Nothing Ear (3a) Review: Effortless Everyday Audio

Nothing had just introduced two of its latest devices to the Philippine market: The Nothing Phone (4b) and the Nothing Ear (3a), both available at Digital Walker.

I’ve been given the opportunity to try both products out, and so after a good amount of testing, here’s my full review of the Nothing Ear (3a).

While I’ve had a lot of experience with my fair share of wireless earbuds, this was my first go at a Nothing branded one, and like the Phone (4b), this one in particular left quite a good impression.

Unboxing Experience

I’m more used to opening boxes of earbuds with flaps that can be opened and closed, so this was quite different as it was a first for me to see this kind of presentation.

You start by tearing away at a pull tab at the bottom of the box, then proceed by pulling out the contents in one go.

The internals are pretty straightforward. You’ll immediately see the earbuds wrapped in some film. After taking them out, you’d have to pull up the cardboard the earbuds were in to check the rest of the contents, which will include three (3) pairs of spare eartips in varied sizes, as well as a small booklet containing the necessary information you’ll need for warranties, safety, and the user guide.

For a more visual experience on the unboxing of the Nothing Ear (3a), here’s a short video of ours below:

@gadgetpilipinas

Check out our unboxing of the Nothing ear (3a)! Read more about here: https://www.gadgetpilipinas.net/2026/08/nothing-ear-3a-ph-pre-order/

♬ original sound – Gadget Pilipinas

Design & Build Quality

Let’s talk colors first. The Nothing Ear (3a) that I was given came in the color Yellow, one of 4 which also includes Pink, Black, and White. I am also happy to say that all four were made available in the country.

And like the Nothing Phone (4b) that it was released alongside with, the packaging was made so the boxes of each pair of earbuds are color-matched to the actual product inside.

In terms of aesthetics the Nothing Ear (3a) sport what the brand calls a “Party Pill Design” which is inspired by the Finish Fetish movement in LA, an art style characterized by slick, glossy, and flawless industrial surfaces.

That inspiration, paired with Nothing’s almost futuristic yet minimalist style mixed well with the selected colors the product comes in, and the transparent lid of the charging case with just the Nothing brand logo placed on it complements the concept well.

The charging case has a quite a few functions apart from just containing the earbuds magnetically on each side.

First is the LED indicator that looks like the Glyph Bar that can be found on some Nothing Phone devices. It has 3 LED lights that blink in given patterns to show battery life, charging status, and pairing status.

The second is the circular button on the opposite side that can be long-pressed in order to activate pairing mode, which then is indicated by an alternate blinking pattern of the three small LED lights.

Now, while the front portion of the charging case has a magnetic lock to keep it sealed, the back is where you’d find its Type C charging port.

The charging case has one more feature that matches the earbuds. There are 2 different colored dots that indicate which is left and right. White is assigned for the left, and red is for the right side.

And since we’re at it, the charging case itself is compact at 64.8 x 48.95 x 22.8mm while only weighing 40.92 grams.

The earbuds on the other hand are at about the standard size of a regular earbud with dimensions at 31.2 x 21.7 x 24mm, and a weight of 4.53 grams

The stems of each earbud house the sensors that are able to read the user’s pinch gestures. These stems also have a texture that look like carbon fiber on the inside of the transparent material. Both earbuds’ stems also have the product name “ear (3a)” printed on them.

As a nice final touch, both the Nothing Ear (3a) earbuds and their charging case have an IP54 dust & water resistance rating. This is rarely heard of as an IP rating would usually only apply to the earbuds, so this adds an level of certainty for when they’re used outdoors, either under the rain or elsewhere.

Audio Quality

While the general opinion on audio products can be quite subjective and highly dependent on people’s individual preferences, I am confident that the Nothing Ear (3a) would be able to deliver a well-rounded listening experience for most.

It starts with the Nothing Ear (3a)’s driver size at 12.4mm, which meets the now usual standard seen across TWS products sitting in the same price range. This also makes its bass 5dB louder versus their Ear (a) from a few years ago.

Having larger driver sizes would usually mean better sound quality, meaning that the earbuds can produce deeper bass, like how a bass singer in a choir would require a large breath of air to sustain his low notes. Not only that, but this would also mean clearer mids and highs for music that users would listen to.

And given that, my experience listening to music through the Nothing Ear (3a), the output is as expected. This is also true for when I used the earbuds to watch videos on YouTube, TikTok, Netflix, and other apps.

To complement that, the earbuds are Hi-Res Certified and support LDAC, which when combined with a phone that can handle it – provides higher quality audio to the listener.

In order to test it out, I personally downloaded Apple Music on my Nothing Phone (4b) and streamed there with Lossless Audio toggled on, then I alternated the AAC and LDAC playback options for the earbuds via the Nothing X app.

