The Brief
The Nothing Headphone 1 is for people who are tired of boring headphones and want something that looks as good as it sounds. They offer a fun, bass-heavy audio profile, the best physical controls on the market, and truly insane battery life. While they’re a bit heavy and the transparency mode is subpar, they deliver 90% of the flagship experience for a fraction of the price, making them one of the best headphone values of the year.
Nothing Headphone 1 Review
Let’s be real: you probably had an opinion on the Nothing Headphone 1 the second you saw it. Nothing, the company built by marketing savant Carl Pei, doesn’t do subtle. Its entire ethos is built on see-through gadgets, dot-matrix fonts, and a level of pre-launch hype that could power a small city. So when images of these strange, squircle headphones—looking like two cassette tapes strapped to a headband—first leaked, the internet did what it does best: it formed two very distinct, very loud camps.
- Camp A: “Finally, something that doesn’t look like every other boring headphone.”
- Camp B: “Ugh, another case of style over substance.”
For the past week, I’ve had the Headphone 1 clamped to my head, and I can tell you that both camps are a little bit right and a little bit wrong. The design is absolutely a statement, but for the first time in a while for a new audio contender, the substance is here to back it up. This isn’t just a good-looking headphone; it’s a surprisingly great one. And at $299, it’s not just a product. It’s a problem for the rest of the industry.
A Design You Can’t Ignore
In a sea of black and silver ovals from Sony and Bose, the Headphone 1 is aggressively different. The earcups are squared-off aluminum shells with transparent windows showing off the patterned, techno-industrial plastic inside. It’s a bold look that’s both retro and modern, and it’s guaranteed to get comments.
But nobody will think it feels cheap. The build quality here is fantastic. The aluminum earcups and sturdy metal alloy hinges feel more premium than the price tag suggests. There are some trade-offs for that premium feel, though. At 329 grams, they’re significantly heavier than the featherweight Sony WH-1000XM6 (254g). You will feel that extra heft on a long flight. More surprisingly, the memory foam earcups get noticeably warm. Testing them on a New York summer day, my ears felt toastier than they do with competitors from Sony or Bose. Great for winter, maybe less so for a humid commute.
The real genius of the Headphone 1, however, isn’t the look. It’s the controls. In an industry maddeningly obsessed with finicky, unreliable touch panels, Nothing made a radical choice: physical buttons that actually work. And they’re brilliant.
On the right earcup, you get a simple on/off slider. Below that is a “Paddle”—a small joystick you flick left or right to skip tracks. Then there’s the star of the show: the “Roller.” It’s a beautifully smooth-gliding wheel for volume control that is so intuitive and satisfying to use that I’m now angry it’s not on every other headphone. It’s a genuine user-experience innovation.
Sound That’s Made For Fun
Whether the “SOUND BY KEF” branding on the earcup is marketing genius or a sign of deep engineering collaboration is debatable, but the result is a headphone tuned for fun, not for a flat, analytical response curve. And it works. The custom 40mm drivers deliver a thunderous, tight bass that makes modern pop and hip-hop thump without turning into a muddy mess. The soundstage is vibrant and focused, and for most people, it will sound virtually as good as any other pair of high-end headphones on the market.
Where things get more complicated is in how the headphones handle the sound around you. The active noise cancellation is surprisingly good—better than you’d expect at this price. It’s not on the same level as the class-leading Sony or Bose cans, but it does a solid job of quieting a subway train or minimizing cafe chatter. The one place it really struggles is with wind, which can create a roaring noise that other headphones handle better.
But the real weak spot is the transparency mode. It’s just not good. It processes external audio in a way that makes the world sound tinny and compressed, like you’re listening to everything through a tin can. It’s a huge step down from the natural-sounding transparency modes on AirPods Max or Sony’s flagships.
Call quality is also a mixed bag. In a quiet room, the microphones do a decent job. But introduce any significant background noise, and people on the other end of the line will tell you that you sound muffled.
Battery For Days (Literally)
What isn’t a mixed bag is the battery life. It’s absolutely absurd. Nothing quotes up to 35 hours with ANC on and a whopping 80 hours with it off. That’s not a typo. In my testing, I couldn’t even kill them with ANC off. These are the headphones to buy if you care about battery life above all else. Add in an IP52 rating for sweat resistance, and you’ve got a seriously durable daily driver.
Should You Buy The Nothing Headphone 1?
You should buy them if…
- You prioritize battery life above all else.
- You want headphones that make a design statement.
- You love physical controls and hate finicky touchpads.
- You listen to a lot of pop, electronic, or hip-hop music.
You should not buy them if…
- You need best-in-class transparency mode for daily awareness.
- You want the lightest possible headphones for travel.
- You make a lot of phone calls in noisy environments.
- Your personal style is more “understated” than “sci-fi retro.”
So where does this leave us? At $299, the Nothing Headphone 1 isn’t perfect. The transparency mode is a letdown, the mics could be better, and they can feel a bit heavy and warm. But it’s an ambitious product that gets the big things right: a standout design, a fun and engaging sound, best-in-class battery life, and truly innovative controls.
It’s not trying to be a spec-for-spec Sony killer. It’s carving its own niche as a high-style, high-value alternative that nails the core experience. Nothing has always been good at building hype. With the Headphone 1, it has built a product that, despite its flaws, largely lives up to it.
