The microphones in your earbuds probably suck. You know, I know it, and apparently Nothing knows it too. Its fix? Better microphones — but in the charging case, not the buds.

The Ear 3 buds feature what the company calls “Super Mic.” What that really means is a pair of microphones built into the earbuds’ case, with a button to activate those mics instead of the ones built into the buds.

Nothing’s pitch is that the beamforming microphones in the case can deliver clearer audio and better noise cancelling, which probably mostly comes down to the fact that you can hold the case right in front of your mouth — traditionally where microphones go — rather than inside your ears.

I’ve been testing the Ear 3 for a week or so throughout a vacation in New York, and have given the Super Mic a bit of a test along the way. Nothing is definitely right that it sounds better than the buds by themselves, especially in relatively quiet areas — audio recordings are a little less tinny, with more rounded sound and depth to my voice. That said, the first time I tested it during a voice call with my partner, she could hardly tell the difference, so for some it will clearly be a subtle improvement, especially if connection quality is an issue.

Things are more mixed in noisy areas. Nothing has built in some fairly powerful noise cancellation to both sets of microphones. It’s impressive at blocking out unwanted noise — I stood a few feet away from a jackhammer and couldn’t hear it in the recording — but it’s so aggressive that it chopped up my voice in the process, the sound dropping in and out like it might on a call made from a moving train. This happened on both the earbuds and the Super Mic, and the latter suffered from it just as much.

There’s a bigger problem if you hope to use this for video: latency. Using the Blackmagic camera app I spotted an improvement in sound quality whenever I activated Super Mic, but my audio pretty immediately dropped out of sync with the video, my speech no longer lining up to my lip movements. That won’t be a problem for voice calls, but for video calls and especially any hopes of recording footage for the likes of TikTok, it might kill a lot of Super Mic’s appeal.

There are other downsides to Super Mic. Holding the case to your mouth means, well, holding the case. Buds don’t always sound great, but they are hands-free, and this isn’t. Moving it too far away from your mouth or pointing it in the wrong direction will also ruin your audio pretty quickly. That might make it annoying for longer calls, especially on the go, but probably won’t bother you too much if you just need to record a quick voice note or video.

Compatibility is a headache too. Super Mic will work anywhere that your regular earbud microphones would — your phone actually can’t tell the difference, since the switch between microphones is handled by the buds themselves — but that means it doesn’t work everywhere.

Most voice and video calls support it, including the likes of Zoom and WhatsApp, along with some audio recording apps, like iOS Voice Memos. But you can’t use it to record WhatsApp or SnapChat voice notes, and most Android phones’ camera apps only work with the phone’s own microphone. iOS 26 just added the option to select an external microphone for video recording at least, so compatibility is actually better for iPhone users, despite Nothing making its own Android phones.

The company wants to be clear that this isn’t its fault. “Most of these apps default to the phone’s native microphone and don’t give users the option to select another input,” Andrew Freshwater, head of global smart products marketing at Nothing, said when I asked about the limits to support. “That’s an OS and app-level decision, not ours. We’d love to see this flexibility opened up so more people can benefit from Super Mic.”

I’ll be testing Super Mic out more over the next few days, along with the rest of the Ear 3’s audio, for a full review next week.

Photography by Dominic Preston