Nothing’s new buds promise to sound as transparent as they look

Nothing Ear Open
Pictured: Nothing Ear Open
// Transparent tech meets open-ear design.
Fergus Halliday
Sep 26, 2024
Icon Time To Read1 min read

Nothing is expanding its empire of earbuds with the new Ear (Open).

Billed as the brand's first set of open-ear headphones, the Ear (Open) are very much what you'd expect. These wireless earbuds might have a different form-factor to Nothing's last but they very much embody the same transparency tendencies.

Like many of the other open-ear options out there, the Ear (Open) are looking to strike a balance between making your music sound good and keeping you aware of your surroundings. To that end, the earbuds come with an engineered "Sound Seal System" with directional speakers that minimises sound leakage.

The trendy tech company is also billing the buds as one of the slimmest set of open-ear headphones out on the market, with each bud weighing just 8.1g. 

A lightweight form-factor isn't the only thing that the Nothing Ear (Open) has going for it though. Under the hood, the headphones feature a custom patent-pending diaphragm, steeped drivers that get the sound closer to your ears and a bass enhancement algorithm that optimises for lower frequencies.

Other key specs here include 8 hours of battery life on a single charge plus an extra 22 hours of playback via the charging case. There's also fast-charging, with 10 minutes translating into 2 hours of playback.

Last but not least, those who set up and use the Ear (Open) with the Nothing X companion app will be integrate the earbuds with ChatGPT. Nothing rolled this functionality out to its other earbuds earlier this year, so it's not quite new but it is interesting to see given how AI is making its way into more and more gadgets.

If that's more of a drawcard than a dealbreaker for you, you'll be able to preorder the Nothing Ear (Open) can do so via the Nothing website from this week with local pricing starting at $249.

Fergus Halliday
Written by
Fergus Halliday is a journalist and editor for Reviews.org. He’s written about technology, telecommunications, gaming and more for over a decade. He got his start writing in high school and began his full-time career as the Editor of PC World Australia. Fergus has made the MCV 30 Under 30 list, been a finalist for seven categories at the IT Journalism Awards and won Most Controversial Writer at the 2022 Consensus Awards. He has been published in Gizmodo, Kotaku, GamesHub, Press Start, Screen Rant, Superjump, Nestegg and more.

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