Nothing Headphone (1) Pro: Two-minute review

I love an audio outfit that refuses to kowtow to the norm (no thinly disguised AirPods copies here) and instead forges ahead with unconventional and striking ideas — and not just visually, but within the driver count and feature set, too.

Nothing’s success in the audio and headphone arena is deliciously hit-and-miss. There have been some huge, long-term budget wins and an inaugural set of ‘close, but no cigar’ cans that made us yearn for an update to see if the relatively young tech brand (born of OnePlus’ co-founder Carl Pei in 2021) could fix things. And you know, it certainly could…

But here we are, smash-hit affordable second set in the bag (albeit an actual bag, and one that reminded me of swimming lessons in grade school) and on to a third set of headphones from Nothing, this time in the much trickier premium space.

Can the Nothing Headphone (1) Pro sit pretty at the very top of the firm’s over-ear lineup and perhaps even snatch a spot in our best noise-cancelling headphones guide? If you just gave me the headphones and, ahem, nothing else, it’d be a much easier recommendation than when handing over the whole package.

Nothing has worked very hard on the details here, including a new triple-driver audio architecture and upgraded materials throughout. There’s machined titanium which actually helps to make the arm 45% lighter than Headphone (a), 9H Panda Glass on the ear cups (which Nothing assures me has been thoroughly drop-tested 18 times at a height of 1.8m, so it absolutely, positively will not shatter) and even 12% thicker padding and 10% wider headband than Headphone (1). Also, there’s a new foam lining in the cups that’s a claimed 50% softer, thanks in part to a new dual-layer system with a silicone baffle wall around the cups.

And here’s another claim: 40% better ANC than the Headphone (1) Pro’s nearest older (a) stablemate, thanks to 10 mics in total that have been repositioned on the inner walls of the earpieces. Does all of this make for a more silent backdrop for your music? You betcha it does.

Acoustically, Nothing isn’t afraid of a collab either, and for this set of cans it teamed up with the famous (and rather chic) Metropolis Studios in Chiswick, London. This was not only for the creation of a new “Pro-level Flat EQ switch” on the left ear cup, but also to unveil a new Dynamic Spatial Audio mode plus five custom EQs, where one is meant to sound like you’ve been dropped into Studio B at the professional recording facility.

So where’s the “but” within my verdict? For me, it’s a weighty issue. Headphones like these must always marry sound quality and comfort with battery life and portability. Here, the battery life with ANC is a relatively unexciting 30 hours (or 28 with LDAC and ANC both in use), although it jumps to 68 hours without ANC or LDAC deployed. And once you add the case, it more than doubles the product’s weight in your bag. The thing is, given the use of glass on the ear cups, you wouldn’t want to go without a case, would you?

Nothing takes great pains to sell you on the aesthetic and design language of this new case, even suggesting you add a strap so it becomes a headphone handbag where the headband is the handle of the bag. But, I’m sorry, the Apple AirPods Max at least made the ‘headphone bra’ (still one of the most controversial cases out there) small and lightweight. This gray half-shell is not light — and don’t go thinking it’ll at least house your bundled USB-C-to-USB-C and 3.5mm-to-3.5mm cables, or even a replacement battery. It will not.

I think much of the added expense here goes on said case. And that to me does not represent value. Simply put, I found myself reaching for other headphones simply because I didn’t want to carry the Nothing option. And that is a shame.

Sonically, there are marginal gains to be had over the Headphone (a) but depending on the music you most enjoy, you may actually prefer the (much) cheaper product from Nothing’s own catalog for expanse and excitement. So again, it’s a tough sell.

Nothing Headphone (1) Pro review: Price & release date

• Released on September 28, 2026
• Priced $399 / £349 / (approx. AU$655)

Now then. This is premium territory for Nothing and then some, isn’t it?

Given that the Nothing Headphone (1) launched in July 2025 for $299 / £299 / AU$549, and the follow-up Nothing Headphone (a) arrived in March 2026 for half that (at $199 / £149 / AU$329) Nothing essentially has to upsell its fans to the tune of $200 — or £200 — more than the most recent and very highly rated Headphone (a) release, to get you to look over at the Pro-suffixed set. And that is a big ask.

Now, consider the five-star CMF Headphone Pro, which I called “as good as $99 / £79 / AU$179 headphones can possibly look and sound” shortly after their release in September 2025. Hard not to think that the big ask just got even bigger, no?

Then again, $399 / £349 is not an unreasonable asking fee if they’re that good; there’s plenty at this level to pit them against in the wider flagship headphone space (Sony’s WH-1000XM6 are $50 / £50 pricier, at $449 / £399 / AU$699, for example).

