Nothing Ear (2) – Wireless ANC (Active Noise Cancelling
Nothing Ear (2) – Wireless ANC (Active Noise Cancelling) Headphones, Hi-Res audio certified, Dual Connection, Powerful 11.6 mm custom driver – White
From the brand
Nothing Products
| Dimensions: | 5.88 x 5.88 x 2.37 cm; 90 Grams |
| Model: | ear 2 |
| Batteries Included: | 3 Lithium Ion batteries required. (included) |
| Manufacture: | Nothing Technology Limited |
| Dimensions: | 5.88 x 5.88 x 2.37 cm; 90 Grams |
| Origin: | China |
The sound cancellation isn’t amazing for music but they are great for Teams call and phone calls which is exactly what I wanted them for. The sound from them is still pretty darn good.
Really great EarPods from Nothing.
Slightly more base than AirPod pro 2 and overall better sound.
I purchased for call quality and find these to be much better.
Build quality and design is outstanding, fit and feel also great.
An excellent alternative to Apple.
I bought this headset on the recommendation of my friend and I am very happy with it. I bought the same headphones for my wife a while after I bought them for myself and she loves them too. I use them with my iPhone and they perform very well. It is very useful to have different noise canceling modes and I can change them according to where I am. I had a hard time getting used to the controls on the first day, but now I am very satisfied.
I highly recommend it. It gives you the best value for money. You can’t get a better headset at this price.
Things I wanted:
– easy volume control along with ANC voice assistant and track control. Tap controls are to finicky. (These best by far)
– okay noise cancelling (Sony best)
– auto off when removed (all)
– find buds (all)
– water resistant (buds2 pro best)
– decent case (I like this one best)
– good sound (pretty even, but these sound best out of the box)
– decent fit (these best in my wonky eared opinion – Sony worst)
Others have nice features, but not worth double the price. I also tried buying referbished, but they all had faults and earwax in the buds… urgh…
I also like that this is a London company, but I don’t like the 1 year warranty.
I will re-review in a few months.
I’ve not been disappointed thus far, they work seamlessly with the phone 2 and most importantly, they sound good.
EQ via the app gives you decent enough control over the sound and produces nice crisp highs and large amounts of bass, I like a lot of electronic music and they have a decent amount of punch to compliment bass heavy kick drums.
I’m not a purest in any sense, I do own a 300+ pair of over ears which are clearly a lot better in every way, but for portability and punch, these are great.
ANC is ok, not a patch on the over ears, but for 100, not bad at all, I’ve sat in a busy restaurant with screaming kids and they do enough to drown out that audible misery.
Charge wise, I think 3 hours with ANC active is typical, I don’t tend to use them for long periods of time, but I guess if you’re on a long haul or a lengthy train ride and you value silence, you’d invest in proper over ear units anyway.
Overall, as a newbie to this brand, I’m very impressed (with the phone also!)
I highly recommend these for enhancing your music experience. The app allows you to customize your sound profile through various settings. While I appreciate the convenience of switching between devices with my Airpods Pro 2, these earbuds also provide dual connection capabilities. There’s really nothing to fault with these.
Fit well to my ears and the automatic noise cancellation is the best. I can’t even hear my wife when nagging.
Sounds great. The bass and balance are perfect.
Did you hear the noise on the video? With the Noise Cancellation on this Nothing Earbuds 2 you will enjoy your music even its very noisy around your environment.
I watched the YouTube reviews that recommended this product, it’s allot better than the first iteration I have heard, however I wasn’t too impressed. Before using these headphones I used apple beats but they seemed to break after 3 years use spontaneously. So I decided to take a different route for my second set of wireless headphones. The headphones are not bad per se, the sound quality is good, but I now prefer just to used wired senheiser pro music headphones over these because there are not many advantages in features over the wired. The sound equaliser settings didn’t sound any different for me and the AI sound enhancements made the headphone sound like they were underwater. For these reasons I ended up concluding that I would stick to the apple EarPods or wired in the future.
I was a bit fussy when it came to EarPods anyway but I didn’t find these earphones much of an improvement.
I just bought these ear 2 not expecting them to be as good as airpods and oh i tell you know they are BETTER!! The ANC is just amazing and you can really sense the silence! They are comfortable for a fee hours but can strain the ear in extreme long periods.
