Nothing Headphone 1 Review: As Good as They Look?

(casual music)

- These are the Nothing Headphones 1.

(casual music continues)

So, Nothing has become very much a design company.

And that's not a bad thing,

people love great design, I love great design.

But you can think of them as a design company

in the genre of consumer electronics.

They've made a few phones where design

is like their major distinguishing feature.

They've also now made a few earbuds and accessories

where design is their major distinguishing feature.

And now, this is their first pair

of $300, over-ear, noise-canceling headphones.

So now they're playing in the space with the big dogs,

like where people usually buy headphones like this

for their audio quality, their noise cancellation,

the Sonys, the Boses of the world, Sennheisers.

And so these will obviously stand out

because of this design,

but is that enough?

Now, first of all, the design is pretty wild,

so it may be enough for some people.

There's a dark version and a light version.

I've been rocking the light version.

And yeah, it's very much like cassette tapes

glued to the side of your head-type of look.

So there's nothing in the modern headphone world

that's going to look quite like it,

which, you know, hey, that's also the Cybertruck effect.

Like all that means is some people

are going to love it because it looks different

and some people are going to hate it

because it looks different.

I do think this is a bit more elegant

than a Cybertruck, though.

There's some text, there's this red dot,

so you always know which side is the right side.

And then, of course, Nothing really likes

the transparent aesthetic.

And obviously, that's a little boring with headphones

because all you'd really see is drivers and batteries,

but I still think they kind of pulled it off

and it looks neat.

Is that crazy? Am I crazy for that?

But I do have a theory.

I do think that this slightly weirdo design

was easier for me to accept

because the rest of the product, as I've been using it,

is actually pretty good.

Now, when I first saw

that Nothing was making these over-ear headphones,

you know, I read the spec sheet

and I got all the information about them,

and one thing kind of stood out to me

that you might have also seen in a keynote

or whatever announcement they end up doing,

which is, "Sound by KEF."

Right, so these headphones are designed by Nothing,

but obviously this is their first pair

of these big, over-ear, noise-canceling headphones.

So they've partnered with this company that,

I honestly don't know that much about, called KEF.

And my immediate reaction is,

okay, how much of a brand collaboration is this really?

So I went digging around KEF's website,

and wow, they have a whole bunch of Hi-Fi speakers.

A few thousand dollars,

a few tens of thousands of dollars.

They've got bookshelf speakers, standing speakers.

These things are $225,000.

But then, they did have, exactly,

one pair of headphones on their site.

One pair of wireless, noise-canceling, over-ear headphones.

These things are called the Mu7.

Uh-huh.

Is this one of those white-labeled product-type situations

where Nothing just changed the design a little bit?

That would feel kind of insane, and I had to find out.

So I bought them.

They were like 400 bucks on their site,

but they're listed for $220 on Amazon,

so that's where I got them.

But I'm happy to report that, thankfully,

they're almost nothing alike.

I mean they sound similar enough,

but if the premise is that Nothing just took

like these drivers and just reintroduced the packaging

and all the features around it,

then I think they've done enough

to make an entirely different product.

There's about five different interesting buttons

on the Nothing Headphones 1.

First of all, this top button here

is actually also a slider,

kind of like a mouse scroll wheel.

So it's smooth, it goes back and forth,

and it's volume up and down.

But you can also press it in once to play/pause,

and then hold it down to switch between transparency

and noise cancellation.

I don't love that they still make this creepy sound

when they do.

(headphones sighing)

But that's already way better

than those finicky, touch-sensitive areas

we've seen on so many other headphones lately,

so I'm down with it.

And then right below that, there's this like paddle,

that's large enough and easy to find without seeing it.

And that is the next track and previous track button.

And in certain supported apps,

it'll also actually hold down to fast forward or rewind.

Confirmed this works in chunks in Spotify,

but it also works I think best

in like a 2x scrubbing speed in Apple Music.

But then the bottom of the right headphone

has the on/off switch, the USB Type-C port,

and the 3.5-millimeter headphone jack.

And then at the front of the right ear

is a customization button.

By default, pressing it once triggers a voice assistant

on whatever phone you've paired to.

But in the Nothing app,

you can actually customize this button to do other things.

And then on the inside here is a subtle

but useful Bluetooth pairing button.

So no touch controls, no awkward, finicky swiping,

only tactile, physical buttons and switches.

Thumbs up to the control system.

And then they hit almost every other

build quality fundamental too.

These headphones are comfortable, they're well-built.

The ear cups are a mix of metal,

where you grab the headphones,

but also plastic to save weight.

And the headband is very flexible

for a variety of head sizes.

The ear cups are quite soft.

They are a little heavier than the average,

completely plastic ANC headphones, but not too heavy.

They're not AirPods Max-heavy, for example.

And they're still very comfortable to wear for hours on end.

I know that because I just did.

I had about eight hours of flights this past weekend,

and I watched tons of videos

and listened to music and podcasts,

and I was impressed by how good they feel.

And they did that all on one charge.

The battery life has rated about 35 hours.

Roughly, the average for this category.

And then when I didn't want to have them on

or when I had to talk to somebody,

I could take them off like this and they actually fold down,

which is not something they all do.

The one miss is these headphones don't fold.

So traveling with them, you know,

that means the case is a little awkwardly bigger.

And also, this zipper in the case is kind of annoying.

I'm not just saying that because I just came

from this perfect Sony XM6 magnetic buckle case,

but this is actually a small annoying zipper

that I'm confident will annoy everyone who uses it.

Just watch other videos,

I bet they also hate the zipper.

Just a little thing.

Aside from that, though,

as far as comfort and fundamentals for headphones,

they've done a great job here.

So then, what about the sound?

What if you are buying them for the sound?

Well, I think you could do a lot worse.

First of all, the ear cups, the pads here,

are very soft, but also very thick.

So when you put these on,

the isolation from your environment,

even without ANC, is really good.

So then you turn ANC on,

and it does a great job with room noise

and general white noise.

Turn the music up,

and that's all you're really going to be hearing.

I will say on the extreme end,

it's about a notch and a half behind the Sony's ANC.

I could still hear some plane engine noise on my flights,

where I'd never hear that through the Sonys.

But it's definitely not a deal breaker.

If the Sonys are an A+,

these are a B+.

Transparency mode is a different beast, though.

The AirPods Max and the Sonys have nailed that,

these kind of fall in with the rest of the pack.

I mean, functionally, they're fine.

I can hear my environment.

If people talk to me, I can hear them.

But my own voice,

maybe there's not enough mics inside,

but my own voice is super booming, it just doesn't,

it's not comfortable to have a conversation with these on,

so I ended up just taking them off.