It’s just that rarely have I seen three sets of headphones from a single brand, all released all within the same 15-month period, that a) look so similar (see attached photos) in terms of design and shape, save for the case you put them in; and b) that vary so much in price.

So let’s delve a little deeper, to see where the money’s gone.

Nothing Headphone (1) Pro review: Specs

Nothing Headphone (1) Pro review: Features

• 5 Spatial Audio modes (Standard, Studio B by Metropolis, Live House, Club, Concert Hall) are fairly light touch
• Flat EQ switch to toggle between neutral and everyday listening (meant for pro mixing) is interesting, if hard to access… and not to my taste
• 5 mics per ear cup for ANC is a big improvement, aided by better passive NC

The headline-grabber here is the addition of Spatial Audio profiles that can either be deployed with or without head-tracking. If you’re hoping for AirPods Max to Apple Music iPhone levels of head-turning immersive audio trickery, you’ll be disappointed, but I did find the profiles added a sense of “OK, the live gig feels like it’s in front of me” or “Oh I’m in a recording studio in leafy Chiswick, I get it” to the sound profiles.

As if to really emphasize the new audio architecture under the hood, Nothing has gone particularly specific with the EQ tabs here. If you bypass ‘Simple’ (which offers the usual ‘vocal boost’ presets and the option to create your own) and head to ‘Advanced’ within the Equaliser page on the Nothing X app, you can actually tweak the various settings per driver — well, for the ‘precision driver’ (ie. the midrange dynamic driver) and the ‘main drivers’ (which would be the 40mm bass dynamic unit and the xMEMS treble driver). Yes, really.

Add to this Nothing’s Q Factor tab (to define the width or sharpness of the frequency band being boosted or cut), Gain (the loudness in decibels of a specific frequency band being toyed with) and Frequency (you can choose a specific frequency from 20Hz up to 40kHz to tweak) and essentially, if you’re quite sure that 11,595Hz is where you need a boost you can have at it. And you can have it sharply, and with a modified jolt to the loudness, if you so want — by first locating the Precision dynamic driver dot on the stave, because that handles frequencies between 5 kHz–15 kHz.

While impressive to toy with, the above sonic tweaks pale into relative insignificance once you locate Personal Sound, in my opinion. It’s not new to this product, but I’ve long been a fan. This is a test of your actual hearing, in whatever environment you find yourself. It takes around three minutes, during which you listen to ever-decreasing tones of different frequencies in each ear, until you cannot hear them. At the end of it, a personalized profile will be added to your cans and this, to me, makes a lot more difference than the tweaks I made without it. My hearing is good, but still, this test finds the areas that could be subtly bumped or eased off, for me.

Now, Nothing’s ‘Flat’ EQ toggle, on the top inner edge of the left ear cup, developed alongside Metropolis Studios. Honestly, it’s hard to find and difficult to switch on or off while wearing the headphones, but since you can’t do so within the app, you will need to use said switch. The feature is billed as a “neutral profile that removes coloration and processing” and “designed for specific listening situations — like reviewing tracks or comparing mixes”. Nothing even suggests that the type of situations in which you’ll need it: “a clean setup to make critical listening decisions about how a track behaves before it reaches audiences.” You should note that Transparency Mode, Spatial Audio and EQ settings are disabled when Flat EQ is on.

For me, Flat EQ is a miss. Deploy it and there’s an odd sense of being in a tunnel with a bit of a warm veil and even a slight echo to the audio. It’s novel, but neutral and useful for critical listening? During my testing, not so much.

What of the ANC? It’s much better. Nothing has put three feed-forward and two feedback mics on each ear cup capture noise. The mics are also now positioned inward in a bid to better avoid direct wind exposure and airflow interference. Basically, Headphone (1) Pro does a better job at understanding your surroundings and adjusting things according to extraneous sounds in your immediate environment.

You can select Adaptive Active Noise Cancellation, which automatically adjusts between Low, Medium and High levels based on your surroundings for a claimed maximum of 46 dB of noise reduction, or manually select it yourself — and when deploying ‘High’ I was very impressed. My hunch is that the claimed “40% broader noise cancellation coverage across the frequency range” and “5 dB stronger average noise reduction than Headphone (1)” are true, but that aside from the mics and software, said improvements also have plenty to do with the stepped-up padding and new silicone ‘baffle wall’ around the cups to create a better seal around the ear.

Transparency mode? It’s good. It really does do what it says on the tin: lets the world in (particularly my voice and the voices of those around me, vying for my attention), but without any tinniness to my music.

Elsewhere, you can “start a broadcast” to other Auracast-enabled devices nearby simply by playing music and toggling on ‘Broadcast Audio’ in the ap. You can also receive or join broadcasts (with or without a password, if you or your sharer has set one), which is fun and still relatively novel, despite Auracast having launched a few years ago now. Dual connection and a low-lag mode are here, and during my tests wearer-detection (which can be switched on or off in the device settings) was very reliable.

