2025
What do you want out of a pair of over-ear headphones? No, really. Like, what do you want? I don’t mean that as a challenge; I mean that as a threat. Personal audio is a serious thing, and you need to make a sound choice when you’re picking a device that protects you from the horrors of other people’s talking, other people’s music, or other people, generally speaking. But it’s not that simple. If choosing over-ear headphones were based solely on sound, then we’d be walking around with ugly-ass blocks on our ears like we just stepped out of a replica Apple Store constructed inside some dweeb’s Minecraft server.
The fact is, we want it all when it comes to headphones. We want something that sounds good, that looks cool, and that feels nice on our heads—and we don’t want to pay too much for it. That’s a high bar, to be sure. Not unattainable, but high, and a rare one on top of that. It’s the bar that I judge almost every wearable audio device by, but especially the bar that I judge Nothing’s first pair of over-ear headphones by. I say “especially” here not because I have a bone to pick or an axe to grind or some other analogy that doesn’t involve bones or axes or pointy objects, but because Nothing, as usual, is talking a big talk, and it’s my job to say whether or not that talk has any merit. And to do that, we have to start from the most superficial place we can.
Cool-looking headphones with a competitive price that hold their own against AirPods Max. Pros Fun design
Fun design Solid sound
Solid sound Very comfortable
Very comfortable Competetive price Cons Finnicky buttons
Finnicky buttons Not quite AirPods Max sound
They Definitely Look… Different
When I first saw leaks of Nothing’s $299 Headphone 1, I thought to myself… uh-oh. It’s not that I hated the look off the bat, but more that—as the leaks suggested—I saw that these headphones have a distinct vibe. As is the case with any gadget that has “A Look,” that vibe is not going to be for everyone. Personally, I was on the fence. I could tell exactly what Nothing was going for with the Headphone 1: an almost-retro pair of over-ear headphones that evoke a cassette player or one of the many devices of yore that Nothing is clearly (pun intended) inspired by. It’s a swing, and not one that I was sure would connect.
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