The minimalist tech brand Nothing has just unveiled its latest futuristic-looking pair of earbuds, with the Nothing Ear 3.
To make things slightly confusing, it’s important to note that Nothing Ear 3 is not the successor to the Nothing Ear 2 nor Nothing Ear 1. Instead, the buds are the update to the 2024, four-star rated Nothing Ear.
Now we’ve cleared that up, let’s see how the Nothing Ear compare to the newly announced Nothing Ear 3 buds. We’ve highlighted the key differences between the two pairs of earbuds below, to help you decide whether or not you need to upgrade.
Otherwise, make sure you visit our best headphones and best wireless earbuds guides, where we’ve listed the top performers of the past year or so.
Pricing and Availability
Available now, the Nothing Ear 3 is slightly cheaper than the 4.5-star AirPods 4 ANC with an RRP of £179/€179/$179.
The Nothing Ear, on the other hand, have a cheaper RRP of £119/$139 and are available in either Black or Silver. However, as the buds are over a year old, we’d expect this price to drop in the coming weeks.
Nothing Ear 3 has Super Mic technology
One of the new additions found in the Nothing Ear 3 is Super Mic technology. Nothing explains that Super Mic is a dual-microphone system that’s built into the Ear 3’s charging case, and driven by ambient-filtering technology which promises to focus your voice for clearer calls and voice notes.
To enable Super Mic, you’ll need to press the Talk button on the Ear 3’s charging case when it’s near your mouth. You can either press and hold for quick calls or voice notes in noisy environments or double-press for longer conversations and transcriptions.
When paired with a compatible Nothing phone, Super Mic can record a voice memo and save it to your Essential Space app. From here, the memo can be analysed by AI to deliver a transcription.
Otherwise, Super Mic works using beamforming technology to lock onto your voice while cutting through environmental noise, which should enable clearer calls too.
Nothing Ear 3 buds are fitted with a bone-conduction VPU
Although you may think bone-conduction is a technology reserved solely for open-ear buds, that’s not necessarily true, as the Nothing Ear 3 confirms. In fact, each Ear 3 bud combines three microphones with a bone-conduction VPU for precise voice pickup.
Nothing explains that as bone-conducted signals are less affected by wind and environmental noise, the system is “better at differentiating between your speech and all other noise”.
Nothing Ear
Nothing Ear 3 has redesigned dynamic drivers
It’s not just voice pickup which promises an upgrade with the Nothing Ear 3 buds. In fact, the buds benefit from redesigned 12mm dynamic drivers and a patterned diaphragm, which Nothing promises lowers total harmonic distortion down to 0.2%, a 0.4% improvement from the Nothing Ear.
Nothing also claims the Nothing Ear 3 offers a wider sound stage and cleaner highs from its predecessor too. Considering that the original Ear pair presented a “balanced and coherent sound in a confident manner” albeit when ANC was switched off, then the Nothing Ear 3 should hopefully offer an even better listening experience.
Both have Adaptive Noise Cancellation
Both the Nothing Ear 3 and Nothing 3 buds are fitted with adaptive noise cancelling, which means they choose the level of ANC depending on your environment. However, Nothing promises that the Ear 3 adjusts to your surroundings “every 600 milliseconds” and updates the cancellation profile continuously so isolation stays consistent.
Interestingly with the Nothing Ear buds, although noise-cancellation was somewhat effective, we found that it altered the quality of the audio. In fact, we concluded that when ANC was enabled it had an “abrupt emphasis on the bottom of the frequency range” which masked external sounds.
Nothing Ear 3 offers a slightly better battery life
Although the Nothing Ear 3 earbuds each have a 55mAh battery capacity, which is larger than the Nothing Ear’s 46mAh capacity, they only actually promise a slightly higher battery life.
With ANC enabled, the Nothing Ear 3 promises up to 5.5 hours of battery life with an additional 22 hours within the charging case. The Nothing Ear, on the other hand, promises up to 5.2 hours. Not only that, but the charging case actually boasts slightly more hours to hand, with up to 24 instead.
Even so, Nothing promises that when ANC is off, a five minute charge should result in one hour of playback with the Ear 3, while 10 minutes provides up to 10 hours playback with the case included.
Early Verdict
With the new Super Mic tool, a promise of a “wider soundstage” and slightly longer battery life than its predecessor, the Nothing Ear 3 buds seem like a promising upgrade. However, considering the Ear 3 is more expensive than the original Ear, if you want a more affordable pair of everyday earbuds then the latter remains a solid option.
Otherwise, our list of the best wireless earbuds and best cheap headphones will provide you with even more options to choose from.
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