I enjoyed unboxing the Nothing Ear (a), the presentation was OK. I did try them out during my workout that is a moment where I highly use my earbuds so I thought it was a perfect occasion.
I’ve always had a problem with earbuds that come with the adapters. I’m glad that I was able to find these quite comfortable. I also like the fact they gave me three different options, small, medium and large. allowing for the consumer to find the most comfortable insert. They are also lightweight so you really don’t feel like you’re wearing anything in your ears.
The charging case does look a little bit different from all the other charging cases this is probably what makes it look me and also it’s transparent plastic. The process press the button on the case open up the app on your phone and you’re ready to go.
Sound Quality
The sound quality to my surprise they actually sound really good and the fact that you’re able to adjust the equalizer on the app you can that sound to your liking which is something that I really enjoy doing. The bass was actually spot on for my liking and I was able to play some songs that happen heavy bass on them and at no point did they sound distorted, it was always clear. in combination with the bass, the highs sound pretty good, clear and crisp everything you could ask for in sound quality.
Battery Life
The Nothing Ear(a) has a long pattern life of up to 9 ½ hours but I think this is if you have the volume set at to possibly medium. Up to 42 ½ hours with the case. Now, if you have active noise cancellation on, you will drastically reduce the playback time on the earbuds to 5 ½ hours and with the case to 24 ½ hours. And for active noise cancellation while on a phone call if it is deactivated, you will get 23 ½ hours with the case and 5.2 hours of talk time. You prefer to have active noise cancellation on then you will cut back the usage time to 18 hours with the case and only four hours of talk time.
So my workout lasted about an hour and 45 minutes and throughout that time, I was monitoring the battery life on the earbuds. so the earbuds went from 100 to 90% within 40 minutes that’s a 10% decrease at 90% volume. At the end of my workout, I noticed that the earbuds had gone from 100 to 65% that is a 35% decrease within that timeframe. Please note that if you do have ANC activated, you will reduce the battery life so this is the reason why the earbuds went to 65% by the end of my workout because I did have this feature activated. So I now know that by using the earbuds at 90% volume, you will decrease the listening time drastically because it is indeed using much more power to pump out your favorite jams.
ANC
The active noise cancellation actually worked pretty good. I received a phone call and the other person was not able to hear all the noise that was going on around me but the one thing I didn’t notice is that the sound quality on the phone calls is not as great as when you’re listening to music so I think that this department is the sound quality for the phone calls was a bit more clear they would be spot on.
Voice Assistant
Although ChatGPT is integrated into the nothing app and can be accessed via the Nothing Ear (a) earbuds. I was unable to test this feature because you need a Nothing cell phone device.
Overall
They are a decent pair of earbuds, although they lack a bit on the phone call side, which is something I don’t do too often while wearing earbuds. Asked for the sound quality, it was an amazing experience. What I like about the earbuds and the case is that the earbuds are water resistant IP54 and the cases is IPX2.
