Nothing Ear 1 – Long Term Review!- Nothing better than this under INR 6000 or $99!

Unboxing the Nothing Ear 1 TWS Earbuds.

The Nothing Ear comes is a nicely packed compact box, that has just the necessary accessories, unboxing the box we get the below items:

• Earphones inside the charging case
• USB-C Charging Cable
• Small/Large Earphone Tips/Plugs
• User Manual

We really liked the minimal approach of the User Manual, where it clearly shows how to pair the earphones and the control gestures by which one can easily adjust the Sound, Play/Pause music, etc.

Build, Design & Features of the Nothing Ear 1.

The Nothing Ear 1 TWS Earbuds have a beautiful transparent design, where-in we can easily see the internal parts of the earbuds, The Case also looks quite nice, it’s a square shape case with just the Bluetooth Pairing Button and the USB-C Charging Port on one side, inside the case, we have colour coding for the earbuds, red for right and transparent/white for lest earbud, there also is a small LED light that glows to indicate Pairing & Charging.

Talking about the earphones, they are colour coded so that, we don’t get confused between the Right and the left pair, which happens quite often while using other TWS earphones. The Red one is the right pair and the White one, the left pair, also if you look closely, we can see the “Nothing Ear (1)”, engraved on the earphones handle, the charging pins can be found on the inner side of the handle, also these earbuds are IPX4 Water-resistant.

These Earphones just weight at around 4.7 grams each and fell quite light on the ears, many times, we have worn it for more than 5-6 hours at a go and didn’t feel any discomfort, the Ear Tips are also of good quality. These earphones can also detect when you remove them from your ears [In-Ear Detection], so if you’re listening to music/watching a video, when the earphone is removed from an ear, the content gets paused, which is quite useful while having quick conversations.

The Gesture control also works very well with these earphones, we also get good feedback when a gesture is made, some quick gestures include, Double-tap to take or drop the calls, triple-tap to skips the music tracks, and a long-press changes ANC mode, the press changes the mode from, No ANC to ANC ON and then Hear-through mode, by which you can listen to outdoor sound.

How does the Nothing Ear 1 Sound?

Taking about the sound, by default we found these earbuds to be high on bass, the sound is tuned in collaboration with Teenage Engineering, and they have done a good job, people who like to listen music with a lot of bass instruments will definitely love this, we listened to a wide variety of music including the 80s Pop, 90s Bollywood and some EDM Music on these earbuds and overall we feel the sound is good, we do have the EQ setting in the Nothing Ear 1 App, and our settings was set to “Balanced”, but users have the option to customize their EQ settings.

Talking about the ANC [Active Noise Cancellation], we were a bit surprised by the noise cancellation these earbuds offer, we could easily compare them with earbuds prices upwards of Rs.18K or $250 – We did not expect them to be this good for the price it sells for. Overall, the sound output with the EQ settings in the app, make these a great pair of TWS Earbuds for daily use.

Checkout the Fostex TM2 Review – They make your IEM Wireless.

How is the Call Quality on the Nothing Ear 1?

This is the one of the best thing, that we liked about the Nothing Ear 1, the call quality is quite good, given the fact that many of us are still working from home & we tend to take many calls. The calls we took were clear and loud, even when you are a bit far away from the connected device, there were hardly any drops, which clearly shows that the connectivity is also quite good on these earbuds, also the Noise cancellation works well, these earphones cancels out the basic noises easily, and we can hear the sound out them Without much distortion.

Generally, most of the TWS Earphones are very average at calls, and only few of the high-priced one above $200 or so are good enough, but with this earphone, we were quite surprised with the call quality, considering its price of INR 6000 or USD 99.

How is the Battery Life of the Nothing Ear 1 ?

We would say the battery life on the Nothing Ear 1 is average, we got around 3 hours of usage with the buds at 75% volume levels with ANC [Noise Cancellation] On, and around 15-17 hours with the case, although we really liked the design and other features, we would have liked to see a better battery life, hopefully the next gen Nothing buds would have them.

This earphone also supports wireless charging, which is quite useful as you don’t need to carry around your wires all around, we have a Wireless charging power bank and the Nothing Ear 1 charges perfectly when placed on it [See the above image for reference] when charging is on, the LED indicator on the case glows to red and when it is complete it turns to green.

Nothing Ear 1 – App Features & Bug Fixes.

The Nothing Ear 1 App offers quite useful features, such as EQ Options, setting up the Noise Cancellation mode, checking the Earbuds touch gesture, hear the buds, show the battery percentage, also with the feature “Ring my Earbuds” in the app, you can find the earbuds if you have misplaced them, and it is in near proximity and connected to the phone, so basically it blasts a tone at super high volume, that we can listen to the earbuds ringing sound.

One of the best thing that we liked about Nothing is the customer feedback taken into consideration and fixing the issues as soon as possible, we used these earbuds for more than a month, and we got 2 OTA Updates, which fixed the commonly reported issues.

Why Should you consider getting the Nothing Ear 1.

Overall for the price of Rs.6000 or $99, these earbuds are worth every penny, they sound well, look super stylish, are build well and offers some cool smart features via the app, all together, the Nothing Ear 1, makes an excellent daily use earbuds, plus they also make a great gift for students, working professionals or anyone who use TWS earbuds for long time.