WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 The Nothing Headphones, eh? Okay, that's the last one of those I'm about to make, 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:07.960 but Nothing has been kind of on a tear lately, making awesome, really cool, 00:00:07.960 --> 00:00:11.480 and relatively well-priced audio products, 00:00:11.480 --> 00:00:15.980 especially with their Nothing Headphones. However, when it comes to their A series of products, 00:00:15.980 --> 00:00:20.760 whether that's their phones or their earbuds, sometimes the trade-offs can be a little bit hit or miss, 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:25.480 but we're hoping that all of the trade-offs are gonna be the right ones for their new budget headphone offering, 00:00:25.480 --> 00:00:28.720 the Nothing Headphone A. In front of me, I have three of the four 00:00:28.760 --> 00:00:32.600 Nothing Headphones A colorways, we got white, black, pink, but we don't have the yellow, 00:00:32.600 --> 00:00:36.960 which I kind of like, because it looks like a fried egg on your ear. We can only open one today, though, 00:00:36.960 --> 00:00:40.100 and which one's that gonna be, boys? White! Well, you know what, 00:00:40.100 --> 00:00:43.880 cause you caught me in such a good mood, we're gonna unbox all of them, but we're gonna listen to just the white ones. 00:00:43.880 --> 00:00:48.040 Okay, let's take a look. Voila. 00:00:49.280 --> 00:00:54.280 Okay. I was kind of expecting these to have maybe a different color in the white parts, 00:00:54.280 --> 00:00:57.720 but there are differences in the accents. There's like the darker gray ones, 00:00:57.720 --> 00:01:01.560 and instead of the red accent on this ear, you get a pink accent over here, 00:01:01.560 --> 00:01:06.600 whereas on the black ones, it is red and white. They're very, very reflective. 00:01:06.600 --> 00:01:10.800 But before we get to these, let's take a look at what else is in the box. 00:01:10.800 --> 00:01:15.440 We have a bag. Well, I do appreciate that we get a bag, 00:01:15.440 --> 00:01:19.280 you know, something to carry our headphones in that isn't just the packaging it came in. 00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:22.840 I am a little disappointed that it's not a full case 00:01:22.840 --> 00:01:24.540 like the original Nothing Headphones. 00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:30.200 Not that it was like the best case ever, but it was a nice value add. In the box, we have two cables, one C to C, 00:01:30.200 --> 00:01:34.840 and one 3.5 millimeter. I don't have a lot of faith in the strain relief on these cables, honestly. 00:01:34.840 --> 00:01:38.480 I, previous Nothing Products, I've always kind of been underwhelmed with, 00:01:38.480 --> 00:01:42.320 though I do like the unique very square. It's interesting because it's kind of like 00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:45.920 the similar design motif to how they have the like squircle, 00:01:45.920 --> 00:01:49.000 squectangle, swectangle, 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:55.320 the round in the square shape. It's just, it's neat. I do really appreciate Nothing's design language. 00:01:55.320 --> 00:01:58.320 I just wanna check if the cables are colored, matched. 00:01:59.320 --> 00:02:02.640 They're all white. That's okay. There's worse things in my life. 00:02:02.640 --> 00:02:05.640 Is there like a plastic peel on this? There's like a seam. 00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:09.560 They see like very faint, this faint outline that my fingers are going along. Oh yeah. 00:02:09.560 --> 00:02:12.600 On the outside of these, I can see a lot of mixed feelings about how they look. 00:02:12.600 --> 00:02:15.800 I think they kind of lose the kind of cool, 00:02:15.800 --> 00:02:19.280 flashy complexity of the normal Nothing Headphones. 