The sound quality is just amazing for a 2nd gen earbuds from a company that not got the backing of massive investors
I have the Nothing Phone (1), its the best ever , I had the ear Stick…thought they were okay so I bought the Ear 2….Fantastic. the app that gives you a hearing test is great an the bass is superb. For the money these are amazing .
First thing i noticed about the ear 2 is how comfortable they are. Unlike my airpods pro’s, these actually stay in my ear and don’t fall out after 10 mins of wearing them. They’re much more comfortable than I expected them to be that i’m actually using them more than my airpods.
Sound quality is right up there too, if you’re like me and prefer your headphones to sound more bassy, the ear 2’s won’t disappoint you one bit. The Nothing X app has an equaliser with a bass boost option and it really works wonders. Definitely recommend these for EDM or hip hop listeners.
Overall I think they’re excellent value for money really happy with them.
Sound quality is good call quality is decent too, one of the features multiple device pairing is not worth it randomly just cuts out and you have to reset them to hear music again, hopefully something an update will fix one day, battery life is okay not great but so far I’m happy with them
Didn’t think these would fit my ears as they are small. Gave it a go and love them. I now use them more than my bose quietcomfort ii headphones. The noise cancelling doesn’t give me a headache too which my headphones do
small package, great value and sound. easy to use controls and they last surprisingly long even using noise cancelation for 80% f the use time. great brand and looking forward to more products
Update after some use.
The double press to skip does not work. Sound is still great but half of the features don’t work all of the time. Asked the missus to try them out too and she had the same issues.. in current working order I’d be happier paying 70quid for these.
Due to an ear condition I can’t use in-ear canal earphones and AirPods aren’t ideal for an Android phone. I have the Nothing Phone (1) and this pairs perfectly with them. Their ‘open’ design does have some inherent limitations: The sound quality is pretty good, though of course not incredible; and while it can do ‘noise suppression’ as of a recent firmware update installed via the Nothing X app, it isn’t full Active Noise Cancellation like on the Nothing Ear (2). But the design is sleek, especially the case with its swivel. It pairs nicely with my phone which lets me easily see the battery levels of left, right, and case itself. It charges quickly. Battery life is pretty good. Most importantly for me at least: they’re really comfortable and don’t cause irritation for my ears. I can’t really complain given the price.
Was looking forward to getting these once they released. After using them for a month I can say that they are 100% worth the price tag.
Premium earbuds at a decent price. Noise cancelling is really good. Maybe not as good as the airpods pro but that’s a different price point.
The transparency mode is brilliant.
These buds are very comfortable and after hours of use they don’t become uncomfortable.
The design is next level! No other earbuds except the 1st gen even compare to how these look. The earbuds design is amazing!
They have a great design and good sound. The downside for me is that they don’t fit in the coin pocket of jeans like most other buds. also no wireless charging
Yes, it is true that these have an over pronounced high end, but once you’ve used them a while, you don’t notice it and it provides a nice level of clarity.
They also look funky, yada yada yada.
Now, though they sound nice (with some tweaking in the app and/or an external equaliser such as wavelet), there are some vital issues worthy of note.
The fit is fine, and they’ve never fallen out, but the have an oval shaped attachment for the tips, not circular. This CAN have a minor effect on the fit in the ear. Or at least, that’s what I assume is reducing the natural sound isolation.
The noise cancelling is fine, but I do have cheaper buds (Soundcore Life P3) which do a slightly better job.
But the two most important things I want to mention are the battery life and connection.
The battery life with noise cancelling is shocking. I get an audio warning before I even get to work on my commute. That’s less than 80 mins listening time with noise cancelling active. Having it set to high or adaptive makes little difference for me. It SHOULD be better than this. I use noise cancelling for sensitivity reasons. I will not be able to use these on their own for a shopping trip out.
The second thing I need to mention is the connection quality. EVERY time I connect them to my phone, I HAVE to access the developer settings on my phone and change the connection quality (for LDHC) to 400kbps. If I don’t, the connection wavers and drops it to less than 100kbps, and it sounds AWFUL! They can run higher than 400kbps without issue, if I’m not moving. The changing of distance while the phone is in my pocket causes frequent audio drops that get irritating quite quickly.
