is a senior reviewer covering TVs and audio. He has over 20 years experience in AV, and has previously been on staff at Digital Trends and Reviewed.
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 Headphone A come with a carrying bag instead of a case.
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.
Nothing Headphone A specs Price: $199
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