Lastly, call quality: very good indeed. My testing involved taking calls on a particularly windswept day on the Dorset coastline, yet callers said I sounded remarkably clear.

• Features score: 4.5 / 5

Nothing Headphone (1) Pro review: Sound quality

• LDAC support, plus hi-res wired via USB-C or 3.5mm bundled cables
• Highly tweakable sound (if hard to understand via the driver EQ tabs)
• Integrated and neutral by default — if you want ‘fun’ they may not be ideal

If you’re in a rush, know that much of what I’m about to impart in this section can be boiled down to: “They’re very good for sound, but better than the cheaper Nothing Headphone (a)? Not especially — unless you always listen with wires”.

There are of course the additional spatial audio modes (all five of them, with the option of head-tracking) in this new product, whereas the Headphone (a) only offers a concert mode or cinema mode — and both of those can only move with your head, rather than giving you the option of using your device as a fixed source. However, I found each of the profiles within the Headphone (1) Pro quite light touch, rather than the “Wait, that’s so good!” experience you get when sonic passages slip under your chin, past your left ear and down to the small of your back with the AirPods Max 2.

There’s nothing wrong with subtlety and faithfulness to a recording (in fact I really like these attributes in headphones) but when listening to my specific reference tracks in an a/b test against the older Nothing headphones, I actually found the bite, attack and general zeal across the frequencies of the cheaper Headphone (a) marginally more fun to listen to than the integrated, studious, hi-fi approach of the Headphone (1) Pro.

That will of course be a matter of taste and may depend on which genres of music you most enjoy. Both sonic recipes are valid — and when listening via USB-C audio to hi-res tracks on my FiiO DAP, greater detail through the leading edges of notes can certainly be had in the Headphone (1) Pro, which makes sense when you realize that the Headphone (a) tops out at 24-bit/96kHz, whereas the Headphone (1) Pro lists resolutions at up to 24-bit/192 kHz when going wired with USB-C.

I cue up The Killers’ In the Car Outside and there’s a beautiful circumaural presentation to the audio. I have to commend Nothing on the multi-driver integration (the company is proud to have created one of the first over-ear headphones to use an xMEMS driver), with a treble that’s particularly sparkling, easy and natural when Brandon Flowers starts to unfurl his vocal folds.

The Nothing Headphone (1) Pro also dig an extra ounce of texture and emotion from within John Frusciante’s hard-lived but defiant vocal in Omission, alongside (but never at the expense of) the tambourine and female backing vocals. Switch to an instrumental or classical piece, such as Roberto Cacciapaglia’s Universal Dance, and the Headphone (1) Pro are at their happiest, celebrating the rhythmic depression of keys in a cohesive and expansive mix. Head to BackRoad Gee’s raucous, rough and ready grime track Live in the Flesh, however, and you may just think these headphones are playing a little safe through a clean, but perhaps marginally over-sanitized, low end.

That said, this is less about any sonic shortfalls with the product itself and more about the well-documented talents of Nothing’s own previous (a)-suffixed cans which, however you slice it, are $200 (or £200) cheaper than these. And I’m just not sure the sound is that much better.

• Sound quality score: 4 / 5

Nothing Headphone (1) Pro review: Design

• Slightly firmer but still comfortable clamping force, which helps with ANC
• Triple-driver array is well handled
• Battery life is middling; the half-case is a sore point

I’m a big fan of the adjusted clamping force and general comfort levels here, despite the nominal additional weight (these weigh 327g; the older-generation set weigh 310g).

Nothing products are known for their forward-thinking design language and so if this section feels a tad longer than is traditional for a set of headphones, there’s your reason: there’s plenty to get through.

Visually as well as under the hood, the Headphone (1) Pro’s ear cups can be seen as a refinement on those in the Headphone (1) in the same way that the MiniDisc was a refinement on the cassette tape; much better technically, but perhaps unable to command the recognition or longevity it deserved. To be clear, yes, I have lived through both physical formats’ respective heydays.

A lot of work has been done on this ear cup design and Nothing wants you to know it; the padding around each cup is dual-layer and much better; the hinges feel more premium (and are silent); the headband padding means said band never gets tender across the top of my head.

Sadly, we do need to talk about the case, though. It’s hard to find good things to say about it. At a time when Apple AirPods Max 2 arrived still wearing their ‘headphones bra’ idea in lieu of a much-wanted hard-shell case, it’s odd that Nothing didn’t read the room. Instead, Nothing unveiled something like that but bigger, heavier and clunkier, and that only covers the ear cups so your cans look like they’ve been dropped (and are still partially suspended) in wet cement.

