July 27, 2021. Nothing has just launched the ear (1), its first product, and it is not a phone. The earbuds sell for £99, €99, and $99 at launch. The transparent stem reveals the internal components, driver housing, wiring, and the acoustic architecture through clear plastic, making the engineering visible rather than hiding it behind an opaque shell. 100,000 units are selling through Nothing’s own website and select retail partners. They are going fast.
I want to be clear about what this device is and is not. The ear (1) is a genuinely good product at its price point. Active noise cancellation. 36-hour total battery life with the case. Three ear tip sizes. Wireless charging in the case. The audio quality is competitive with Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Pro, which costs twice as much, and better than the Pixel Buds A-Series, which costs the same. The companion app lets you adjust the ANC levels and the equalizer. None of this is revolutionary. All of it is solid, and for £99, solid is a win.
The design does the work, but the price cannot.
The transparent stem is doing what the Teenage Engineering partnership promised. The ear (1) does not look like the AirPods. It does not look like the Galaxy Buds. It looks like something a designer chose to make, rather than something an engineering team produced and a marketing team named. The internal component arrangement is deliberate: the wires run along intentional paths, the driver housing has a particular color, and the internal architecture is considered a visual composition. This is the OP-1 synthesizer philosophy applied to consumer earbuds at £99, and it works.
The 100,000-unit initial run matters because it establishes scale. A company that can ship 100,000 units of a first product is not a Kickstarter project. It is a hardware company. The manufacturing relationship with OPPO’s supply chain, which Nothing has been transparent about, is working. The question that follows every first product, can they actually make things and get them to people, is getting answered today.
What this means for the phone
The company has said for months that it wants to make a phone. The ear (1) is the proof of concept that Nothing can establish a brand and a community before it earns the right to build the flagship product its founder really wants to make. The earbuds are not the destination. They are the credentials. If 100,000 ear (1) units sell, if the community is happy, if the reviews are positive, Nothing has the platform to announce a phone with the credibility to make people take it seriously.
We are not there yet. Today is day one of Nothing’s first product. But day one looks promising.
Part of Nothing Company: The Complete Story, my running diary of Nothing from founding to global expansion.