00:02:19.280 --> 00:02:23.280 And I would feel like the big plastic chunks in the middle 00:02:23.280 --> 00:02:29.320 kind of just make these look a little cheap compared to like the cool designs that show through 00:02:29.320 --> 00:02:33.360 on the actual like clear plastic areas. It also makes them a lot bigger than they need to be. 00:02:33.360 --> 00:02:38.840 Like, look at how much bigger they are than their ear cups, just cause they're square. Speaking of which, the ear cups are made of some sort of, 00:02:38.840 --> 00:02:42.280 I wouldn't even go so far as to call it like faux leather 00:02:42.280 --> 00:02:45.280 cause it doesn't even really attempt to feel 00:02:45.280 --> 00:02:48.720 like actual leather. It's very much like a silicone kind of, 00:02:48.720 --> 00:02:53.160 it's a very interesting texture with a decent amount of cushion and a decent amount of depth for your ears. 00:02:53.160 --> 00:02:58.840 So these could be comfortable even though they're not the biggest ear cups. On the bottom, we have a power switch, a status indicator, 00:02:58.840 --> 00:03:02.200 a USB-C port and a 3.5 millimeter port. 00:03:02.200 --> 00:03:06.720 Something to note is that while you can listen to audio via the USB-C, 00:03:06.720 --> 00:03:11.840 if you wanna listen to the audio via 3.5 millimeter, you do have to have these on. 00:03:11.840 --> 00:03:16.080 There's no passive listening, so they will use battery if you're using the 3.5 millimeter jack. 00:03:16.080 --> 00:03:21.560 That's kind of a bummer. One question that I have is if you'll still be able to take advantage of the noise canceling and stuff 00:03:21.560 --> 00:03:25.560 while you're listening via 3.5 millimeter. On the right ear cup, we have our rocker 00:03:25.560 --> 00:03:29.760 that allows you to skip tracks or fast forward through them. And you have your roller. 00:03:29.760 --> 00:03:33.360 We got a rocker and a roller. Do you remember that movie, Rock and Roller? 00:03:33.360 --> 00:03:37.240 I don't, I've never seen it, but I do remember all the ads because it would come on the TV for five seconds, 00:03:37.240 --> 00:03:41.800 which would be Rock and Roller. This is where you're gonna find your volume settings as well as pressing for play and pause. 00:03:41.800 --> 00:03:46.240 Also on the right ear cup is a multi-function button. We're probably gonna take a look at their app 00:03:46.240 --> 00:03:51.360 to just see exactly what everything can do. On the left headphone, you get nothing, sorry lefties, 00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:55.480 but you can also see venting for microphones. Oh, another secret button. 00:03:55.480 --> 00:03:59.020 You will not believe how long it took me to find this when I was trying to pair these. 00:03:59.020 --> 00:04:02.760 That's the Bluetooth pairing button. It's really annoying to accidentally like hold a button down 00:04:02.760 --> 00:04:07.440 and then find out that you've disconnected your headphones from whatever you're listening to. So I really appreciate, honestly, 00:04:07.440 --> 00:04:11.880 the whole loadout for these nothing phones. Like it's such an easy headphone to control. 00:04:11.880 --> 00:04:14.920 You're not like doing a crazy bunch of multi-presses 00:04:14.920 --> 00:04:19.120 to do things. It's pretty nice. The headband has a smooth adjustment 00:04:19.120 --> 00:04:22.920 and has this kind of weird silicone pad. 00:04:22.920 --> 00:04:26.480 It's not the nicest. Yes, Prime Minister, what's that? 00:04:26.480 --> 00:04:31.120 The material is called liquid silicone. That's dumb as hell. 00:04:31.120 --> 00:04:35.800 Love you, bye. The way this mechanism adjusts, 00:04:35.800 --> 00:04:40.320 I might worry about getting hairs caught in it or it causing like kind of pressure points 00:04:40.320 --> 00:04:45.240 for people who have maybe larger heads. I personally didn't find too many issues with it. 00:04:45.240 --> 00:04:48.440 For the earphones you have swivel that can go all the way flat for storage. 00:04:48.440 --> 00:04:53.320 And you have some kind of spring-loaded tilt that it's really, it's like, it's weird. 00:04:53.320 --> 00:04:58.320 What I do find is that it causes these to have a bit of clamping pressure that people may not enjoy so much. 00:04:58.320 --> 00:05:02.280 I did not find these to be particularly comfortable. I found that they got a little bit warm. 00:05:02.280 --> 00:05:06.600 When I put them on, I can really tell they're kind of hugging my ear the whole time. 00:05:06.600 --> 00:05:09.920 I don't really have super big ears. So usually this isn't an issue, 00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:13.560 but your mileage may vary. They remind me so much of the AirPods Max ear cups 00:05:13.560 --> 00:05:16.680 that I really just think that it should just pull off with magnets. Oh, and look at that. 00:05:16.680 --> 00:05:20.240 There is some sort of flashes of pink also on the inside. That's cool. 00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:25.080 With the pink ones, you can see through to the driver housing a little bit better. 