Despite the issues, I do currently use them daily for my commute, as they sound lovely and it’s worth the general quality. But they cannot be a favourite with the current issues in place. 4 stars is generous, but I felt 3 is too low.
other than the build quality of the case, think the products really great, I like the unique design, stems feel wel built, sound quality’s great for the price, very happy with everything. Excerpt for the case, it’s really letting down the product and making me not feel fully satisfied with my purchase, which is disappointing. I haven’t looked into whether other people have the same issue or whether I’ve just got a faulty product but the lid of the case is very fragile and moves about a mm from side to side with very little pressure, making a squeaking sound. The polymer scratches really easily and generally just feels very cheap in your hand compared to something like an AirPods case for example.
For the price, these are decent headphones. The noise cancellation definitely isnt the best, but I’ve used on several flights and it does a decent job of getting rid of constant background noise like aircon.
Build wise, they’re OK. The case feels a bit delicate but the headphones themselves seem good.
Audio is generally decent. I’m no audiophile and for me they seem perfectly fine.
The touch functions can be a bit temperamental, but features such as auto turning off when removing them from your ears.
Overall, I think these are decent at the price point and good for an audience looking for decent but not mind-blowing performance
1) For wireless buds, these sound really quite good, and don’t seem so suffer the fate of bluetooth compression as much as buds like the Galaxy Buds do.
2) They look awesome, and so does the case
3) Battery is pretty good and I am yet to go flat during the day.
4) Fairly comfortable to wear, but I do wish they had a smaller set of tips for the buds.
But. Theres a few… issues with them. Ranging from annoying to serious flaws that can leave me put off using them.
1) The noise cancellation is nortorious for turning its self off.
2) The touch controls are god awful and way too sensitive, even just adjusting the fitting can make them pause your music, skip songs or turn noise canelling off (bring back buttons.) It gets so annoying that it often leaves me just putting them away and not bothering with them.
3) The buds often just pause my music for no reason or cut out for a few second, desipite me not touching them. However this happens rare enough for me to just.. deal with it. Its not common at all.
So.. overall. Sound great, fit great, look geeat, battery is great and the noise cancelling when it works is pretty great. But the little technical issues can make them a bit of a pain to use at times. So… I do recommend them but, only if your temper isn’t short when it comes to the touch controls and bugs.
As soon as they arrived on my doorstep, I was impressed by the packaging. The box and the overall brand is plastered with a very unique visual style, very clean and minimal, something you’d expect from a much more established brand. Clearly a lot of work has gone into this brand identity.
The unboxing experience was very pleasant, everything was packaged very cleanly, with minimal text or unnecessary extras. The box contains; the earphones nested within their charging case with pre-applied medium size ear-tips, some minimal paperwork – printed atop some very nice quality black card, a small cardboard insert containing some additional silicon ear-tips (Small and Large) and a very nice quality USB-C to USB-A cable.
Upon taking the earphones out of the packaging, I was shocked with how nice the charging case feels in the hand. The photos make it look like thin clear plastic, but it’s surprisingly substantial and very nice quality. It has some weight to it, although is on the bigger side where charging cases are concerned. It still fits just fine into a pocket. The earphones themselves also feel extremely well-built and click perfectly into the charging case with no force. The hinge is very solid with no wobble and shuts with a satisfying ‘click’. I have rather small ear canals and found the small tips fit perfectly into my ears. I can swing my head as hard as I like with no risk of them falling out.
So… How do they sound?
Simply put? I was blown away. In many cases, better than my old trusty XM4’s at less than half the price. I primarily listen to metal, classical a bit of rap and podcasts, but found they are extremely well-balanced for all genres. The bass is solid, but the accuracy of the mids and highs is what struck me. They are considerably better than my Sony’s. They sound every bit as good, and better in some ways. Ear fatigue was non-existent even after an extended listening session. While I absolutely do own IEMs that sound better, they are significantly more expensive (250 – 300) and I would argue that these wireless earphones beat just about anything in their price range.
Overall the Nothing Ear (1) is a fantastic product. I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a great listening experience without breaking the bank. You can not do better in this price range, and they have the build / sound quality of much more established, expensive brands.
