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

Nothing has had a beardown ocular personality since the Ear 1 were released successful 2021 for $99 and challenged the conception that a highly featured headset requires a precocious price. The Ear 3A person the aforesaid transparent look arsenic Nothing’s erstwhile earbuds, pinch a clear lawsuit and stem creation accented by a solid-colored assemblage — this clip adding a striking pinkish alongside yellow, black, and achromatic options. And Nothing continues to amended some ANC and audio performance. But the Ear 3A besides stock the buggy capacity that has plagued Nothing earbuds. While $99 is an charismatic value for them, beryllium fresh to woody pinch immoderate insignificant adaptive ANC and telephone value issues.

The Ear 3A person 12mm move drivers and support the high-res LDAC codec, on pinch SBC and AAC. Their default sound is very dense connected the bass, and while it gives bass lines other punch, the midrange — which includes vocals and guitars — gets covered by the excessive debased end. Bassheads mightiness bask it, but it’s acold excessively overmuch for my taste, and I expect that will beryllium the aforesaid for astir people. Where I mightiness ding immoderate points for this connected different earbuds, the Nothing 3A prevention themselves from that because of the robust EQ successful the app. There’s a elemental interface pinch 4 presets and a civilization 3-band EQ, a bully 8-band parametric EQ that gives you much precocious adjustments, and immoderate further EQ profiles from users curated by Nothing.

In little than a infinitesimal I was capable to set the EQ to thing acold much balanced to my receptor (I added a downward slope to the bass beneath 115Hz, mid boost betwixt 220–540Hz, different flimsy trim to the shouty frequencies betwixt 2–3.5kHz, and immoderate other highs supra 6.6kHz for a much unfastened sound). It gave Chris Robinson’s sound much beingness connected “Thorn successful My Pride” and his relative Rich and Marc Ford’s guitars bully crunch and wound arsenic the opus builds done the solo. And moreover pinch the trim to the debased end, Johnny Colt’s bass supports the set throughout.

ANC capacity is improved complete erstwhile Nothing earbuds, pinch coagulated cancellation peculiarly successful the little mids and bass range, truthful debased drones for illustration aerial conditioners aliases level compartment sound get filtered retired very well. For $99, they besides do a decent occupation pinch higher frequencies, but if you scheme to usage them consistently successful a java shop you’ll still perceive orders being called retired a bit. And if the precocious ANC mounting is excessively overmuch for you, location are mid and debased settings that fto successful a spot much of the debased extremity to crushed you successful reality.

There’s besides an adaptive ANC setting, but here’s wherever immoderate of the insignificant issues I encountered started. While retired connected walks astir the neighborhood, occasionally (maybe 2 aliases 3 times during an hr walk) the ANC strength would quickly set to fto successful overmuch much ambient sound and past move backmost to its erstwhile level. The full acquisition lasted possibly 2 seconds each clip and was disorienting. I tried to return statement of what mightiness person triggered it, but couldn’t find a accordant business that would origin it to happen. In general, whenever the adaptive ANC makes a alteration to the intensity, it’s abrupt alternatively of the much gradual alteration that my Apple AirPods Pro 3 aliases Sony WF-1000XM6 do — for hundreds of dollars more.

The 1 rumor I was capable to fig out, besides astir measurement attenuation, was pinch my telephone quality. While talking to a friend I regularly telephone erstwhile testing earbuds, if I was conscionable listening to him, he couldn’t perceive thing from my broadside astatine all. No traffic, nary wind, nary breathing, nothing. At 1 constituent he wondered aloud if the telephone had disconnected.

When I was talking, I sounded clear and earthy to him if I started talking erstwhile location wasn’t a batch of ambient sound astir me. When the sound astir maine sewage louder — specified arsenic much cars driving by — a spot of that sound leaked through, though my sound still sounded natural. But if I started talking while location was a batch of sound astir me, my sound sounded acheronian arsenic the earbuds powerfully filtered retired upper-mid and precocious frequencies, including doing a awesome occupation tamping down the large ambient sound.

Both the ANC and telephone value issues could beryllium addressed pinch early firmware updates (my testing was pinch firmware 1.0.1.59), and if you usage 1 of the fixed ANC settings alternatively of adaptive ANC, aliases don’t scheme connected making calls successful noisy areas, past they’re a nonissue anyway.

The Nothing Ear 3A besides see 32MB of on-device storage, allowing them to grounds up to 2 hours of a telephone aliases return an audio snapshot (Nothing’s term) of up to 1 minute. When you past entree the app, you tin transportation the recordings onto your device. When opening a telephone recording, a connection plays to notify everyone. I tin easy spot the usage of signaling an important telephone to make judge you don’t miss immoderate accusation (although this tin besides easy beryllium done done your phone), but I person yet to find a logic for the audio snapshot. It only records up to a infinitesimal of what you’re listening to, not thing astir you utilizing the earbuds’ microphones, astatine little fidelity. It’s unsocial to the Nothing 3A, but besides gimmicky.

I’m gladsome the Nothing Ear 3A returned to a value nether $100 aft the $179 Ear 3. Nothing is astatine its champion erstwhile it’s challenging what tin beryllium done for little — and I’m much forgiving of its insignificant flaws. While the sound wasn’t my sensation retired of the box, the truth you tin make meaningful adjustments and tune it to your preferences makes them much versatile than astir earbuds astatine the aforesaid price.

Photography by John Higgins / The Verge