Nothing Headphone (1) Review – 6 Months Later

By Josh Teder

It’s been six months since I bought the Nothing Headphone (1), and I’m going to take you through why, while not perfect, these might just be my favorite pair of headphones for the money.

Design and Build Quality

The first highlight with these is their design. They’re a very unique-looking pair of headphones, almost retro in a way, and I personally really dig that aesthetic. They definitely have the classic Nothing transparent design with the translucent plastic used, but don’t be fooled. The part here that looks like aluminum is actually, yes, forged aluminum, which does add to their weight, but it gives them this really nice premium feel.

And another thing that I really like about their design is the controls. There are five buttons and controls all found on the right ear cup. Instead of trying to have like two buttons that do five things, Nothing decided, you know what? Let’s just have five buttons that can do no more than two, maybe three things, or most of the time just one. And I think this approach is much more intuitive.

First up is the power switch, which looks very Appley, which is funny given that Apple’s own headphones do not have a power switch. It also has a status light, which will glow red when they need juice and pulses white as it charges, which is a nice touch.

Next up is the paddle button, which allows you to skip tracks or jump through podcasts with short clicks. And then you can hold the paddle to scrub through your media, which Nothing says will vary based on the media player. But for the ones that I use the most, like Apple Music, this button works great with those. And for podcasts, if you have a particular interval that you’ve set for skipping ads, like in Pocket Casts, for example, when you short press the button, it’ll trigger the skip forward or skip back for the correct interval.

And then there’s the roller button that you can just press in for play/pause and then you can roll it to control volume. You can also press and hold to cycle through noise cancellation modes, or you can move the noise cancellation cycling to what Nothing just calls the button instead.

The Bluetooth pairing button is on the inside of the right ear cup, and having this button is so brilliant. Now, most headphones make you hold down the power button to enter Bluetooth pairing mode, and often you just end up turning the headphones off and then back on again to get into that pairing mode, which, yes, is stupid. With these, the headphones don’t turn off. They just go right into Bluetooth pairing mode.

One other really cool design trick I noticed with these is after I put them on without having them connect to a device for a while, they’ll just automatically enter Bluetooth pairing mode.

And then there’s the button. You can have this hooked up to your Nothing Phone Essential Space or customize a single press and press and hold to do different things. And if you want to see my review of that phone or more tech like these headphones in general, make sure you’re subscribed to the channel.

In general, I have this set to trigger my device’s default assistant, which I quite like using since you can’t trigger any assistant hands-free on these by default, which is fine by me since I almost never use that feature with headphones. Anyway, moving on.

Comfort and Fit

When it comes to comfort, overall, I found these to be extremely comfortable. I’m able to use them all day with no discomfort. The weight is also pretty great. It’s 329 g compared to the 386 g of the AirPods Max. Now, they’re not the lightest headphones on the market by any means, but I definitely notice how much lighter they do feel when you put them on after wearing the AirPods Max for an hour.

Another surprising thing about these headphones is they carry an IP52 dust and water resistance rating. So, they can handle some light dust and water ingress and you should be fine to work out in them. Just, you know, don’t wear them in a downpour or obviously submerge them.

Now, what makes this rating surprising is most of the headphones that these are competing against, like the AirPods Max, do not come with any type of rating. So, you see all those people wearing AirPods Max outside and to the gym all the time. Just know those people, yes, are likely, uh, sending their headphones to an early grave.

Sound Quality and EQ Tuning

“For the money, I don’t think I’ve seen a better pair of headphones. They have an excellent control design, great battery life, are comfortable, sleek, and they have a pretty great sound quality once you tune them.”

The next thing that stands out with the Nothing Headphone (1) is their sound quality. Though, with a caveat, out of the box, I thought these sounded, uh, not great. They were pretty flat with muddy bass.

But these headphones come with a fantastic companion app that has one of, if not the best EQ tuning features I’ve ever used in a headphones app, letting you fine-tune them exactly to your liking. But the other really cool thing that Nothing has focused on with their tuner is that they made it really easy to import other tunes that people have created via a QR code.

So, I could import the one from LTT and then fine-tune that one to my liking, which I did. And then I got them to sound pretty much neck and neck with my AirPods Max. Like, maybe the sound stage isn’t quite as wide or their sound isn’t like as dynamic as the AirPods Max, but it’s close enough to where I don’t think I’d spend, you know, almost double what these cost to get the AirPods Max.

And if you’re interested in the tune that I ended up with, I’ll leave that in the blog post which is linked down in the description and pinned comment. And the tune after you set it is actually tied to the headphones, so they’ll stay tuned the way you like it no matter what device you use them with.

The Nothing X App

And speaking of the Nothing X app, overall that app has actually just been excellent. It’s fast, always finds the headphones relatively quickly, works on both iOS and Android, and most features work on both, except for a few specific features for Nothing phones, like using the button to start recording audio that can be saved in your Essential Space.

