Nothing Ear 3A - Too Good for $99

[00:03] best earbuds for most people, offering impressive sound quality, great comfort, battery life, features, and even better A&C than the more expensive Nothing Ear 3. And these offer a very useful feature that I've just never seen on another

[00:18] minute. But first, let's take a step back and start off with the design. These are a very nothing looking pair of earbuds. the classic kind of transparent case, the bubbly design, very teenage engineering. And if you look at the case

[00:31] on the outside, you can see two little bubbles that kind of accent the earbuds. white, yellow, and pink. Of course, the yellow ones are my personal favorite here. And on the inside on the left, you can see a little LED, but it's not just

[00:44] one LED, it's three LEDs in a stack for honestly a pretty neat aesthetic, but battery level and pairing mode and things like that. On the right side, you have your button to go into pairing mode manually. On the back, USB type-C. We've

[00:56] closure on here. And let's see how well they stay in the case. Start off with gentle shake, medium shake, and hard not too worried about these falling out of the case. Both the case and the

[01:10] earbuds are IP54 water and dust resistant. It's pretty rare to see the case also have that rating. I do appreciate that. The design is overall it sits open on your desk if you need it to, but you do not have wireless

[01:23] charging. That's the first drawback we have on these earbuds. At $99, it's good that that's the only drawback so far. Looking at the earbuds themselves, I close, you can really admire the internal tech of this, but from a

[01:35] distance, you're not going to see that. It's much more subtle on the outside. white dot on the left, so you can clearly see which one's which. And you just have your accent color on the inside and a pretty dark, basically

[01:47] vents and sensors on here, including the microphones, are really quite well hidden. They blend in quite naturally. And these do have a ear sensor. So when automatically detect. When you take them out, they'll pause your music. One note

[02:00] earbuds in the past. The case is likely to get some scratches. That clear plastic. You're going to see that if you have keys in your pocket, for example. Overall, this is the most impressive part of these earbuds at $99. Quite

[02:14] Actually, I would say extremely bass heavy out of the box, but most consumers Honestly, the bass is not terrible either. And the EQ is absolutely love these, but if you want to make them more neutral, you can absolutely do that

[02:29] very easily in the EQ. The mids can sometimes get a bit lost with the default tuning, but as I keep saying, the EQ is phenomenal. Any balance issues are easily fixed. The highs are crisp and detailed. Bass is mostly tight and

[02:42] controlled, but can be a tad boommy depending on the song. I would enjoy a bit more texture and fidelity on overtones, but honestly, that feedback is really only worth mentioning if these were three times the price. I found

[02:54] myself reviewing these as if they were three or $400 pairs of earbuds. And I I can nitpick the audio and offer up some feedback, but I mean, that only makes sense if they were really expensive. For $99, these just destroy the competition.

[03:07] The sound quality is very capable. The tuning is very flexible. They can easily be adjusted. And the sound is just incredible on these for $99. These have be the better one if you're on Android for higher resolution audio. If you're

[03:20] on an iPhone or other devices, they're going to default to AAC. Now, I'm going but I wanted to talk about that EQ a little more. I mentioned it a few times. actually do. So, if we tap on equalizer, there's simple EQs and you can say more

[03:33] bass, more treble, voice for someone who doesn't really want to tweak a lock, but bass on here. That's a really good setup. I think that makes a lot of sense versus kind of matching genres. More people are going to resonate with this

[03:45] which anyone who wants to tailor their EQ is going to have an excellent time adjust, you know, what is that, 10 different bands, eight different bands frequency each band is going to be. You can choose the Q value of it and of

[04:00] have basically a full parametric can share it. Uh and if we go over to explore, there's some pre-made ones that you know, download some of these and try them out. And as I said, you can

[04:14] have an EQ that you really like, please feel free to share it. Leave a comment down below. But honestly, sound quality, these sound way too good for $99. Now, you have to make compromises somewhere on a $99 pair of earbuds. But A&C isn't

[04:28] really the compromise either. These are actually better than the Nothing Ear 3, Nothing not too long ago. These are cleaner. They have less noise. At high volumes, these absolutely crush the sound in a better way than the Nothing

[04:40] Ear 3, allowing less of the high-end through. So, by comparison, the Nothing Ear 3 when you're listening to like jet noises or something really loud and like a sound like that, they let more of the higher frequencies through that kind of

