Innovative design; great ANC; good fit; impressive sound for the price

Case too big; not for audiophiles

Over the past few months, we have tested almost 20 pairs of true wireless headphoness from brands including Huawei, Soundcore, Final, Marshall, Grado, Jabra, Cyrus, Master & Dynamic and Sony, but at the end of testing we invariably revert to our trusty AirPods Pro.

Why? Well, they simply get the most things right. The fit is second to none, the sound quality (although not as good as Sony) is superb, Active Noise Cancelling (ANC) is effective, call quality solid, the case is pocket friendly, and they always work. There’s never a need to re-pair with your phones, and drop-outs are virtually non-existent. It’s boring to say, but Apple make the best all-rounder. 

But who’s this little guy coming into frame, swinging a slingshot? It’s Nothing, Carl Pei’s London-based consumer tech brand (backed by heavyweights including the ipods-inventing Tony Fadell and Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch), and they’re brandishing a pair of Ear 1s, the much-hyped true wireless earbuds designed to take on Apple at a fraction of the cost.

But can a pair of £99 earbuds really challenge the £250 Apple Airpods Pro? We put them head-to-head to find out.

Such has been the success of the AirPods Pro that the design now teeters on the edge of ubiquity. Admittedly this is as much the fault of third-party, knock-off-toting audio brands and copycats as Apple themselves, but stumpy white earbuds are everywhere. 

That doesn’t stop the Airpods Pro being an exquisite example of electrical and audio engineering. Sleek, perfectly balanced, and good-looking enough to be just the right side of show-off. 

With its transparent square box, exposed hinges, power points and magnets the Ear 1 positively scream ‘different’. There’s industrial style dot-matrix writing, transparent wings, silver microphoness and visible circuit boards on the earbuds. There’s also a big red dot on the right earbud to avoid any placing confusion. The Ear 1 stand out and grab your attention, which is not surprising when you consider how much work Teenage Engineering put into the overall design.

The aesthetic works. It’s fresh, new and different, but place them side-by-side next to a pair of Airpods Pro and you’ll see why. Aside from the transparent arms, they’re virtually identical. OK, so some angles are tighter and lines straighter, but if they were all white, they’d be just another Apple clone. 

We’re glad they’re not, because in a market drowning in similarity, different is good, even if it is the aesthetic equivalent of switching fonts from Arial to Calibri.

The size and shape of the Apple Airpods Pro case is possibly 40 per cent the reason why we love them so much. Sure, the hinge is a little floppy at times, but no other case slips so easily into a pocket. It really doesn’t take much to make us happy. Battery life is an acceptable, but not a class-leading 4.5 hours, and the case offers 24 hours of listening which is plenty.

The Ear 1 case has been sat on our desk for a week, partly because it’s a cracking bit of industrial engineering and we like looking at it, but mainly because it’s a bit big for your pocket. It’s not massive, and not the worst we’ve used, but the square shape and tighter edges are just not as ergonomic.

The earbud battery is 31mAh and offers up to 5.7 hours life (34 hours with the 570mAh case), although that is with ANC off. Want some quiet and you’ll get 4 hours (max 24 hours with case), much like Apple.

Both offer wireless and fast charging and the bonus of effortless connectivity. Apple’s powerful M1 chip and legendary ability to play nice with its own kind makes connecting Airpods Pro to an iphoness a dream. This is the reason why so few people only have one Apple product.

Admittedly, the Ear 1 can’t match Apple for instant pairing, but they come close, and we were thoroughly impressed by how quickly and reliably they connected via Bluetooth. We’ve been using them for almost a week and have yet to re-pair them, which is rarely the case with true wireless designs (apart from Apple).

Weighing in at 5.4g each, Apple Airpods Pros are the most comfortable earbuds we’ve found. They manage to feel barely there, yet secure, even when exercising. They’re not the perfect sport headphones, but work well for all but the sweatiest among us.

At 4.7g, Nothing’s Ear 1 are just as comfortable, and when wearing one AirPod and one Ear 1 bud at the same time there was no discernible difference. Maybe the medium earbuds on the Ear 1 are marginally tighter, but that could just be newness. This is seriously impressive, and while we’re not suggesting our ears are identical to yours, given AirPods Pro already fit 90 million people, chances are Ear 1 will fit you. Plus, with IPX4 rating (the same as the Pros) they’re sweat proof, and therefore ideal for the gym.

