For a company that only released its first product – the Ear (1) – less than two years ago, Nothing has managed to make quite a name for it in a very short space of time. Of course, it helps having names like OnePlus’s Carl Pei attached to it, but its provocative approach to marketing, competitive pricing and unique designs have also helped it to stand out from the increasingly busy true wireless ANC headphones crowd.

Now it’s here with the successor to its first product, and the introduction of the Ear (2). It brings with it a number of improvements, including a level of personalisation that its predecessors were lacking. How do they hold up in testing, considering their very reasonable £129/$149 price tag? Here’s our review.

Design

• Case dimensions (HWD): 55.5 x 55.5 x 22mm
• Bud dimensions (HWD): 29.4 x 21.5 x 23.5mm
• Weight: 51.9g (case), 4.5g (per bud)

If you know anything about Nothing, you will already know the Ear (2) look a little different to other earbuds on the market – to some extent, at least.

They still borrow the stem design that is so popular among true wireless headphones, led by the AirPods Pro 2, with a choice of differently sized silicone earbuds to keep them comfortably in place. However, you won’t find a copycat white plastic finish here – Nothing’s transparent designs are its calling card, and that returns in the Ear (2).

That starts at the case, which is entirely transparent from the top so you can see your buds as they charge. A thumb-shaped dip in that case top helps give it some grip and tactility, while an exposed magnet and strong metallic hinge ensures the case has a reassuringly secure snap closure.

The case – which is palm-sized and square with rounded edges – is perhaps on the larger side compared with something like the case of the AirPods Pro 2 but it’s still perfectly pocket friendly and shouldn’t be a problem for anyone to accommodate.

It sits flat and the top opens upwards, so the buds look up at you – almost on display. This design makes it easy to get the buds in and out, and also to ensure they’re sitting in place as they should be. There’s even a handy coloured dot on each earbud – red for right and white for left – that matches up with a dot in the case, to help prevent the earbud scramble we’ve all done trying to work out which one goes in which spot.

To complement the transparent aesthetic, there’s a matte white section that runs diagonally through the middle of the case that the buds sit on top of, but that also covers the battery and the USB-C port connections.

This matches the white and transparent design of the headphones themselves – here the stems getting the transparency treatment, while the ear buds themselves are white. Look closely and you’ll see some of the internal circuitry, plus the external microphones and touch controls, alongside Nothing’s dot matrix logo and Ear (2) product name down the stem itself.

While its form factor may be familiar, the aesthetic is like nothing else you’ll see on the market, and we respect the extra attention to detail this requires. It’s a clean, striking design that we think most people will like, and we are very fond of indeed.

Even better new is that the design is lightweight at 4.5g per bud, and they sit comfortably in our ears for all-day wear without any irritation.

Features and battery life

• IP54 rating (buds) / IP55 rating (case)
• 6.3 hours playback with ANC off (36 hours total)
• 4 hours playback with ANC on (22.5 hours total)
• Qi wireless charging and reverse charging
• Dual connectivity

It feels like the features department is where the Ear (2) have really taken things up a gear on their predecessors, and while the Ear (1) were a little bare bones in this respect, the Ear (2) comes packed with options for making them your own.

But let’s start with the bog standard stuff – and perhaps one of the more disappointing points of the Ear (2), and that’s battery life. While overall battery life has been improved on last year, it’s only been boosted when you have ANC off, and only by 30 minutes per wear at that.

The four hours of playback with ANC on is the same as last year and is definitely on the low side when you think of the six hours offered by the AirPods Pro 2, or the eight hours offered by the Sony WF-1000XM4.

Of course, those options are considerably more expensive, but if you’re a power user, you’re likely to find these coming up a little short. We did notice we were needing to recharge these buds more than we can remember having to do with some of their competition in a working day.

The good news is there is fast charging on board, for up to eight hours of charge in 10 minutes, plus Qi wireless charging (up to 2.5W) and reverse charging compatibility. Physical charging is done via USB-C and a sturdy white woven cable comes in the box.

There are some other returning features from the Ear (1) too. First, there’s wear detection, which pauses your music when you remove an earbud and starts it again when it’s put back in. And there are also touch controls, which can play and skip music with a series of squeezes on the earbud stems, plus toggle between noise cancelling on or off with a long hold.

We found the touch controls to be very responsive, with no issues whatsoever in use, but the wear detection was a bit more hit and miss. While the music paused every time we removed a bud (and never by accident, when we hadn’t), having the music restart when it should was a little more hit and miss – we found we had to make our movements a little more exaggerated to ensure it knew the earbud was back in place.

All the touch controls are customisable within the Nothing X app, which is available for iOS and Android, or Nothing Phone (1) users will find these controls and functionality all built into the phone’s UI.

The app is where you’ll unlock a lot of the new, added functionality for these buds. For example, they now offer Dual Connection for connecting to two devices at the same time. That means if you’re listening to music on your laptop and your phone rings, the buds can alert you of that, allow you to switch to take the call and then resume your music immediately after. This worked seamlessly in our experience, and is a great addition to the Ear (2).

However, our favourite new feature is the ability to personalise your sound. Not only is there an equaliser with a handful of pre-tuned EQs – Balanced, More Bass, More Treble and Voice – and a customisable option, there is also the ability to create a personalised sound profile – which you use on top of these EQ presets.