[04:52] a little bit compressed, whereas these don't allow that through quite as well. They also block marginally more noise in general. So, slightly stronger ANC on the low end, maybe by about 1 or two dB in a quiet room. These also sound

[05:06] silent. There's no artifacts or white noise. So, I appreciate how clean the solid for this price and it competes double the price, but certainly not as strong as the big three, Sony, AirPods,

[05:19] and Bose. When you're looking at those lower frequencies or voices or a lot of other just loud sounds, these are going to be solid, but they're not going to be competing with those $400 or $300 pairs of earbuds out there. So, just want to

[05:31] overhype these on their ANC capabilities. Decent, very clean, but they have their limitations. The transparency is a little bit less clean. sure. You have decent volume, but it could be a tad louder in my opinion. And

[05:46] while it does sound relatively natural, it's not overly compressed or unbalanced. You're not going to forget that these are in your ears. They're not feeling like the AirPods as far as

[05:58] adjustment in the app, but for, you know, getting the job done, which I think most people using transparency just want to have it so they can hear if and asks a question or maybe they want to be aware of their surroundings when

[06:10] they're walking in the city. Whatever it is, they certainly do get the job done. As far as controls go, these have pinch controls on each earbud. So, you can pinch, you can pinch and hold, you can even do double pinch and hold. And if

[06:22] you pinch both buds at the same time. That's a feature I've never seen on any other earbuds, it unlocks another interesting, well, I'll talk about that gestures for volume. A little bit of a downside with that. Uh, and there's no

[06:34] nodding or head gestures. Really, the industry of earbuds is adding a lot of like that. These don't have that. Just simple pinching. And they're kind of pinching. It's also customizable. So, in the app, if I go down to controls, you

[06:49] can tap on the left or the right earbud. You can customize double pinch, triple pinch, uh, pinch and hold, double pinch and hold, and pinching both buds. Uh, That's always just going to be answering calls or playing and pausing. But for

[07:03] a couple different things. Um, you know, each one's going to have slight differences, so you can't have full customization, but I still appreciate here. Now, I I've kind of beat around the bush here a little bit too long uh

[07:16] talking about that that feature when you pinch both earbuds at the same time. The of this video that I've never seen on any earbuds. This is an interesting recording feature. Now, a lot of earbuds try to add in some unique feature that

[07:29] times it's just a gimmick that you'll never use. This is something I actually think I will use. So, one example of how you would use this is if you're on a something in the phone call. you don't always like maybe your phone's in the

[07:43] something and you want to just quickly record it. You can pinch both earbuds at the same time. The earbuds will record your phone call. They record both ends of the phone call, your voice and the other end. And they also alert both you

[07:56] and the other person on the line that the call is being recorded. Now, that like if you're talking to somebody and all of a sudden you start recording, they might be taken it back. But I think it makes more sense. For example, if you

[08:08] and they're they call you and they're like, "Hey, just so you know, we want to cost this much." And then you're like, "All right, great." And you hang up and then later someone's like, "Oh, like what's going on with your vehicle?" And

[08:20] that they mentioned on the phone call. Well, that's a good opportunity that you could have recorded that part of the phone call so you have it later. Maybe instructions. Again, recording phone

[08:32] useful. That's the main thing that I think would be so useful to have just a recording right away. You can record like 30 to 60 second segments. But there's also another feature tied in with that. If you're not on a phone

[08:46] Basically, anything going through the earbuds. So, it doesn't really make to be pirating music with these. It's very low resolution and low quality. But if you are uh listening to like uh a lecture or a podcast or maybe you're

[09:01] listening to uh maybe you're in like a meeting like a live call for example uh you can just pinch both at the same time like I said and you're able to record further. So if I go into the app I go down to recordings you'll see all of

[09:13] your recordings here. Uh, by the way, this popup there is a little premium option for this which it gives you like basically better accuracy for the transcription, speaker identification, summaries, um, just more like AI stuff.