Here’s where things get interesting. We’ve tried plenty of cheap ANC-packing, big-battery-boasting, true-wireless designs, but, overall, they sound average at best – and it’s clear where the money has, or hasn’t, been spent. But with the Ear 1 you would not believe there was a £150 difference in price from the AirpPods Pro. 

The Pros sound great, but you knew that already. The adaptive EQ automatically tunes the low- and mid-frequencies to the shape of your ear, while the audio is driven by a high dynamic range amp and high-excursion, low-distortion speaker driver that delivers bass down to a claimed 20Hz. The soundstage is wide, there’s bags of detail, instrumentation is precise, basslines have punch, and the ANC doesn’t cloud the performance. The Pros are a class act.

Given the price point they had to hit, Nothing has done a remarkable job with the audio quality on the Ear 1. They are not as good as Apple’s AirPods Pro, but nevertheless the audio boffins at Teenage Engineering have worked wonders tuning the 11.6mm dynamic drivers. They do not sound cheap, they sound assured, and combined with eerily quiet noise cancelling (more on that below) offer a hugely enjoyable listen. 

But there is a slight softness to the overall feel – possibly because of the ANC – and at times the crisp thwack of a bass guitar string feels muted, but it’s certainly not offensive. 

Switching between the two earphoness on a few test tracks – specifically Feathered Indians (Tyler Childers), Ch-Check It Out (Beastie Boys) and The Last Time I Saw Richard (Joni Mitchell) – and Apple edges it with a more rounded, all-encompassing sound and feel. But, to reiterate, the Pros are £150 more expensive.

The ANC on the AirPods Pro is great, not Sony great (nothing is), but given the size, weight and sound quality, the fact that background noise simply vanishes as the software adapts the sound 200 times per second is a triumph, and all with no hint of hiss or whine. 

The transparency mode, now obligatory with noise-cancelling headphoness, also works well, but you can’t adjust the levels.

ANC chips are now super cheap, and the technology is no longer a novelty, it’s an essential sanity saver for anyone travelling or working in anything but silence. Nothing has made the absolute most of the tech available and uses three high-definition mics (same as Apple) but offers three levels of cancellation – Light, Maximum and Transparency.

A press-hold on the earbud stem toggles between them, and in Max mode we couldn’t hear the blades of a desk fan positioned 30cm away from our face, yet in Transparency it sounded like we were in a Chinook helicopter. Light mode was fine if you want just a bit of peace, but Maximum worked so well colleagues were forced to throw things to attract our attention.

There’s also an Ear 1 app on the way offering Find My Earbud, EQ, ANC and Gesture Control customisation, but we were unable to test these features.

Ear 1 uses something called Clear Voice Technology. This turns out to be three high-definition microphoness and an algorithm that analyses the audio input, cross-referencing more than a million voice and sound combinations, and winds (up to 40 km/h) to make your calls clearer. 

In our call tests, connections remained rock solid whether we were using one or both earbuds, inside and out. It’s the least exciting aspect of headphones tech, but like the AirPods Pro, they’re reliable in all but the worst conditions.

Ordinarily, it would be unfair to go head-to-head with two products of such wildly different prices, but after it emerged that Nothing designed the Ear 1 specifically to beat Apple’s Airpods Pros, the gloves had to come off.

You can find AirPods Pros for around £199 – down from £249 in the Apple store – but that is still twice the price of the Ear 1. And yet Nothing’s first audio product weighs less, has a bigger battery, better Bluetooth (5.2) and looks the business. We’ll even go as far as to say that the design manages to make the AirPods Pro look dated.

As a result, the Nothing Ear 1 are – by far – the best value true wireless earbud currently available. They sound great, look awesome and work flawlessly. Noise cancellation is superb, and the fit secure. The Pros sound better though. £100 better? Maybe, but in truth, if audio fidelity is your main purchasing driver, we suggest you look elsewhere entirely.

The more we look at it, the more we appreciate the design of the transparent battery case. It’s clever, innovative and is arguably pushing the consumer tech industry forward. But that doesn’t stop it being just too big.

That said, if you’re after a pair of refreshingly different, but instantly recognisable headphoness that work consistently well, sound great, have excellent noise cancellation, good call quality and excellent fit, it’s clear that you no longer need to spend more than £99.

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This article was originally published by WIRED UK