00:05:25.080 --> 00:05:30.960 Dude, non-removable ear cups is kind of bad. I see screws underneath the ear cups when I bend them. 00:05:30.960 --> 00:05:35.120 These really don't feel like they come off. Shame on you, nothing, shame on you. 00:05:35.120 --> 00:05:39.600 All right, it seems like these cups aren't coming off. If they do, it feels destructive. 00:05:42.160 --> 00:05:46.160 There's not a pleasurable experience. It took a lot of effort. Yeah, you just kind of gotta really rip on them. 00:05:46.160 --> 00:05:51.000 But hey, no shame on you. In terms of other features, these come with Bluetooth 5.4. 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:54.920 They are IP52 water resistant and dust resistant, 00:05:54.920 --> 00:05:58.600 which means that they can probably handle like a little bit of sweat if you're getting a little active. 00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:03.600 The battery life that they claim is 62 to 135 hours, 00:06:05.240 --> 00:06:09.280 depending on your ANC and codec usage. Oh, and that's another important thing. 00:06:09.280 --> 00:06:12.440 This has the LDAC audio codec. 00:06:12.440 --> 00:06:15.960 So if you're somebody who cares about having really high quality audio connection, 00:06:15.960 --> 00:06:19.120 even if it comes at the cost of battery life, well, you got it. 00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:22.520 They do by default only use AAC. 00:06:22.520 --> 00:06:26.600 I would have loved to see maybe some of the Qualcomm codecs, 00:06:26.600 --> 00:06:31.040 but getting LDAC is pretty cool on a lower priced set of cans. 00:06:31.040 --> 00:06:34.640 They also have Google fast pair for easy adding to any sort of Android device. 00:06:34.640 --> 00:06:37.700 These charge to full in two hours, but if you need a quick top up, 00:06:37.700 --> 00:06:42.800 you can plug them in for five minutes and you will then get five more hours of audio playback, 00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:47.080 which is pretty cool. Oh, look at that. I like the text that they do to denote 00:06:47.080 --> 00:06:50.760 the left and the right side. I think that's all there is to say about the outsides. 00:06:50.760 --> 00:06:55.600 So the only thing there is to do is take a listen to what's inside and that's audio, good sound, hopefully. 00:06:55.600 --> 00:07:00.320 I'll let you know after this message from our sponsor. I can report that the pairing process was pretty smooth 00:07:00.320 --> 00:07:03.360 once I found the Bluetooth button. So let's take a listen. 00:07:03.360 --> 00:07:08.720 Okay, first thing I noticed, ANC is quite good. I don't find that it's causing 00:07:08.720 --> 00:07:12.800 any sort of like pressure sensation or anything like that. ANC on the whole has gotten a lot better 00:07:12.800 --> 00:07:16.800 in just a few short years, even as it's climbing down to cheaper and cheaper headphones. 00:07:16.840 --> 00:07:20.680 It's great to see. When you pair the headphones, you are also prompted to download the app. 00:07:20.680 --> 00:07:25.840 And I think that nothing has a great companion app. There's easy control over the noise cancellation settings 00:07:25.840 --> 00:07:29.960 from the level of noise cancellation that you want, adaptive mode, transparency mode, 00:07:29.960 --> 00:07:33.600 or thank you, the ability to just turn it off. And when it's off, 00:07:33.600 --> 00:07:36.680 these honestly have pretty decent isolation. 00:07:36.680 --> 00:07:41.640 These also have spatial audio. I don't really care for that. They have the concert mode and cinema mode. 00:07:41.640 --> 00:07:44.640 And I don't really know what the difference is, but it's usually off. 00:07:44.680 --> 00:07:49.840 You also get access to a full parametric equalizer. 