Nothing's Ear (1) are some great little in-ear buds, and now the sequel, the aptly named 'Ear (2)' are here. They bring some new features to the table, along with a slightly higher price. There's also, for some reason, a beetle in the press release.
The Atlas beetle, the beetle pictured, is super strong. Like, stronger than we could imagine. The little guy can lift 850 times his body weight, and his three horns drive his belligerent need to battle any other male he might come across. This is a statement from Nothing - that the Ear (2) are stronger than their size might convey, and that the fight is being taken to the AirPods 2 and 3, and other similarly priced and specced earbuds.
Filled to the brim with goodies
The Nothing Ear (2) don't look much different from the previous model, but Nothing tells us that the internals are suitably beefed up. There's a 'unique' dual air chamber design inside to let the new 11.6mm driver breathe more, and the Hi-res Audio Certification will mean they are able to play higher quality tracks.
There's LHDC 5.0 on board, which Nothing tells us will "ensure that even the finest sound details are delivered to an industry-leading standard." There's a quick connecting mode with iPhone, Android, and Microsoft devices to go with Nothings Clear Voice Technology to improve the call quality. The mics on Nothing devices before have been stellar, so it'll be interesting to see what they're like here.
One of the big selling points is the battery life. Nothing says that the Ear (2) will offer 36 hours of battery life in total, with noise canceling turned off. That's some pretty good battery life, especially when you look at how small the buds are. There's fast charging as well, so a 10-minute charge will get you 8 hours of battery life.
Noise-canceling joins the party as well, and Nothing says there's 40dB of noise reduction. This is difficult to quantify without having tried the buds, but once we've got them in hand this is going to be one of the first things we play with. You'll notice that the feature set here matches or beats out the two lower-priced AirPods, the AirPods 2 and AirPods 3. They don't feature noise canceling, and their battery life isn't quite so impressive. The Nothing Ear (2) are priced directly in between the two AirPods models, costing $149 in the US.
We can't wait to test the Nothing Ear (2) and see whether they rank among the best true wireless in-ear buds.
