Nothing has introduced Nothing Ear and Nothing Ear (a) at $149 and $99 respectively. Nothing Ear and Ear(a) retain the design of previous models. The company has focused on the sound of the headphones.

Nothing Ear can provide up to 8.5 hours of standalone listening time and 40 hours with recharges.

The younger Ear(a) model has slightly better battery life: 9.5 hours of standalone listening time and 42.5 hours with recharges.

The Nothing Ear(a) is the first to add color to the company’s devices and will be available in yellow. Otherwise, the headphones will have the same design.

The similarities extend to how they function. Both models have the same active noise reduction power and are capable of blocking up to 45 dB of noise, which is twice as much as the Ear 2.

The Nothing Ear headphones provide up to 1 Mbps audio transmission at 24-bit/192 kHz with LHDC 5.0 codec and Nothing Ear (a) headphones provide up to 990 kbps audio transmission at 24-bit/96 kHz with LDAC codec over Bluetooth 5.3.

Both pairs of earbuds are IP54 rated for dust and water resistance. The case of the more expensive Ear is more rugged, with an IP55 rating compared to the IPX2 rating for the Ear(a) case.

Nothing says the Nothing Ear has a driver system that uses a ceramic diaphragm, “rarely found in audio products,” to improve sound richness.

The company has also partnered with Mimi to provide hearing testing in the Nothing X app, which creates a personalized sound profile for your unique hearing characteristics.

Users will be able to create their own sound profiles in the equalizer and share these profiles with friends. But only within the Nothing ecosystem.

The new headphones from Nothing will also have integrated ChatGPT, which will allow interacting with the chatbot on the go, if you also have a Nothing smartphone running the latest Nothing OS.

The company reports that the feature will appear on Nothing Phone 2, Nothing Phone 2a, and Nothing Phone 1.

The headphones can be pre-ordered on the official website and the company will announce when they are available.