And if you’re thinking that at least there’ll be room for your USB-C cable or even replacement batteries in that thing, surely, sadly no. The hinge isn’t especially premium and so the case simply clatters open, which is neither easy to use nor especially useful. It is also heavy at 383.5g (much heavier than the cans themselves) and, I believe, has been an expensive extra. I’d have preferred to opt out. For those who want to wear their headphones in places other than over their ears or draped around their neck, there are holes to fit your own shoulder strap to the Nothing case, so the whole thing can be worn like a cross-body handbag.

I can imagine Nothing’s design team excitedly saying “It’s never been done before!” and the market research focus groups coming back with the reason why. This case makes the Nothing Headphone (1) Pro heavy, bulky and cumbersome.

Yes, there is a glass top plate to each driver housing, but Nothing took great pains to tell us how sturdy and shatter-proof this solution is, so there’s no need for such a bulky case, surely? I recently took a very long-haul flight — a great opportunity to test the active noise cancellation here, and very good it was. But let me tell you that once they were in my carry-on bag, I’d have given a lot of money not to have committed to this plan. And it’s a shame, because the actual audio architecture is really good here.

There are also a lot of buttons of varying shapes and sizes on the Headphone (1) Pro. The left ear cup is where you’ll find Nothing’s new ‘flat’ sound profile button slider, on the inner edge of the rectangular top corner of the softly rectangular earpiece. It’s a little hard to access and slide across during wear, but it’s there. The right earpiece, however, is a lot busier. It’s a solution Nothing fans will know well, involving a button, a roller and a paddle — and I really like it. Said buttons are snappy and responsive, and the roller is a great way to tweak volume.

Where the design lets itself down, aside from the case, is when it comes to stamina. Where the older Nothing Headphone (a) could go for up to 135 hours without ANC on, or up to 75 hours with noise cancellation, you’ll only get up to 68 hours — and that’s without ANC. Switch on noise-nixing and you’ll only get up to 30 hours of playtime; add LDAC to the mix and it drops to just 28 hours. See how it’s hard to make a case for the newer set being a better buy, as well as being much more expensive?

• Design score: 3.5 / 5

Nothing Headphone (1) Pro review: Value

• Very good-looking headphones (until you put the case over them)
• Stuffed with features and sonically up to par, if low on stamina
• That case has eaten into Nothing’s budget, though… 

The looks and style of these headphones (aside from the case) make them seem worthy of their price — and the sound is up to scratch. The ANC, too, is very good, as is the Transparency and extra whistles and bells.

There are two thorns in the Headphone (1) Pro’s side: the stamina (which is a long way short of the cheaper cans they supersede) and the heavy unlikeable case. If there were a third, it would be the talents of the cheaper Headphone (a), which includes most of what makes the Headphone (1) Pro special, and delivers it for a lot less.

• Value score: 3 / 5

Should I buy the Nothing Headphone (1) Pro?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Nothing Headphone (1) Pro review: Also consider

How I tested the Nothing Headphone (1) Pro

• Tested for two weeks, listened against the Headphone (a), AirPods Max 2, CMF Headphone Pro, Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 and Nothing Headphone (1)
• Listened at home, on a long-haul flight, in a hotel room in Tokyo and while walking alone along a blustery seafront, in the rain
• Listened to Tidal Masters, Qobuz and Apple Music Lossless tracks via USB-C to my FiiO player and streamed to my iPhone 15 Pro, MacBook Pro and Sony Xperia smartphone

The Nothing Headphone (1) Pro became my primary travel companions for two weeks — after a 24-hour run-in period. And to be honest, there were times when I wished I hadn’t brought their heavy case along, in my hand luggage.

They accompanied me to the airport (walking brusquely to Heathrow’s T5 from the Airport Express train) and even on the hotel balcony in Tokyo during a minor 5.0 earthquake — no really, I promise I’m telling the truth.

To assess comfort levels (very good), ANC (also very effective) and battery life claims (less impressive), I followed TechRadar‘s meticulous methodology testing and found much to report back on — including their slightly underwhelming stamina.

To check the audio chops across the frequencies, I listened for many hours, in various environments, to my own reference playlists on Apple Music, Qobuz and Tidal, alongside TechRadar‘s reference tracks, plus podcasts and movies.

I’ve been testing audio products for well over seven years now, full-time — first at our sister site What Hi-Fi? and now here at TechRadar. As a dancer, aerialist and musical theater performer in another life, I have always found sound quality, fit and the user experience to be key issues for me in headphones, but having heard how wonderful ANC can be when done well, I know what I’m listening out for there, too.

Read more about how we test earbuds at TechRadar

• First reviewed: September 2026

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