ANR: It does a great job but don’t expect 100% noise cancellation, it’s an 80 pair of airbuds. (Sony’s flagship ANR buds are +250..). That being said, taking a flight with these changed my initial opinion drastically. It does an amazing job with constant buzzing sounds, to the point I don’t think I’ll be able to fly or take a train again without these. I fly at least 3-4 times a year so a massive game changer for me.
Battery: They charge super fast! If I take a 4:20h flight they last with ANR on around 3h30, probably more without it. Then I just put them on the case 5-10 min and can use them the rest of the flight. I think for most users this should be more than ok.
Connectivity: Instant pairing, that says it all. The only thing missing is multidevice support (having it connected to two devices simultaneously). That’s a bummer for me but I knew that when I bought them. It doesn’t automatically forget devices when you pair them to a new one though, so you don’t need to set them up everytime. They just can’t connect at the same time.
I have to note something here though. The airbuds turn on/connect the moment you open the case, not when you pull them out. It’s happened to me a few times that I pulled them out too quick (before the green light of the case turns on) and I’d be left with one of the airbuds unpaired. It takes half a second for the light to turn on, so not a big a deal at all, just be aware.
Sound: I’ve used Sony earphones in the same price range most of my life and I found these quite comparable in sound quality. So perfect:). Volume-wise, like most earphones nowadays, I depends on the device. I’ve had no issue at all with my Pixel phone and MacBook air, they are pretty loud. I had on my old android tablet, but if you physically turn the volume on sliding your finger on the airbud it overrides the volume output of your device (that’s the common solution for low volume on most airbuds with physical volume control btw).
All in all I don’t regret the purchase at all and can’t wait for a second iteration with multi device support. Just by how often they’ve been updating these to refine the product gives me some faith.
I reviewed these on YouTube as part of a ‘best earbuds under $100’ video, and they performed really well. Since I bought them on here I decided to share with you all the review and also the clip from that video featuring the ear(1)s. So that’s what the video is and below is the written form of the review in case you’d rather read instead:
[Review below]:
What the tech world has reached a consensus on is the design, with many (including myself) calling these the best looking earbuds on the market. This transparent design looks awesome – the craftsmanship is second to none, and I personally love this minimal design that, as they say, highlights the beauty of tech.
It’s not just for the earbuds, but the charging case tooand I think these look especially good in this new black colour. You’re not gonna be mistaking this unique design for any other earbuds.
The touch controls here are great, they’re responsive and the contact area is surprisingly wide. They’re one of only a few earbuds to support a swipe gesture for volume – and this timeit actually works. I had close control over each volume increment, and the glossy outer surface meant I could swipe without knocking these from my ears (though this is still possible if you aren’t careful). These also have wearing detection and customisation in the app – so the controls are almost perfect. But customisation is limited and there’s sadly no single tap option.
Comfort is another thing they’ve nailed, I’m talkingforget you’re wearing them, kind of comfortable. They’re lightweight and form a gentle seal in the ear, so I can easily wear these all day. I can just about run with them as well, and they have IPX4 protection, but I wouldn’t trust them to stay in place for most other workouts.
The gentle seal means the passive noise isolation isn’t amazing, even with the larger eartips. However the active noise cancellation was surprisingly good. Obviously it’s not flagship level performance, but you can clearly hear the reduction in noise turning this on. The transparency mode though, is very good, clearly amplifying your surroundings. There’s still a bug here though where there’s a faint hiss that seems to fade in and out sometimes in transparency mode. Inaudible with music playing, but still a bug – so for all the firmware update improvements we’ve seen since their launch, that minor annoyance still exists.
The main improvements have been to connectivity, these are now very reliable, offer single earbud use, fast pairing and show no noticeable latency with videos. There is a dedicated low-latency mode here as well, which gamers may be interested in, but otherwise it’s not really necessary. On one day I did have one earbud randomly disconnect – but a quick power off and on with the case seemed to fix it. So maybe not 100% of the issues are fixed, but on the wholemy experience has been pretty consistent.
Battery life is a big weakness though, you only get 5 hours on a single charge with up to 34 in the case. They do support wireless charging though, which is nice, and actually these are the only earbuds in this video to offer ANC, transparency, wearing detection and wireless charging – so these actually have the most complete feature set.