This requires you to take a short sound test, where some background noise is played and you have to press and hold the screen when you hear a beeping sound rise above it, played at various frequencies. Once completed, it tweaks the sound and offers you a new EQ – your Hearing ID – that you can toggle on and off as you like, but also, that you can tweak further still.

That means you can adjust the intensity of the effect on a sliding scale from 0-100 per cent – we found somewhere between 60-70 per cent worked best for us – as well as the option to make the effect softer, richer or to stick with the recommended balance, which we chose to do.

We have used several of these sound personalisation features but often hear little change or opt to go back to the default. With the Ear (2), we kept it on and felt it genuinely improved the sound to our ears, and would definitely recommend trying it out.

Other improvements include improved noise cancellation, promising up to 40dB of noise reduction this time round. There’s also the ability to use the Adaptive Mode for automatic ANC level setting depending on your environment, or get personalised active noise cancellation based on the shape of your ear canal.

The Ear (2) aren’t going to offer you the eery silence of Bose’s QuietComfort Earbuds II or Sony’s WF-1000XM4, but they still do a good job at killing off the annoying, fatiguing lower frequency rumbles – like traffic noise or the hum of an office. Voices will cut through, particularly if they’re close by, but when your music is playing, you’ll do well to hear them – let alone have them bother you.

At this price point, we can’t think of ANC headphones that offer better, and we think there will be very few grumbles with how the Ear (2) perform here.

Finally, Nothing is promising the Ear (2) will offer better call quality too, thanks to its Clear Voice Technology. Now with three high-definition microphones on each earbud and an AI noise reduction algorithm, it claims to push the user’s voice forward in calls, and cancel out the background noise.

Certainly, all calls made with the earbuds were taken without complaint from our recipients – even when in busy environments they reported our voice was loud and clear, and very much sitting above the background noise.

Performance

• 11.6mm driver
• New custom diaphragm
• New dual chamber design
• LHDC 5.0 support

The Ear (2) bring some internal improvements when it comes to sound quality. The 11.6mm driver is the same one as was in the Ear (1) but Nothing has added a new custom diaphragm, made from a combination of polyurethane and graphene. The softness of the PU balanced with the rigidity of the graphene delivers benefits at both end of the spectrum, while the new dual chamber designs offers greater airflow for a cleaner sound.

Not only that, but Nothing has listened to feedback from the performance of the Ear (1) and early feedback on the Ear (2) and tweaked the sound profile in response. There’s also newly added Hi-Res Audio certification thanks to LHDC 5.0 support – a new-ish codec that works with some Android devices – the Nothing Phone (1) being one of them – to stream high-res music up to 24-bit/192kHz.

Getting down to listening and it’s clear from first listen just how much fun these headphones are. Considering their price point, they are incredibly dynamic and handle complicated rhythms with a confidence that you might not expect.

They don’t hold back on a playthrough of Sugah Daddy by D’Angelo, for example, and can easily pick out the textures and personalities in the various different instruments – from the pianos, to horns, to hand claps. While you can easily focus in on each one of these elements, if you wish, nothing sticks out or sounds disconnected – it’s a very cohesive performance.

Stereo separation is good and there’s decent headroom too, so horns can cut through the mix and make the impactful entrance that was intended. Their dynamic wherewithal means there’s a real handling of light and shade here, which isn’t always expected at this price.

You might get a touch more subtle insight from pricier headphones, like Sony’s WF-1000XM4, but we don’t find it lacking at this level. There’s still plenty of detail here, and even things like piano notes – which can sound flat and simple in some headphones – have more about them than we’re used to hearing at this level.

Try something like Cranes in the Sky by Solange and the Ear (2) vocals are delivered with a sweetness and a whole heap of clarity. Chaise Longue by Wet Leg demonstrates more of the same on a busier track, with the Ear (2) picking up tempo and dropping back without missing a beat. Timing is on point, and the drums punch through the melody with toe tapping accuracy.

There’s depth to the low-end here too. It’s not overpowering at all, but there’s more than enough of it when it’s needed. Billie Eilish’s bad guy is always a great test of this, and the Ear (2) walk the perfect line of delivering the weight and the rumble the track demands, without inflicting that influence any further up the frequency range. The clarity throughout the midrange is always maintained, which helps to make these such a thoroughly engaging pair of headphones.

Some may find the treble a touch spicy for their tastes, though. It has been refined from before, but it definitely sits on the side of exciting and forward – and can occasionally catch your ear at volume. If you prefer more laid back headphones, these probably aren’t for you – and something like Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 will offer a warmer performance better suited to your tastes.

We actually managed to take some of that edge off the treble – without killing the excitement – by activating our personal sound profile on the Balanced preset EQ. This also teased out a slightly more forward midrange too, and while we think the default sound setting is accomplished in its own right, we’d recommend trying out the personalisation for yourself.

Verdict

The Nothing Ear (2) are the first second-gen product from the company, and show just how open the company is to feedback and improvement. They fill in a lot of the gaps that the Ear (1) left from a features perspective, while also building on sound quality and noise cancellation too.

The battery life is really the only sticking point for us here. If we could get a couple more hours from these on a single charge, that would really make them the full package.

That said, for £129/$149 there is no doubt that these are a fantastic pair of headphones that may leave people wondering if they really need to spend any more.