Nothing Headphone 1 overview: a daring design with some odd omissions

Nothing’s first pair of over-the-ear headphones has arrived, bearing the corporate’s signature retro-transparent design that it launched with the Telephone 1. However till now, that design has largely been in your pocket or peeking out of your ears. With the $299 Nothing Headphone 1, it’s a must to decide to having that aesthetic wrapped round your head or hanging out of your neck.

I spent a couple of week with the Headphone 1 to see the way it matches among the many competitors — and along with your outfit.

The Nothing Headphone 1 resembles a cross between Apple’s AirPods Max and Eighties FM radio headphones. I dig the design, however sporting it on my head feels foolish. The housing feels cheaper than the aluminum casing of the $549 AirPods Max and in addition much less… grown up. I’m virtually embarrassed to put on it on the road and frightened that I’ll seem like I’m cosplaying as a cyborg. The ear pads seem like that of generic headphones, with rubbery and plastic unremovable pads and a reminiscence foam heart. Although I don’t take care of the feel, they’re snug, and I haven’t felt fatigued whereas sporting them all through the day like I do with the Sony WH-1000XM6.

The button design is my favourite a part of the headphones. The amount is managed by the curler, which is sort of a rubbery wheel you spin, not too far off from Apple’s digital crown, however oriented on its facet. Urgent on the curler performs or pauses your audio, and holding it down toggles one among three modes — noise canceling, transparency, or off.

There’s additionally the paddle button, permitting you to skip tracks, go backward to earlier tracks, quick ahead or rewind, or dangle up or decline telephone calls when held down. I’ve but to seek out an app that works with the quick ahead / rewind management, however Nothing claims that is depending on the platform.

A customizable button on the surface of the appropriate ear cup will be set to launch a voice assistant like Google Gemini, use an EQ preset, mute the microphone, management noise, or allow spatial audio. These customizations are carried out with the Nothing X app (obtainable on iOS and Android). If you happen to use the Headphone 1 with the Nothing Telephone 3, you should utilize that button to “channel hop” between completely different audio apps — a function that may finally be rolled out to different Nothing units. I wasn’t in a position to take a look at this, since I don’t have a Telephone 3.

The Headphone 1 options head monitoring, permitting you to anchor your place whereas listening to audio and rotate the panning in response to the way you flip your head. It is a pattern amongst flagship headphones — like Apple’s spatial audio, Bose’s immersive mode, and Sony’s spatial audio mixing — however it’s not one thing I ever need to use. It doesn’t sound very plausible, and more often than not, it makes the audio sound worse. Very like the worst variations of Apple Music’s spatial audio tracks, it emulates that “stadium” mode from previous stereo receivers.

Noise canceling works nicely, exterior of calls. It’s somewhat simpler to ship good lively noise cancellation (ANC) with over-the-ear headphones than with earbuds due to their measurement and talent to cowl your total ear, however I’ve discovered the Nothing headphones can block subway sounds, loud hums, and different metropolis din with ease. I might really feel snug bringing these as my journey headphones on a visit.

I gained’t get over-analytical with the sound high quality, however nothing stands out as unhealthy in comparison with different flagship headphones. I don’t suppose the Headphone 1 sounds nearly as good because the AirPods Max, however I choose Nothing’s frequency response to Bose’s QuietComfort Extremely and Sony’s WH-1000XM6. That is on par with Nothing’s earbuds line and even its price range CMF-branded earpieces, which compete surprisingly nicely with different flagship earbuds.

My greatest drawback with these headphones is how they deal with voice calls. Nothing claims the Headphone 1 has “4 built-in microphones with AI-powered Clear Voice Know-how to isolate your speech and suppress background noise,” however I went to a busy practice station in New York Metropolis to take a name with some colleagues, they usually weren’t in a position to perceive half of the phrases I used to be saying. In a quiet workplace, I had no hassle speaking on calls, and it even sounded positive towards the opposite headphones. However in a big corridor with crowd sounds, it began to cancel my voice out together with all the things else. The headphones additionally don’t appear to have multipoint; The Verge emailed Nothing to substantiate however has but to listen to again.

The Headphone 1 is available in a slim, softshell zipper case that’s fabricated from a fabric liable to selecting up the fur of my white cat. The zipper is somewhat finicky and will get caught simply when closing, however it seals fairly nicely when totally zipped.

The Headphone 1 additionally comes with a Nothing-designed USB-C cable, which can be utilized for each charging and listening, and a 3.5mm cable for listening on analog headphone jacks. The analog jack doesn’t work when the headphones are off or when charging, so if the battery dies, they’re unusable till you discover a USB port. That’s unlucky, particularly if / when these batteries die of previous age. However you can hear over Bluetooth or USB-C whereas recharging, not less than.

Nothing guarantees as much as 35 hours of battery life with ANC on and utilizing the AAC codec (most likely the most typical state of affairs) and 37 hours of discuss time with simply ANC on. With ANC off, Nothing claims the headphones provide as much as 80 hours of playback utilizing AAC codec and 54 hours with the LDAC codec. After every week of informal use and utilizing them all through my day working in an workplace, I by no means needed to cost them to get by my day, and had gone two days with out plugging them in.

The $299 Nothing Headphone 1 affords many options that compete nicely with Bose, Apple, and Sony, and the cheaper price may get some people to decide on it. If you happen to’re planning to make use of headphones for voice calls, I’m undecided that is the appropriate decide. But when not, and if the design matches your persona, then saving $200 for this audio high quality and noise cancellation makes this a package deal price contemplating.

Images by Owen Grove / The Verge