Nothing Ear (2) (Photo: Walla! Technology, Yanon Ben Shoshan)
Nothing's new wireless earphones, the Ear (2), which come in the same design as the previous generation, failed to attract the required attention.
The products (three in total) of the young British manufacturer, headed by Karl Fay, one of the founders of OnePlus, have been successful - and made the company the hot trend of the time.
Just before the launch of the new headphones in Israel, which are sold as official imports on the Bug network, we took them for a review and checked whether they would be able to maintain their good name.
Design, connection and buttons
The connection to the mobile device, like all wireless headphones (TWS), is simple.
All you have to do is put the headphones in your ears and find them in the Bluetooth menu of the smartphone.
Within a few seconds, the headphones will play a sound and announce if you are connected.
In the box you will find silicone adapters in three sizes and a USB-C cable.
As mentioned, the Ear (2) headphones keep the transparent and familiar design that we met in the first generation.
The transparent and beautiful structure gives a glimpse inside and reveals the black board, the microphones and the other tiny electronic components, with each earpiece (right and left) marked with a red or white dot for quick identification.
The charging case also remains the same - which is not a positive, at least in our opinion.
The case, which is designed as a square transparent box with rounded corners, is quite bulky, not comfortable to carry and the main minus is that you will feel it well when you put it in your pocket.
Also, Nothing continued with another failed design idea - adding a bump in the case that should be used as a spinner.
comfortable?
No.
useful?
No.
And yes, we would prefer the case to be small than to have another pointless gimmick that comes at the expense of convenience.
The charging case also remains the same - which is not a positive, at least in our opinion (Photo: Walla! Technology, Yanon Ben Shoshan)
Sound and comfort
And now we will move to the positive side:
the headphones themselves are adequate.
They are not the smallest in the category, and they are more similar in size to AirPods Pro, but they are still very slightly larger than them.
The headphones are devoid of physical buttons, and all operation is done by pressing force sensors (touch) with two fingers on the stem (the prominent part), similar to AirPods.
The end result is quite elegant and has an interesting presence and is not casual like some of the competitors.
In the comfort department, Nothing did an adequate job.
Overall, the headphones sit comfortably in the ear - even with frequent use throughout the day.
At the same time, even with decent shakes of the head they don't fall, which is excellent.
And what happens in the sound section?
Compared to other similarly priced headphones, Nothing ear (2) provides good audio quality.
By default, the sound is clean, crisp and clear, but not deep enough and a bit bass-less.
However, in the application (Nothing X) you can choose a sound profile with more emphasized bass and less treble, and adjust the sounds to your taste.
Personally, in the application I was able to reach an almost perfect sound level, and in short, in terms of sound, these are headphones worthy of any genre and any time.
Overall, the headphones sit comfortably in the ear - even with frequent use throughout the day (Photo: Walla! Technology, Yanon Ben Shoshan)
noise filtering
Want to disconnect from the noisy environment?
To the credit of the Nothing ear (2) is the noise filtering (ANC) which does an excellent job.
Even while traveling on a bus, train or in a noisy space (for example at work), the headphones managed to reduce the penetration of background noise in a great way.
However, it still doesn't come close to what you'll get in higher-end headphones - such as Sony's WF-1000XM4.
The noise filter can be activated by pressing and holding the power sensor at the base of the earphone, until a sound is heard.
Sound familiar to you?
That's right, it's just like AirPods.
By the way, while they are connected to the device, you can define in the application separately what each press on the earphone will do - skip to the next song, return to the previous song, activate noise filtering, start/stop the music or cancel the feature
To the credit of the Nothing ear (2) is the noise filtering (ANC) which does an excellent job (photo: Walla! Technology, Yanon Ben Shoshan)
In the bottom line
With an impressive design, excellent sound and an affordable price tag (NIS 589), again this year Nothing succeeds in bringing advanced features to a low price tag.
True, in the previous generation we talked about only 99 dollars (NIS 379), but even this year it is difficult to find a suitable answer for them that is not AirPods Pro, which will cost you almost twice as much.
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