Nothing Ear Open or Nothing Ear? My choice is… both!

For the past few years, I’ve been using Nothing earbuds as my daily carry. In my opinion, Nothing makes some of the best true wireless earbuds you can get. I love the look and feel of the company’s flagship ‘buds, and the sound quality and battery life have always been terrific. Right now, the Nothing Ear 2 are the only wireless earbuds in my backpack.

When Nothing told me it had a new type of earbud on the way, I jumped at the opportunity to try them out. The Nothing Ear Open, as the name suggests, are the company’s first set of “open” earbuds, meaning they don’t actually go into your ear. When I first learned this, I immediately thought to myself, “OK, well, I guess I won’t be swapping out my Ear 2 for these.” I need a sealed design for shutting out the world.

However, after using the Nothing Ear Open for about a week, I’ve come to a new conclusion: maybe I actually need to have two sets of earbuds in my backpack. Let me explain!

With just a quick glance at the Nothing Ear Open, you’ll immediately know these are very different from all the other Nothing earbuds we’ve seen in the past. Since its inception in 2020, Nothing has launched no fewer than five sets of earbuds (more if you count the ones in its sub-brand, CMF by Nothing). All those previous earbuds are either sealed (silicone-tipped earbuds you push into your ear canal) or unsealed (earbuds without silicone tips that go into your ear but don’t actually enter the canal). The former category houses the Nothing Ear 1, Ear 2, and the recently released duo of the Nothing Ear and Ear A, while the latter houses the Nothing Ear Stick. In either case, your ear’s enclosure over the earbud tip is what keeps the bud in place.

The Ear Open, though, don’t go into your ear at all. Instead, you wrap the silicone-covered ear hooks around the backs of your ears to keep them in place. The earbud itself then rests on top of your ear canal.

This design allows for a variety of advantages over traditional in-ear ‘buds. First, they are far more comfortable to wear for extended periods of time because you don’t need to stretch your ear around anything. Second, they will stay put on your ears no matter how much shaking of your head or opening your mouth you do. Finally, they stay much cleaner because your gross ear goop isn’t getting all over them.

However, there are some disadvantages to this style. First, and most obviously, it does not allow for active noise cancelation (ANC). In order to have ANC, you need to seal your ear canal, and that’s simply not possible with the Ear Open’s design. Second, the sound comes from outside your ear canal rather than directly inside it, which limits sound quality significantly. Finally, the earbuds themselves are far larger than sealed or unsealed earbuds, which makes carrying them around slightly more cumbersome.

As I just mentioned, there are some distinct advantages to using open earbuds over traditional in-ear models. One advantage I didn’t touch on, though, is one Nothing is pushing hard for the marketing of this product: awareness of the world around you.

When you have sealed or unsealed earbuds buried in your ear, the outside world is muffled. When you have sealed earbuds that support ANC, the world is essentially shut off, allowing you to fully immerse yourself in whatever you’re listening to. One might think that the Nothing Ear Open’s inability to do this would be bad, but Nothing considers this to be their biggest selling point.

Many people these days walk around with one earbud in their ear. This allows them to listen to music or a podcast or even talk on the phone while still being alert to what’s happening around them. The design of the Nothing Ear Open replicates this experience but with superior stereo listening since you have two earbuds instead of one.

This could be advantageous in a variety of situations. For example, I’m pretty into cycling, and having sealed earbuds while on the road is incredibly dangerous. You might not hear a car honking at you or even your fellow cyclists crashing behind you. The Nothing Ear Open solves this problem, allowing you to hear your music and those real-world sounds simultaneously. Additionally, the ear hooks add a layer of security that your earbuds won’t fall out.

Open-style designs also allow you to listen to music without pausing while chatting with someone. For example, with ANC earbuds, you need to either physically remove an earbud or temporarily disable ANC/playback to order something at a coffee shop. With the Nothing Ear Open, the most you’ll need to do is turn your music down a bit, which is far easier and more convenient.

There are many other situations where an open design would be better than a sealed one, such as being at the gym, driving a car, waiting to get on an airplane or bus, and on and on. However, there are loads of situations in which this might not be preferable, such as on an airplane, working in a coffee shop, or being stuck at a family event where people are arguing about politics. With the Ear Open, Nothing is essentially saying, “These are the earbuds you want for the times you don’t want to shut off the world.”

Setting up the Nothing Ear Open is incredibly similar to all other Nothing earbuds. You put them into the case, hold down the case’s button to put them into pairing mode, and then use your connected device’s native Bluetooth protocol to get up and running quickly. The Ear Open support Android and iOS as well as Windows, macOS, and pretty much anything else to which you would connect Bluetooth headphones.