The mic quality was really decent as well. My voice sounded really clear and the earbuds isolate my voice well from the background noise – so phone call performance was very good.
As for the audio qualityit’s good, better than I expected actually. These have good clarity, are well-detailed and are leaning slightly towards a bright sound signature. The bass is tight and punchy, but I’m sure some will find this lacking. EQ options unfortunately are very limited – you’ve only got these 4 options. There’s a distinct difference with each mode, but I’d love to be able to customise this myself.
The overall sound quality should be good enough to please most – but some of our other entries like Lypertek and Sennheiser’s are a step up.
Having tested these throughly myself, I can understand why the initial reviews were so underwhelming. As the flagship killing phenomenon these earbuds were touted to be, sure, they leave a lot to be desired. But as a $99 pair of earbuds, as they should be viewed, they’re actually exceptional value for money. I was left genuinely shocked by just how good these turned out to be for the price.
But the problem is they feel like a beta product. Occasionally…. note, occasionally, they may lose connection to my OnePlus phone or not connect properly when removed from the case.
Another thing I dislike if the fact you can’t buy a replacement case. If anything was to happen to my case, such as it being lost, I’d have to buy another pair. Not an issue with standard wired Bluetooth headphones.
Apart from that, great product.
Update: May 2022.
I still love them, but still feels like a beta product.
For the money, the sound is very, very good. I love the design, though wish the black version was released along with the white version. I would have gone for that, though that is.a personal design choice.
The issue I have is that it when I remove both buds from the case, there is a 50/50 chance both will understand they have been removed from the cade. This lead me to have to put the one that is not responding back in the case and remove it again in the hope it understands I want it to be active.
As a company that is trying to establish itself in the market, I want it to do it’s best. I’m excited for it’s upcoming phone, but for the fact I can’t rely on it to work on time, every time, is making me feel that I should go for more established brands (a la Google Pixel Bud and a Pixel Phone).
I would say, yes, these are great headphones, but it still feels like a beta.
Update: October 2022
Still having connection issues to my devices. If I touch the headphones even slightly in a WhatsApp call they hang up. No software updates in a good few months. Long and short of it, I wish I went for the Pixel Buds A series.
I think most people will be purchasing these as an intro to ANC, and I think it does an ok job at that but you need to set your expectations correctly. The Nothings do a good job at knocking down the sounds around you by a few notches, which depending on the scenario could be plenty for what you want or disappointing. I find that car sounds in particular are not filtered well by the noise cancelling, although I wonder if this is a product of the relatively poor passive noise cancelling. The plus side of this is that the ambient sound passthrough is very good, I would say it’s the best out of the 3 buds in terms of how natural conversations feel when you have the buds in.
In particular regarding these being an intro to ANC, the pressure they exert with ANC on is quite strong compared to the XM4s and can take a little bit of getting used to so 1) take it easy on first try by not having ANC on for too long and switching to ambient or no noise cancelling before taking them out, and 2) if the pressure is still too much don’t be too discouraged from buying other higher end or next gen ANC earbuds.
Sound quality is better than the buds+, which were already fairly good, but it’s clearly held back by the bluetooth codec used and it would be much better if they supported up to date aptx codecs or LDAC. It’s not as good as the XM4s (as expected) but unless you’re used to high quality headphones you probably won’t notice much difference.
In terms of comfort they’re very comfortable in most circumstances. I wouldn’t wear them to bed because the stalk gets in the way, but otherwise the fit and light weight compared to other earbuds means you barely notice the feeling of them being in your ear once you’re used to them.
The control scheme is very intuitive compared to other buds. Often you need to choose between being able to control volume on the buds and doing something else, but the swipe control along the stem means that isn’t an issue on the Nothings. They don’t have a voice assistance control so if that is something you want then you will need to choose another earbud.
Battery life is alright for most purposes, you can’t get away with falling asleep with them in like other buds but they should last you through a day of work if you use your lunch break to put them back in the case.
Overall I think these are really good earbuds for the price point but you should be aware that you are making sacrifices somewhere. They’re more akin to buying a mid range phone than a flagship killer.