Nothing Ear Open review: these $150 earbuds are a tough call

Nothing's first pair of open-style earbuds are hard to recommend

Image credit: Max Buondonno / The Shortcut

🏆 Review score: 2.5 out of 5

The Nothing Ear Open, the first open-ear buds from London-based startup Nothing, take a stab at a market that’s become more popular thanks to brands like Bose and Sony. The Ear Open is designed to latch onto your ears and play music like little speakers over your ear canals, letting the outside world in while still letting you enjoy all your favorite music. With a price of $150, I was intrigued, to say the least.

Here’s the problem: there are a few too many things you need to be okay with to justify buying them. From the design itself to the sound quality and charging options, nothing about them is necessarily bad, but they can be tricky to live with. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether it’s worth the gamble because they’re pretty conflicting buds.

Pros

• ✅ Solid headphones for $150

• ✅ Long 30-hour battery life

• ✅ Nothing’s design language continues to impress

• ✅ No significant sound leakage

Cons

• ❌ Design might not fit everyone

• ❌ No wireless charging

• ❌ Case is pretty big

• ❌ Sound quality is too bass-heavy

Shortcut review

Image credit: Max Buondonno / The Shortcut

The Nothing Ear Open are solid open-style earbuds for $150, but they have some problems. The biggest issue is their design, which may or may not fit on your ears. Even if you can hook them on comfortably the first time, they can slide out of place away from your ear canal and muffle your music.

When they are aligned, the sound quality is decent but very bass-heavy. Battery life is surprisingly solid and lines up with the 30 hours Nothing’s claims, although I wish they came with wireless charging to juice back up. Also, the case they come in is pretty big and not as convenient to carry around as other earbuds. For the money, these are fine open-style headphones, but you can get a similar (and better-fitting) experience from alternatives like the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds and Sony LinkBuds Open.

Full review

Image credit: Max Buondonno / The Shortcut

📐 Nothing’s design language continues to shine. There’s no question that the Ear Open look really good. The buds have a similar transparent design to Nothing’s other earbuds, down to the black and red accents. They come with a white finish that’s clean and minimal, and the ear hooks are flexible and comfortable to wear for long periods of time. Despite it being three years since the first Nothing earbuds were released, this transparent design isn’t growing old any time soon.

🦻 They won’t fit everyone. The design isn’t perfect, primarily because the buds won’t fit everyone. We passed them around to members of The Shortcut team as well as family and friends, and a good number of folks couldn’t get them to sit on their ears the right way. The ear hooks are flexible and comfortable, but they can easily slip off for some people with smaller ears. Similarly, the speakers are rotated 50%, so they play right into your ear canals, but they can misalign easily and muffle their sound. I also noticed that wearing glasses can interfere with the Ear Open’s fit; Nothing says eyeglasses won’t get in the way, but in my usage, the speakers and hooks would fall out of place faster than they would without glasses on.

The Ear Open are IP54 rated so they’re safe to work out in, but I would never work out with these things on. They’re basically just dangling from my ears while I’m sitting still, so I can’t imagine they’d remain in place while running or weight-lifting.

The most disappointing part is you can’t try these on before you buy them. Nothing has a 30-day return policy on all of its products, so you can technically get your money back, but you won’t know whether the Ear Open fit until you actually buy them.

🧳 The case is pretty big. It’s also worth mentioning that the case they come in is thin and long compared to the normal capsule-shaped earbuds case. I can generally fit the Ear Open in most of my sweatpants and jean pockets, but if you don’t have deep pockets, you’ll need to throw them in a bag while on the go.

Image credit: Max Buondonno / The Shortcut

🎧 Sound quality is good, but very bass-heavy. After I got the Ear Open set up, I started playing some music and immediately noticed two things: sound quality is surprisingly good for open-style headphones, and boy oh boy do they love bass.

For the most part, music is fairly balanced. Highs and mids are pretty clear, and the soundstage feels wide. I listened to a lot of country music with the Ear Open and was impressed that the steel guitars and dusty drums had a good amount of definition. However, I also noticed that bass levels are simply too strong to be enjoyable. I had to crank it down in the Nothing X app because it sounded completely unnatural for everything but hip-hop. I found it to be worse than the unnecessary bass Beats adds to its headphones, which is saying a lot.

You can adjust the sound quality using EQ settings which is great, and you’ll enjoy how your playlist sounds for the most part. But it might take extra work to make the Ear Open sound the way you want them to.

I actually found that phone calls and podcasts sounded best on the Ear Open. Voices are a lot clearer than any of the music I listened to, and the extra bass in those scenarios helps a lot.

Do these sound as good as earbuds like the AirPods Pro 2 or Sony WF-1000XM5? No, because they don’t block any noise and it can be hard to hear your music in loud environments. But for open-style earbuds, they’re not too shabby.

Image credit: Max Buondonno / The Shortcut

🗣️ The perfect amount of external noise–plus, no one can hear your music. Since the Ear Open sits on top of your ear canal, you can still hear everything around you in a natural way (a.k.a. you don’t have to rely on microphones and an algorithm to pump the outside noise into your ears like other earbuds). This makes them perfect for walking around cities, or anywhere you still need to hear what’s going on around you while you jam out. I also found that audio doesn’t leak very much at all; it does in the sense that music quality dips for the listener, but those around you won’t be able to hear what you hear unless you crank the volume to 100%.

🧑‍🎓 Enough smarts to get excited about. The Ear Open pair with the Nothing X app and come with a fair amount of features like multi-point connectivity, EQ settings, bass level adjustments, and more. I can also squeeze the buds to play/pause your music, adjust volume, and more which can all be customized in the app. You also get Google Fast Pair and Microsoft Swift Pair to make setting them up easier. While voice assistant integration would’ve been nice to see, as well as Find My Device support in either the iOS or Android ecosystem, the features Nothing includes are sufficient for the price.

Image credit: Max Buondonno / The Shortcut

🔋 30-hour battery life. If you want long-lasting earbuds, the Ear Open is right up your alley. Nothing says they can last eight hours on a full charge and up to 30 hours with the case, and that’s what I’ve experienced myself. These buds can last a full work day for me before dying, and I can easily cruise through a work week without having to plug them in. 

⚡ The lack of wireless charging is disappointing. Speaking of plugging them in, that’s the only way you can charge the Nothing Ear Open. The buds aren’t compatible with wireless charging, which sucks on every pair of earbuds that omit it. It’s incredibly convenient to come home and set your earbuds on a wireless charger, but that’s simply not an option with these. Maybe Nothing will add it to the next generation.

🛍️ The alternatives solve a lot of problems. It’s hard to recommend the Nothing Ear Open when its competitors can solve a lot of the problems I have with these open earbuds. Buds like the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds and Sony LinkBuds Open fit a lot more securely while still letting in outside noise, sound better as a result, and come with a smaller case. The Nothing buds are cool to look at and affordably priced, but if you want to feel safe about the headphones you buy, it’s as simple as picking up an alternative pair of open-style earbuds.

Image credit: Max Buondonno / The Shortcut

Should you buy the Nothing Ear Open?

✅ Yes, if…

• You want to spend less than $200

• You want cool-looking headphones

• You want long battery life

❌ No, if…

• You’re worried about them not fitting

• You want something you could wear to work out with

• You want better sound quality

Max Buondonno is a writer at The Shortcut. Follow him on X @LegendaryScoop.