Sweet Nothings you will love in your ears

What do you need from a pair of earbuds to pair with your phone?

They’ve got to sound good, obviously, and they’ve got to be lightweight and fit well, too. You don’t want them to be uncomfortable. Then there’s battery life to worry about. Most of the major phonemakers do make their own earbuds… but they can be a little bit pricey.

And that’s where the Nothing ear (1) comes in – I’ve been testing a pair of these beauties for a couple of weeks. And they not only tick all the boxes mentioned, they go a lot further. And yet they cost just £99.

The backstory is an interesting one – the company, Nothing, was founded by Carl Pei, the Swedish entrepreneur responsible for co-founding the Oneplus smartphone-maker.

He left that company a couple of years ago to start Nothing, and has attracted some pretty big names in tech as backers.

Tony Faddell, formerly of Apple and one of the chief architects of the ipod, Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch, and Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, have all backed the company with cash.

The ear (1)’s design is very cool with minimal looks and see-through casing. They’ve been designed in collaboration with another Swedish company – Teenage Engineering, makers of ultra-stylish and much sought-after synthesisers.

They sound great, offer a good range of fits via three sets of interchangeable rubber tips, and, extraordinarily at this price, offer pretty usable active noise cancellation that even has a ‘transparency’ mode to allow you to hear what’s going on around you.

Battery life is a solid five hours of playback, that goes up to 34 hours thanks to the included charging case.

Last month, Nothing also added support for voice assistant control via the headphones – and that works with Alexa, Siri and the Google Assistant. Controls are all gesture and tap based, and you can configure which taps do what in a companion app on IOS and Android.

And what’s next for Nothing? The ear (1) is just the beginning, and rumours are currently building to suggest that a smartphone may be next on the list.

If the ear (1)s are anything to go by, it’ll be worth seeking out.

The Nothing ear (1) earbuds are available in black or white from nothing.tech