s worth noting that there’s no extra large option available.

Solid audio performance for the price

Noise cancellation, hi-res LDAC audio, and more

Under the hood, the Nothing Ear 3 features 12mm dynamic drivers. The buds support 24-bit hi-res LDAC audio (LDAC being an advanced Bluetooth audio codec that facilitates enhanced audio fidelity), AAC and SBC codecs, 45 dB active noise cancellation (ANC), Bluetooth 5.4, a dedicated low lag mode for reduced audio latency, and a pinch sensor for controlling playback and the like.

In practice, audio quality is solid and generally in-line with my expectations. The sound stage is reasonably broad, there’s solid separation, the bass is nice and ‘thumpy’ (if a little overemphasized by default), and distortion is kept to a minimum at higher volume levels. Highs, mids, and lows are all quite detailed, too. Both ANC and transparency modes get the job done without a problem, but neither are nearly as impressive as what Apple offers in its latest-generation AirPods lineup.

Each individual bud includes a 55mAh power pack, while the charging case comes with a 500mAh capacity battery. Top-ups can be done either via the (admitted too short) included USB-C to USB-C cable or through Qi wireless, but sadly there’s no ring of magnets for optimally-lined-up inductive efficiency.

Nothing quotes anywhere from 10 hours of playback in AAC mode with ANC off, to 3.5 hours in LDAC mode with ANC on. A 5-minute charge will net you up to 1 hour of ANC-off playback, and 10 minutes of charging will net you 10 hours of ANC-off playback when including the charging case. In my experience, these estimates are fairly accurate across the board, with ANC and LDAC both lowering battery life to a demonstrable degree when switched on.

Setting up the Ear 3 was a smooth experience thanks to the Nothing X app, which handles connectivity through Bluetooth automatically. There’s support for both Google Fast Pair and Microsoft Swift Pair here for effortless pairing, and dual-device connectivity makes it easy to switch audio sources on the fly.

Within Nothing X, you can control ANC and transparency modes (there’s an automatic adjustment option that I find works well), adjust the equalizer, and map actions to presses and long-presses of each earbud stem. Everything within the app is logically laid out, and it follows Nothing’s modern design language to a T, which is very nice to see.

Nothing X also lets you adjust how the Ear 3’s Super Mic feature works. Super Mic is Nothing’s marketing term for the dual-microphone system embedded within the product’s charging case, which can cancel out ambient noise through a unique filtering process.

These dual microphones work in tandem with a dedicated ‘talk’ button on the case, which can be held down to switch away from the mics built into the buds themselves. The button can also be long-pressed to lock mic access for longer recording sessions. When pressed, a green LED lights up to indicate current microphone access.

In the real world, Super Mic is a fun addition that I’m actually quite fond of. The dual microphone array is far more capable than the buds’ onboard mic, and I like that the setup here encourages you to hold the case up to your mouth as though it were a dedicated microphone unit.

I recorded some audio across both onboard mics, and the Super Mic was, unsurprisingly, cleaner, crisper, and less tinny than that of the buds. Within Nothing X, you can also enable a Walkie-Talkie Mode, which mutes audio except for when holding down ‘talk’ — a useful option for when having an important phone conversation in a loud environment.

Refreshingly unique in an AirPods-dominated world

While not perfect, the Ear 3 is a compelling product

Overall, I’m a big fan of the Nothing Ear 3. I simply can’t get enough of the look and feel of the product, with its evocation of 90’s-era translucent technology. While I sometimes struggle to effortlessly place each bud back into its case position, the style and presentation alone are worth the sacrifice.

The Ear 3 sounds reasonably solid from an acoustic standpoint, too, even if its ANC mode isn’t as high-tech as that of Apple’s, Sony’s, or Bose’s. The sound stage is fairly wide with solid instrument separation, and the 12mm drivers are clearly putting in the leg work when it comes to highs, mids, and lows.

Nothing’s ‘talk’ button is a clever inclusion that I’ve been making use of since day one, with those dual charging case microphones providing significantly better audio capture than would otherwise be possible via the buds alone. Of course, whether the feature is useful to you will depend on how often you take phone calls or record audio while out and about.

Lastly, I’m a big fan of the Nothing X application, both from a user interface and a functionality perspective. The app is clean and aesthetically pleasing, and it provides a ton of granular control over EQ balance, button and gesture controls, firmware updates, and more.

At $180 USD / $265 CAD, it’s hard not to recommend the Nothing Ear 3, though audiophiles and Apple ecosystem inhabitants are likely to prefer AirPods 4 with ANC for reasons of noise cancellation quality and device interoperability, respectively.

While I do wish the Ear 3 charging case used tempered glass rather than plastic, and that the product supplemented its wireless charging experience with an array of magnets, these gripes have hardly stopped me from enjoying the buds’ many merits on a near daily basis.

This device was provided to Pocket-lint by Nothing.

4/5

The Nothing Ear 3 is a pair of true wireless earbuds that features a fashion-forward physical design, active noise cancellation, support for the LDAC codec, and a unique ‘talk’ button.