[09:26] adding this feature cuz they were trying but you really don't need it in my opinion. Just being able to play this back is fine. There's also a free version for transcribing things. Um, so

[09:39] like this transcript right here, you can either do fast, you can do uh like the for the, you know, the more accurate model there. I haven't had any issues you can always just relisten to it. But what I was going to say is if you go

[09:52] of all, you have a lot of storage. Apparently, this can store up to two hours on the earbuds. I think it's very impressive. We also have the ability to customize what the recording window is, including retroactive recording, which I

[10:05] assume means it's just always recording and deleting it as it goes because you could say, you know, when you double pinch record or save the last 30 seconds that's not going to be a phone call, but maybe in like a a lecture or a podcast

[10:19] or something like that, a radio station thing that could be really useful, but otherwise uh you could, you know, go forward up to 60 seconds into the future. You can choose the sound quality just for standard and pro. I set it on

[10:31] great, but if you want more storage, maybe s standard would be fine. You can to be relevant for like transcription and stuff. Uh, and you can have the transcription mode. As I said, there's three modes. Standard, uh, fast or

[10:45] precise versus fast, and then the pro if you pay for that plan, which, uh, I'm I'm I'm not I don't really have any need to upgrade to that plan. Once you're a second to actually send it over to your phone. And once you open it, then

[10:57] you're able to play it back, you're able to crop it, uh, and do some basic stuff, stuff you'd have from like a sound bite. Now, talking about the other features app is really clean. I love the way Nothing set this up. You have your other

[11:11] tells you the battery life on them. You can customize the noise control, so noise cancelling. You have low, medium, high, or adaptive. Transparency, like I that. You have spatial audio, but if you turn spatial audio on, it's going to

[11:25] change uh your EQ. So, I usually don't keep it on. I'm not the biggest user of spatial audio. Uh we've got the EQ down there. You've got low lag mode. If the controls, of course, these do have multipoint connectivity. They can

[11:37] connect to two devices at the same time, maybe phone and laptop, you're watching answer the phone call, it'll automatically switch over to your phone. two devices. It's just one of my favorite things. Device settings.

[11:51] just change the resolution. So, LDAC or AAC. It's nice to see that in the app, though. And we have in-ear detection as well as find my earbuds. But finding your earbuds just plays a chirping sound. I'll do that right now.

[12:04] You can kind of hear it. Wait, it's this one actually. It's not even much of a chirping sound. It's kind of a weird sound, but again, drop it and it rolls away. You know, use that. Oh, and if you connect to a

[12:19] nothing phone, I'm connected to a Galaxy S26 Ultra, but if you connect to a nothing phone, you get a couple extra features like you can talk to chat GBT hands-free. Not really a gamecher to me, but you know, a little benefit if you

[12:32] comfort goes with these earbuds, it's very similar to previous Nothing earbuds, very similar to AirPods. They stay in my ears very well. I find that like I could work out with these. They're not going to fall out. There's

[12:45] can go smaller, larger, you know, depending on the ear. But, you know, the really good to me. The battery life on these, well, you get a fast recharge. So, 5 minutes of charging gives you 1 hour of listening. Presumably, that's

[13:00] with like uh no ANC. So, you know, in a pinch, that's kind of nice you have nothing for showing the battery levels with different configurations, ANC, uh, LDAC, different things like that. So, if you don't have active noise cancellation

[13:14] on and if you use the lower resolution codec AAC, you get 10 hours of battery in the earbuds and 42 hours total, which is huge. But if you turn on&c and LDAC, you get four and a half in the earbuds and 20 hours included in the case with

[13:28] no wireless charging. That's a could be a little bit annoying, but it's honestly the only real compromise with these earbuds so far. Now, let's get into a microphone test. These are the microphones on the Nothing Ear 3A. I'm

[13:40] in a studio, so this should probably be as easy as it possibly could be. But let me know if these sound, you know, robotic or or compressed or anything. they block the louder environments. All right, so outdoor microphone test.

[13:53] some like weed whackers and mowers running back there, and it's also a bit microphones perform in this louder environment here. >> All right, so the nothing 3A, they check a lot of boxes. $99 is a killer price. I

[14:08] They sound good. The ANC is clean. It's not the most powerful, but that does, you know, does a good job within its capabilities. I think the design is very minimal. The black ones will just blend in. The white ones the same, or you get

[14:22] something a little more fun and accented like the pink or the yellow ones. I might scratch in the future, but it's not really that big of a deal in my with, you know, stickers or skins or

[14:34] snapshot feature, you can be the judge. Is that a gimmick or is it actually useful? But I think the Nothing Ear 3A are pretty hard to deny that they're a really good value for a lot of people. Solid pair of earbuds and again $99. So,

[14:48] you think of these and what I should compare them to