00:07:49.840 --> 00:07:53.720 You can use a simple equalizer or use pre-made profiles, but you can go to each of these bands 00:07:53.720 --> 00:07:57.920 and adjust not just how loud or quiet you want each of these sections of the audio spectrum to be, 00:07:57.920 --> 00:08:02.720 but you can also adjust the cue factor, which changes how steeply the audio is curved 00:08:02.720 --> 00:08:06.640 for that specific frequency. It's really cool. And that means that if you have any sort of problems 00:08:06.640 --> 00:08:10.040 with these headphones, you can dial in your preference as you please. 00:08:10.040 --> 00:08:15.280 And you can even scan a QR code or make a QR code to share your equalization preferences 00:08:15.280 --> 00:08:18.800 to make sure that you can get a headphone that sounds good to you or to share with your friends, 00:08:18.800 --> 00:08:23.120 because you have so many friends when you're EQing headphones, I'm sure. That's not fair. I have friends that I EQ headphones. 00:08:23.120 --> 00:08:28.640 You also have a decent control customization. You can put a lot of different stuff on your button, 00:08:28.640 --> 00:08:32.120 including press and holds and on your roller and on your paddle, 00:08:32.120 --> 00:08:38.240 though there's a couple of things that you cannot change like the paddles don't have a ton of customization, 00:08:38.240 --> 00:08:42.040 but that's okay. But with how much you can customize most of the other controls 00:08:42.040 --> 00:08:45.320 and how much you can control easily on this headphone, 00:08:45.320 --> 00:08:48.400 I don't think you're missing out on too much. You can also set up dual connection via this app 00:08:48.400 --> 00:08:52.920 so that the headphones will specifically remember two devices that it'll more easily shift between 00:08:52.920 --> 00:08:57.560 so you don't have to deal with the like, kind of like shaky handoff like Bluetooth 5.4 00:08:57.560 --> 00:09:02.200 does technically support like multi-point connection, but it's really, really clumsy. 00:09:02.200 --> 00:09:05.240 The dual connection on this app makes it work a lot better. 00:09:05.240 --> 00:09:08.520 But that's enough about the app. Let's give these things a listen. 00:09:09.200 --> 00:09:17.800 Okay, so these are kind of weird. 00:09:17.800 --> 00:09:21.640 On the one hand, they have a decent amount of bass, 00:09:21.640 --> 00:09:25.960 but on the other hand, they kind of end up sounding like muffled. 00:09:25.960 --> 00:09:30.000 It's weird and it kind of shows up in a lot more like acoustic or like rock stuff. 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:33.720 Whereas in EDM, I think it sounds pretty good. I think like it's almost like hollow. 00:09:33.720 --> 00:09:38.720 Like what they did is that they had like a lot of bass, but then they were worried about it becoming like bloated 00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:42.960 and you losing detail in the mids so that they like cranked down the low mids or something. 00:09:42.960 --> 00:09:46.800 And it feels like they've almost like kind of sucked the soul out of a lot of some of the music. 00:09:46.800 --> 00:09:50.000 Outside that, I think that the treble reproduction is good, if not a little bit peaky, 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:53.920 but it kind of feels like it has enough sparkle to be like more attention grabbing. 00:09:53.920 --> 00:09:57.800 It's more of a V shape, but I'm just kind of really weirded out 00:09:57.800 --> 00:10:01.600 by what they did with the bass. Could you bring it back with EQ? I think you could. 00:10:01.600 --> 00:10:04.840 I bet she we could. In fact, actually I already did. I took a little bit of time, 00:10:04.840 --> 00:10:08.520 spent some time with the EQ to bring it back. And I think that these sound a lot better. 00:10:08.520 --> 00:10:11.840 And that's, this is exactly why the EQ is awesome. 00:10:11.840 --> 00:10:16.320 Because if I find that these headphones aren't up to my preference, then I can just kind of fix that. 00:10:16.320 --> 00:10:19.360 And what I did was improved that like weird scoop 00:10:19.360 --> 00:10:22.600 in the low mids and things feel a little bit more lively without feeling bloated. 00:10:22.600 --> 00:10:26.440 Though these are still kind of a bass heavy headphone. I'm still kind of impressed by the ANC honestly. 