The difference can be subtle depending on the music, but using LDAC proved to be superior in quality given the balance the lows, mids, and highs had. It is however best to keep in mind that streaming high-quality LDAC audio consumes more data, so it can be costly unless you’re connected to Wi-Fi.

Call audio also benefits a great deal as these earbuds have 3 microphones on each side for proper audio separation paired with ENC algorithms for better call quality.

The microphone’s audio output is also clear, with a good level of separation of the user’s voice from ambient noises when in use. Here are some samples below with ANC set to high as I was speaking through the Nothing Ear (3a). The files were recorded in aac via the Nothing Phone (4b)’s recording app, then converted to MP3 via cloudconvert:

Sample 1 (Beside an electric fan and open window, not set to High Quality recording)

Sample 2 (Away from an electric fan, with open window, not set to High Quality recording)

Sample 3 (Beside an electric fan and open window, set to High Quality recording)

The Listening Experience

Apart from the the audio quality that it produces, the Nothing Ear (3a) has a multitude of other features that allow users to customize their listening experience to their liking, which include:

Active Noise Cancellation
These earbuds’ ANC can be set to three individual levels at up to 45dB or left in adaptive mode so it manually adjusts according to ambient noises in the user’s surroundings. Transparency mode is also okay.

Spatial Audio
If turned on, lets you listen to immersive sounds that can make you feel like you’re part of whatever audio’s playing, from music, to a movie, or even games.

Custom Equaliser
Lets you change it up on the levels of bass, mids, and treble, while also having built-in presets and a large community of users including yourself with the freedom of making your own settings and sharing them online.

These three, with the large audio drivers it has, and support for both AAC and LDAC provide a good variety of possible combinations for different types of people.

But to share also, my own defaults are High ANC, Spatial Audio off, and the Equaliser set to Balanced. This lets me hear more of each song I listen to, but I do on occassion use Bass Boost for getting in the zone.

Audio Snapshot (A unique feature)

Now, if you were able to see my first impressions on the Nothing Ear (3a), I did tease about a nifty feature toward the end, and here we are.

In a nutshell, Audio Snapshot allows you to record audio through the earbuds by using a double-pinch & hold gesture on either one of them.

The nice thing about it is that it has a rolling buffer of up to 30 seconds you press the button, plus subsequent audio up to a total of 60 seconds. This means that even if you start recording a little late or stop recording a little early, the buffer you set might capture what you missed. Do note however, that the rolling buffer being set will consume more battery, and it also won’t function if LDAC is enabled.

Audio from calls to your phone number and apps like Facebook’s Messenger can be captured, and once activated, both you and the people you’re talking to will receive a voice notification saying “This call will be recorded in 3, 2, 1…”, then proceed to do so. This prompt’s language has a variety of languages to choose from.

The second type of audio that can be recorded is from media playing on your phone, from streamed music, to TikToks, or even webinars.

Now, the audio captured gets saved to the Nothing Ear (3a)’s internal memory before getting transmitted to your phone’s Nothing X app.

Recordings can then be accessed through the app (the earbuds have to be connected to your phone in order to open the app’s menu to access them).

These then can be played back and transcribed with your preferred transcription mode (there is a paid version with better accuracy for transcriptions, but for free users, I strongly recommend to use the Precise option always).

Collected audio files can be shared once extracted, and transcriptions may have some misspellings or need help with spacing as you’ll see in the samples I included, so it’s best to run through them before use.

Here are two samples below along with their transcripts:

Audio Snapshot Sample 1 (Call)

Audio Snapshot Sample 2 (Media, Playback of Gadget Pilipinas’ first impressions video on the product)

Battery Life

With the charging case and earbuds combined, the Nothing Ear (3a) promises up to 42 hours of use with ANC turned off, and up to 25 hours with ANC on.

This claim is accurate given my experience since I use up about 15% battery per hour of continued use per earbud with ANC on.

Charging the case to full takes only 70 minutes too, so it’s very easy to stay on-the-go with these earbuds.

The Rest of the Package

The Nothing Ear (3a) has quite a few more features up its sleeve, with some of them requiring really using the Nothing X app that is downloadable on both Android and iOS. These include:

• Customizable controls
• Low lag mode that’s best for gaming
• Dual connection for multi-device pairing
• Device settings like in-ear detection, ear tip fit test, and Find my
  

Apart from all that, the Nothing Ear (3a) also has ChatGPT voice support, Bluetooth 6.0 for stability, an up to 15-meter connection range, Google Fast Pair, and generally low latency for a nice user experience.

And when paired with a Nothing Phone, you get access to “Essential News”, which is AI-generated audio summaries of global news stories that you can listen to while on-the-go.

The Verdict

Priced at Php 5,990, the Nothing Ear (3a) delivers a straightforward quality experience for casual listeners as well as those who like to tinker a bit with their TWS.

The Nothing X app that it’s paired with is simple and easy to understand, and there’s also a lot of instructions and little details in it that show how valued the user experience is from their end.