Wireless earphones may well be convenient, but their often low quality mic is downright inconvenient. A new pair of earbuds from Nothing aims to fix that.
There is so much choice for truly wireless earphones and earbuds that it’s not difficult or even unexpected to just assume that everything out there is a variation on a theme.
While there are clear differences if you look (and read the reviews), the crux of more or less every pair of truly earbuds is the same: wireless sound with a case that recharges the earphones. Differences abound with active noise cancellation, language translation, AI support, and more, but the idea is roughly the same.
And then there are companies trying to do something different, rare as the case may be.
Nothing’s phones are very different as they are, some offering light up “glyphs” at the back, while all offer a transparent design, something that followed on from the company’s very first product, a pair of earphones back in 2021.
So it makes sense that the company’s latest take on its first product, the “Ear (1)” also gets an update designed to be, well, different.
In the years since, we’ve seen the Ear (2) and even a variation on that theme in the Ear (Stick). So if you’ve guessed the latest pair of earphones from Nothing would simply be called the “Ear (3)”, you’d be right. However, you probably wouldn’t be able to guess its variation on the truly wireless earbud theme: a better microphone found inside the charging case.
Called a “Super Mic”, the Nothing Ear (3) aims to make call sound from its truly wireless earphones better by allowing its owners to talk into a special microphone found inside the case itself.
The idea is simple: you’d hold the earbud case to your lips, speak, and let the system’s two microphones filter out the world while focusing on your voice in calls.
Voice quality in calls is a common complaint with truly wireless earphones, a problem that usually extends from not having a good enough microphone or a close enough microphone, the latter of which has to do with placement and physics. You can’t get better sound if a pair of compact earphones keeps its microphone too far from the mouth it’s meant to be listening to.
Nothing’s Super Mic aims to fix this with the case being held up, and it can apparently be used with other apps, including Nothing’s Essential Space journal, which does require Nothing Phone (3) models (and likely higher).
You won’t need to lean on the case, though. Each earpiece includes three microphones and a bone-conduction Voice Pick-Up Unit, all to improve the sound of your voice in calls. However, the microphone in the case aims to help out, particularly in noisy places.
Outside of the extra Super Mic, Nothing’s Ear (3) will include adaptive ANC adjusting every 600 milliseconds, while the driver is a 12mm dynamic driver tweaked and tuned by Nothing.
The earphones themselves are also transparent in design — a hallmark of everything made by Nothing, it seems — and they’ll also be IP54 water resistant, and work on iOS and Android when they’re released.
Pricing looks to be quite competitive, too, with Australians set to see the Ear (3) earphones from September 25, priced at $299 in both black and white.
