- Surprisingly good noise cancelling
- Solid companion app
- Lightweight design
- AI gimmicks
- Underwhelming battery life
- Oddly-shaped charging case
Nothing’s budget buds are back. While 2025’s Ear a did get something of a follow-up in the form of the CMF Buds 2a, the Ear 3a earbuds have now arrived on the scene to offer a smarter take on the same thrifty and trendy formula.
With a fresh new look and a few new tricks, the Ear 3a are Nothing’s most accomplished take on budget buds to date. Even so, an asking price that almost overlaps with the Ear 3 and a less likable charging case might make them a harder sell for some.
Design, comfort, and controls
At a glance, the Nothing Ear 3a earbuds do a lot to sell themselves as a brighter and more colourful expression of the design seen in its most direct predecessor. As you’d expect given the brand involved, there’s a little bit of trendy transparency here. Even so, the overall form-factor isn’t too far from the average set of AirPods.
As with Apple’s iconic earbuds, the stems of the Ear 3a feature a set of physical sensors that you can squeeze on to pause, play, skip tracks and toggle noise-cancellation. So far, so familiar. That’s less the story when it comes to the charging case though. While Nothing’s latest set of earbuds are relatively lightweight at less than five grams apiece, the charging case is more chunky by comparison and a poor substitute for the square-shaped one seen on last year’s Ear 3.
To be honest, the size is less of an issue than the unconventional and irregular shape. Although it isn’t all that different from the competition in terms of overall utility, I found the design off-putting from the get-go, and while I eventually learned to live with it, it's still one of my least favourite parts of the overall package. The fact that I had to use my fingernail to pull the latch holding the case closed was an instant source of irritation.
As with the rest of Nothing’s audio ecosystem, the Ear 3a can be used straight out of the box via Bluetooth but are intended to integrate with the Nothing X companion app. This can be used to tinker with the sound profile and equaliser settings, toggle things like noise-cancelling and tweak the control scheme.
When it comes to codecs, the Nothing Ear 3a earbuds will play nice with LDAC, Hi-Res and Spatial Audio. Again, this is all nothing new, but it's nice to have in a set of earbuds this thrifty.
The other part of the Ear 3a equation that’s a little far from the norm is the integration of a handful of AI-enabled audio features. Once set up using the Nothing X app, you can pinch to record your surroundings, phone calls or any audio you’re listening to. The earbuds themselves have a whopping 32MP of storage to hold those recordings, though they can also be synced to your phone via the Nothing X app.
Even if I put aside the weird ethical implications of using your headphones to secretly record the people around you or on the other end of the line, it feels like such a minor extension of the functionality that the latest version of Android supports as standard anyway. I continue to appreciate Nothing’s willingness to just go for it and try to find fresh angles on the technology involved, but these inclusions added up to little more than novelty.
Performance
Aside from my qualms with the AI features and the carry case, the Nothing Ear 3a didn’t take too long to win me over. My music, podcasts and audiobooks sounded crisp as ever. While the noise-cancelling here isn’t best in class, it was more than good enough to keep me ensconced in a sonic cocoon whenever I needed it to.
The battery life side of things is a little disappointing. Out of the box, the Nothing Ear 3a are good for around four and a half hours with noise-cancelling and six hours without. Paired up with a fully-charged carry case, you’re looking at 25 hours without noise-cancelling or 18 otherwise. For comparison, Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 offer as much as eight hours of noise-cancelled audio per charge.
Subject to our usual testing playlist, the Nothing Ear 3a scored relatively high marks. As you’d expect, it scored slightly underneath what the Nothing Ear 3 had to offer. More often than not, it delivered excellent but not quite exceptional results. However, for the asking price, I think the results that the humble hardware here delivered mostly met the mark.
I can’t quite say the same for the call quality, though. Despite relying on a triple-microphone setup that promises to capture your voice and cut out the background, the recordings that the Ear 3a delivered were a little underwhelming. They’re not entirely unusable, but there’s definitely a big difference between the microphone quality found here and on rivals like the AirPods Pro or even the more accomplished Ear 3.
Nothing Ear 3a - Final Thoughts
It sounds obvious, but there’s a lot of natural parallels to be drawn between the new Nothing Ear 3a and Nothing Ear 3. Like last year’s effort, the Ear 3a bravely attempted to bring some new ideas to the conversation. These forays fall short of that initial ambition, but even so, you’re still left with a set of earbuds that are pretty good.
If you’re looking for a cheaper option and are happy to live with a larger (and annoying) carry case, the Nothing Ear 3a are more than good enough to get by with. That being said, the Nothing Ear 3 aren’t that much more expensive nowadays, and while they are less colourful, they do sound better than the brand’s latest set of budget buds.
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Fergus Halliday
Digital Content Editor
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