Nothing’s Headphone A are something worth considering

After the release of the Headphone 1 last year — Nothing’s first over-ear headphones — the company is back with the Headphone A. They’re a slimmed-down over-ear option that keep the Nothing design aesthetic and excellent controls while decreasing the weight and bumping battery life up to a maximum of 135 hours. There are some concessions — middling call quality and a carrying bag instead of a case — but they’re also cheaper at $199. The Headphone A makes more sense to me than the Headphone 1 ever did, and are a great second offering from Nothing.

The Headphone A’s design is incredibly similar to the Headphone 1’s. Each earpiece has the same rectangular shape with an oval enclosure on top. But where the oval enclosure of the Headphone 1 was transparent, on the A it’s an opaque white, yellow, or pink against the white housing (there’s also an all-black option), and the ear shell is the part with the transparent cover. There’s a red square on the right ear cup and a white square on the left one — the same color indicators as an old-school RCA cable.

As with the 1, the A’s housing and headband feel plasticky, but the swivel hinges are sturdier than before. The memory-foam-lined ear cups are comfortable for a while, but I did find I needed occasional breaks because of the clamping pressure at the bottom front of my ear and how the headphones rest on the top of my head. And while the Headphone A are IP52 rated — many headphones pricier than the Nothing, like the Sony WH-1000XM6, Bose Ultra Headphones, and Apple AirPods Max have no IP rating — the ear cups don’t breathe well. I tested them during a Los Angeles February heat wave and was sweating around my ear in 20 minutes. IP52 isn’t a particularly high rating, but the A are resistant to dust and safe from sweat or a light rain.

The controls on the Headphone A are exactly the same as the Headphone 1, and that’s a very good thing. Nothing uses mechanical controls instead of capacitive ones, with a roller for volume control, a paddle for track navigation, and a button for voice assistant activation. The paddle can be held to fast-forward or rewind through a track, although it doesn’t work with every app (it did with Apple Music, but not with Qobuz). The volume roller is also a play/pause button, and with a long press will switch between ANC and transparency mode. The button can be customized in the app to control your phone’s camera shutter, mute the mic, activate noise control, or select an EQ preset. I wish the roller had slightly more resistance so I didn’t overshoot while adjusting volume during my walks, but it’s a minor gripe.

The default Balanced sound profile is a bit too sibilant and sizzly in the upper registers, and the bass is heavy for my taste. Cymbals and the squeals during Yoshimi’s battle against the pink robots took over the texture of the music. I enjoy some thump with my ’90s alternative, but Matt Cameron’s thundering tom-toms on “Spoonman” were too boomy for the track, while the toms on Radiohead’s “There There” had too much ring.

I was fortunately able to address those issues with the EQ in the Nothing X app. There’s both a simple EQ, which allows adjustment of bass, mid, and treble frequencies with settings from -6 to +6, and an 8-band parametric equalizer for adjusting the frequency, gain, and bandwidth (or Q) of each of the eight points. It’s a great amount of customizability for a $200 pair of headphones. It allowed me to dial back the frequencies that I found to be too loud (between 100 and 250Hz for the low end and over 6,000Hz for the high).

But the process did take some trial and error. While most EQs will boost a frequency when the slider is moved up, it sounds like the Nothing instead decreases all of the other frequencies. I expect this is to keep the volume at a reasonable level while changing the sound profile and keeping someone from blowing out their ears. But as someone who has adjusted the EQ on many headphones and who is used to adjusting parametric EQs while sound editing, it’s just counterintuitive to me.

ANC performance is good for the price — better than the Sony Ult headphones and about as good as the Soundcore Space One Pro — and manages to block lower frequencies particularly well. They don’t compare to the $300-plus flagship noise-canceling headphones available from Sony, Bose, or Apple, though. There are three levels of ANC in addition to an adaptive option. I found that increasing the level improved blocking of the low end, but made the higher frequencies come out a tiny bit more.

Unfortunately, noise cancellation on the microphone end is bad. The Headphones A have three microphones — one less than on the Headphone 1 — to adjust to background noise and focus on your voice, but they struggle to keep voices clear and intelligible. They kept traffic to a quiet high-pitched frying sound as I talked to my wife while walking along a busy street in Los Angeles, but there were times my voice was heavily compressed. Words got lost and I would be hard to understand, forcing her to focus and guess the missing words to complete my sentences. I listened back to a recording of the conversation and there were times I couldn’t understand what I said, and I’m the one who said it. The Nothing Headphone 1 had similar problems in our initial testing, before we realized they were backward. But I double-checked; the Headphones A were the right way around. They just struggle with ambient noise. You can get better call quality from the non-pro Soundcore Space One headphones that are $100 cheaper and nearly three years old.

There’s no passive listening mode for the Headphone A; they still need to be powered on when using the 3.5mm jack. When the headphones are connected to a device with either USB-C or a 3.5mm cable (both are included), it disables the Bluetooth and app connection, so you’re unable to make any EQ or ANC strength adjustments. Instead, they’ll continue to use whatever settings are selected when they’re plugged in. You can charge them with a USB-C plugged into a charger and still use Bluetooth, though.

As long as dual connection is enabled in the app, the Headphones A can connect to two devices at the same time, allowing for easy switching between devices in a couple seconds by pausing on one device and starting playback on another. It worked flawlessly with my iPhone 15 Pro and a Sony Xperia 1 V. You can have more than two devices on the list in the Nothing X app and switch at any time which two are connected to the headphones. It’s a seamless integration and keeps you from having to go into multiple Bluetooth menus to connect and disconnect.

Nothing’s design aesthetic is distinctive, to the point where I questioned how many people would be comfortable wearing the Headphone 1 when they came out. The opaque covers make the Headphone A more subdued, though the yellow and pink colors still make a statement. The best improvement, though, is that they’re $100 cheaper than the Headphone 1 while keeping some of its best features.

It would be nice to have a carrying case and a less plasticky feel to the exterior, and the lackluster call quality is a letdown. But if those aren’t dealbreakers for you, at $199 the Headphone A offer style and solid sound, which is better (and more adjustable) than similarly priced headphones, like the Sony Ult. If you passed on the Headphone 1, the Headphone A are the Nothing you’ve been waiting for.

Photography by John Higgins / The Verge