The hotly anticipated Nothing ear (2) earbuds have been leaked, and there are some upgrades to be very excited about! And of course, this all comes hot on the heels of Carl Pei confirming the Nothing Phone (2) — the company’s truly coming out swinging in 2023!
Coming from reliable leaker OnLeaks and shared by smartprix.com, it’s fair to assume that not much has changed on first impression of the near-identical design. But the important changes come in the form of some tiny tweaks to the hardware’s exterior, and some big improvements under the hood.
So, rather than blather on, here are the five features you should get hyped about, which look set to make these an impressive iterative update over the Nothing ear (1).
1. Same design with some small (but impactful) tweaks
As we know, the Nothing ear (1) defined the design language of the company — raw transparency. It made for an interesting aesthetic, which while the overall shape struck me as something similar to the AirPods Pro, truly catches your eye. You can look inside and see the high levels of engineering that go into creating a pair of true wireless earbuds.
Nothing ear (2) is keeping a largely identical form factor, but with some small adjustments. Some of these are purely visual, as you can see two of the design elements have been altered on the stem. But most interestingly, the noise-cancelling microphone you had towards the back of the bud has been moved to the top of the stem (near the red dot).
This is a small change, I grant you that. However, I think it will have a big impact, which leads nicely to the second feature…
2. Personalized (and manually customizable) ANC
Active noise cancellation was pretty basic on the Nothing ear (1), with three modes: off, on or strong. This time round, we’re getting personalized ANC — the ability to tweak it on a more granular level to deliver the right amount for you.
To have this amount of customization is great for those who don’t want to have that depressurizing effect you may get from earbuds going too strong!
3. Advanced EQ
Nothing had already done some good work on some EQ options in the Nothing ear (1), but you had a rudimentary set of options. Whereas based on this leak, it looks like we’re going to get some sort of manual EQ to tweak each individual level.
Don’t get me wrong, the ear (1)s sounded great, but it would have been great to get that level of customization to make the most of each genre. Here’s hoping you can save presets too!
4. Dual Connectivity (multipoint)
Yep, you read that right. Multipoint bluetooth is coming to Nothing ear (2) in the form of dual connectivity. Two simultaneous connections that you can switch between seamlessly.
Not much else I can say about this, except for it will be an insanely useful feature for those flipping between a phone and laptop on the go! I love the software implementation of it when using AirPods between my MacBook and iPhone, so to get something a little more open to other devices would be warmly welcomed.
5. An improved transparency mode
Now hear me out on this. The leak just confirms that there will be a Transparency Mode, but I think that microphone placement alteration will help with something along the lines of an adaptive transparency mode, which quietens any harsh sounds and focuses on highlighting conversation.
This is indeed me making an educated guess based on my use of true wireless earbuds in the past, but if this is what Nothing is aiming for, then this could be a huge upgrade over the transparency mode in the ear (1).