00:10:26.440 --> 00:10:31.280 Also something to note, once you've applied the EQ to these headphones, if you're going to be listening through USB-C or 3.5, 00:10:31.280 --> 00:10:35.560 they will hold whatever your previous settings were when you were connected to the app, 00:10:35.560 --> 00:10:39.600 which can be good or bad. But what does Labs have to say? 00:10:39.600 --> 00:10:43.840 Let's see if I was spot on with this. Okay, interesting. 00:10:43.840 --> 00:10:48.200 Wow, the charts look really bad. What we're looking at here is a frequency response and variation graph. 00:10:48.200 --> 00:10:51.280 The white area is basically the preference 00:10:51.280 --> 00:10:55.240 of what most people would think sounds good. The red is the difference in our test results 00:10:55.240 --> 00:10:58.760 across tests and different testing apparatuses. 00:10:58.760 --> 00:11:03.600 So you kind of have an idea of the range of where these headphones may fall, depending on your head. 00:11:03.600 --> 00:11:07.080 Now that this is guaranteed, you always have to give it a listen to tell if you really like it. 00:11:07.080 --> 00:11:10.780 But I think for me, this graph looks worse than it sounds. 00:11:10.780 --> 00:11:14.880 That scoop in the mid-bass does really, really harm the music out of the box. 00:11:14.880 --> 00:11:19.340 And the treble peaks that I was talking about were saying there was kind of some sparkle. I didn't find it too annoying, 00:11:19.340 --> 00:11:23.560 but you can see that there's a lot of variation across our testing, which means that like depending on your head 00:11:23.560 --> 00:11:28.640 or even like the way it sits on your ears could mean that you could get a very different experience, 00:11:28.640 --> 00:11:33.400 which is exactly why. You can EQ in the app. But I think that we shouldn't really be expecting 00:11:33.400 --> 00:11:37.440 a lot of people to do that, nothing. We should be trying to release the best headphones we can. 00:11:37.440 --> 00:11:42.600 And these seem like a big step down from your previous headphones, as well as from the even cheaper CMF headphones 00:11:42.600 --> 00:11:46.280 from the budget, nothing brand, CMF. Yeah, Labs really didn't like it. 00:11:46.280 --> 00:11:49.440 Labs notes, this sounds bad, just straight up bad. 00:11:49.440 --> 00:11:53.760 I don't think they sound as bad as the graphs make them look. I'll say that much, but that's just my personal preference. 00:11:53.760 --> 00:11:57.880 I don't think it was that awful. And the EQ I was able to put on it fixed a lot of the problems, 00:11:57.880 --> 00:12:03.080 but that's pretty disappointing. So let's talk about price. These come in at $200, 00:12:03.080 --> 00:12:06.460 which is okay for the features it presents, 00:12:06.460 --> 00:12:10.840 getting access to multiple codecs, getting Bluetooth 5.4. 00:12:10.840 --> 00:12:15.760 The battery life on these is supposed to be killer, as well as having a pretty capable ANC. 00:12:15.760 --> 00:12:20.920 They're good on paper. It's a shame that they weren't able to really tame the audio, 00:12:20.920 --> 00:12:26.920 and especially frustrating since they've had prior success doing this, so I don't really know what went wrong. 00:12:26.920 --> 00:12:30.940 But maybe if you find these on sale, or you're really like this style, and you like the rest of the features, 00:12:30.940 --> 00:12:35.220 you can fiddle with the EQ to find something that will make these sound a lot better. 00:12:35.220 --> 00:12:39.260 $200 for headphones that'll block out a lot of noise in a noisy office. 00:12:39.260 --> 00:12:42.900 If you don't care that much about sound quality, then you have a lot of other options 00:12:42.900 --> 00:12:46.180 that can also do decent ANC, have decent features from cheap brands. 00:12:46.180 --> 00:12:49.620 Like Soundcore, for example, has a lot of stuff that's competitive under the $200 price point. 00:12:49.620 --> 00:12:53.900 Maybe they can fix the sound, or maybe you can fix the sound yourself. All I know is that we can't fix 00:12:53.900 --> 00:12:57.060 the fact that we're at the end of the video. So thank you so much for watching. 00:12:57.140 --> 00:13:00.420 If you enjoyed this, why don't you check out Linus's unboxing 00:13:00.420 --> 00:13:03.820 of the cheaper CMF headphones. I don't know what he thought specifically, 00:13:03.820 --> 00:13:06.660 but from what I've read, apparently they were pretty decent.