Price and Value

The last big highlight with these is their price. Given that these retail for $299 MSRP, but you can often find them on sale for $239, that’s actually pretty incredible. With their design, comfort, and sound quality alone, I don’t think you could find a better set of headphones for the money right now. And you can check their current price via the product links in this video as well as in our blog post where you’ll find links to multiple retailers at 6monthslater.net/shop.

Oh, and I didn’t even mention battery life, which, yes, is another highlight. The battery life of these with ANC on is pretty spectacular compared to some of their competition. It’s rated for up to 30 hours with LDAC playback and 35 hours with AAC for everything else, which is consistent with the battery life that I’ve experienced with them.

What’s Just Okay

So, those are all of the highlights. Now, let’s talk about what’s just okay with these headphones because they’re definitely not the best in every category.

First up is mic quality. It’s clear, but there is some artifacting going on in my voice that I just don’t get with other headphones. So, I’d rank this as just okay. Fine for work calls and the like, but could be better.

Noise cancellation is pretty decent. Now, it’s not as good as some competing headphones like the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Gen 2s or the Sony WH-1000XM6 headphones, but just for getting rid of background noise like cars going by, airplane cabin noise, and general city noise, I’d say they’re just a hair behind some of the class-leading headphones.

And for transparency mode, that’s also pretty decent. I’d say it’s just a hair below the AirPods Max.

Moving on, let’s talk about channel hop. This is a feature that allows you to use the button to hop between different channels or services, so you can hop from one audio app to another, but I found it to be a bit confusing. In settings, it says only Apple Music and Spotify are supported third-party services, but you can skip between other media you currently have playing on your Nothing phone, like Pocket Casts for podcasts and Apple Music in my case.

They also have this green plus button that you can hit that adds certain media to your favorites. But once they’re in favorites, tapping on them doesn’t seem to do anything. That part I found a bit confusing. I’m assuming you’d add something here like your favorite podcast, playlist, or album, and then you tap on it and it starts playing, but I haven’t gotten that to work.

The Downsides

All right, next. Let’s talk downsides. And the first one for me by far is the sound effects on these headphones. They are just too damn loud and jarring on them. I’d really like Nothing to implement a setting where I’d be able to go in and turn down the volume of these effects, or just let me pick my own sound so they’d sound a bit smoother and less techy and jarring.

Next, there’s no easy-to-replace battery. The internal battery is actually soldered in, which isn’t really consumer-friendly if you want these things to last a while. The ear cups can be removed, by the way, by dislodging the little plastic clips at the top of them, but Nothing still, six months later, doesn’t sell replacements for them on their website.

The case is also bulkier than competing headphones from Sony and Bose, which fold. You also have to readjust them every time you take them out of the case, so you might just end up leaving them out on your desk a lot like me, but then they’re unprotected.

And, you know, I can kind of see how Apple got to the design they did with their smart case, right? It doesn’t protect all of the headphones, but if you’re going to leave them out on your desk, at least like it’s protecting a good bit of the aluminum cups, and you don’t have to readjust them when you take them out and wear them all the time. So, huh.

They’re also arranged kind of backwards in the case. The right ear cup goes on the left and vice versa, which seems kind of dumb.

Another issue I encountered is that over-the-ear detection is god-awful when paired to my Mac. It just never works. I also find that they don’t go into a sleep state when no audio is being played to them for a bit from my Mac. So, their battery ends up draining way faster than I expected.

They also don’t have as precise volume control as competing headphones like the AirPods Max. Though, to be fair, I’ve never had a problem finding the perfect volume level when listening on these headphones.

Another area of improvement involves find my headphones. This feature displays a loud sound on the headphones. I do think it’d be really useful if Nothing implemented some sort of smarter tracking system with their next generation of headphones, maybe using something like ultra-wideband.

Final Verdict

“If you don’t need the spatial audio features of the AirPods Max, you don’t care about the automatic pairing between your Apple devices or using them with your Apple TV, you just want headphones with a true case and you don’t want to have to worry about condensation and what happens if you wear your headphones after you get out of the shower, I think these are an absolutely fantastic choice.”

So, do I recommend the Nothing Headphone (1)? Yes. For the money, I don’t think I’ve seen a better pair of headphones. They have an excellent control design, great battery life, are comfortable, sleek, and they have a pretty great sound quality once you tune them.

So, would I get these headphones and save your money on something like the AirPods Max? Yeah, actually, I think there are a lot of use cases where that actually makes sense. If you don’t need the spatial audio features of the AirPods Max, which I will say are really the only headphones I found that actually do that spatial audio feature, right? You don’t care about the automatic pairing between your Apple devices or using them with your Apple TV. You just want headphones with a true case and you don’t want to have to worry about condensation and what happens if you wear your headphones after you get out of the shower. I think these are an absolutely fantastic choice.