For smartphones, though, using the Nothing X app brings in a variety of features you won’t get through just using Bluetooth alone. This includes EQ presets, an advanced EQ tool for creating custom presets, pinch controls, a low-latency mode for gaming, the ability to connect to two devices at once, and more. If you use a Nothing phone running Nothing OS — such as the most recent Nothing Phone 2a Plus — you can even access ChatGPT through voice commands. This works with all Nothing and CMF by Nothing earbuds connected to a Nothing phone, though, so you don’t need to get the Ear Open for the ChatGPT feature.

Once you have them set up, usage is a breeze. Getting them on your ears is very intuitive: just wrap the ear hooks around your ears and adjust for comfort. Glasses are fine to wear alongside the earbuds, so no worries there. The counterweight at the tips of the ear hooks, combined with their low weight (each bud only weighs 8.1g) makes them very comfortable. I was able to wear the Nothing Ear Open for over four hours straight with no discomfort at all.

Connectivity is rock-solid, as I’ve seen with all Nothing earbuds. At one point, I left my phone on a table, walked well over thirty feet away, went behind a wall, and my music didn’t skip a beat. Pinch controls are also great. One pinch pauses/starts your music, two quick pinches skips to the next track, and three quick pinches goes back a track. A long hold on the right earbud raises the volume, and a long hold on the left earbud lowers it. I had it all down within just a few minutes, and everything was smooth.

Battery life is also terrific. Nothing says you can get up to eight hours of playback on one charge, which lines up with my experience. When you do run out of juice, just ten minutes in the case gives you another two hours of playback, and a fully charged case can give you up to 30 hours of total listening time before you need to connect it to an outlet.

The sound quality, as expected, is also good. Obviously, you’ll need to accept the limitations of this design as far as sound quality goes. Because these are not actually inside your ears, both bass response and overall volume will be much lower than with something like the Nothing Ear or Ear A. Still, I played various genres of music — techno, rock, ambient, jazz — and everything sounded fine. It just didn’t sound as good as it does on my Nothing Ear 2. For more in-depth testing data of the sound quality, be sure to visit our sister site, SoundGuys, for their review of the Nothing Ear Open.

Finally, you might be wondering if the open design creates a lot of sound bleed. In other words, can other people hear what you’re listening to? I found this not to be the case. Yes, if someone is incredibly close to your ears or you are in a very quiet space, a person could listen in. In all other situations, though, the Ear Open do a great job of keeping the sound output localized to just your ears.

Despite how good the Nothing Ear Open are, there are three things I wish Nothing had done differently. The most egregious thing is the case design. To be blunt, it is way too big. I understand that the silicone ear hooks make it difficult to shrink the case, but some sort of stacked design might have been better. There could also have been a way to separate the hooks from the ‘buds, further compacting storage.

Likewise, the case does not support wireless charging. For earbuds that nearly hit the $150 mark, wireless charging should be a given. Once again, the case design might be the big limitation here, but either way, wireless charging is sorely missed.

Finally, the Ear Open only come in one color at present. Although the white colorway you see throughout this article looks very nice, not even having the option of black is pretty lame, to say nothing of having actual colors from which to choose. This becomes all the more annoying when you see the yellows, oranges, blues, and other colors Nothing’s been experimenting with recently across its product lines.

Ultimately, these are a first-gen product, so Nothing has plenty of room to fix issues like these with a sequel. It also could launch new colorway options a few months from now. On Day One, though, the Nothing Ear Open seem to be missing a core feature and are limited for choice.

As I mentioned earlier, before I even took them out of the box, I had already decided the Nothing Ear Open wouldn’t replace my Nothing Ear 2. The open-style design is too limiting in both sound quality and removal of real-world sounds for me to use them for what I use earbuds for the most: listening to instrumental synthwave playlists while I’m working.

After using these for a week, though, I realized that I was both right and wrong. It’s true that the Nothing Ear Open are no replacement for my Nothing Ear 2 — but they aren’t supposed to be. Instead, these are for the situations in which my Nothing Ear 2 would be inappropriate, such as on my bicycle, at the gym, or waiting for my name to be called at the doctor’s office.

In other words, the Nothing Ear Open make a great case for owning multiple sets of earbuds. It might be that having both sealed and open earbuds with me wherever I go would be advantageous, so I know I always have the proper set for my current situation. Of course, this adds some bulk to my backpack (not to mention burns a $149 hole in my wallet), but that might be worthwhile if I find myself using these just as much as I do my Nothing Ear 2.

Of course, the Nothing Ear Open aren’t the only open-style earbuds on the market. If you have some money to burn, the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds ($299 at Amazon) are some of the best you can buy, although they do not come with ear hooks. They do come in lots of fun colors, though. If you want something closer to the Nothing Ear Open design, the Shokz OpenFit ($179 at Amazon) are highly rated and very similar in both design and price.

What do you think? Do you own multiple sets of earbuds for different purposes? Let us know in the poll above, and be sure to explain your reasoning in the comments below.