March 22, 2023. Nothing has just launched the Ear (2) at £149 in the UK and $149 in the US, the first time a Nothing audio product is officially available for American buyers. The jump from £99 to £149 represents a 50% price increase over the ear (1), which means Nothing is betting that a year and a half of brand building has earned it a premium tier in the audio market. The specifications make the case: dual driver architecture combining a 11.6mm dynamic driver with a planar driver, active noise cancellation rated at 40dB, Hi-Res Audio certification, and a companion app with three-band equalizer control and Personal Sound Profile.
What the Ear (2) needs to prove
The £99 ear (1) could trade on design novelty and price surprise. £149 has to compete with the Sony WF-1000XM5, the Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Pro, and Apple’s AirPods Pro on performance. The dual driver system is the hardware argument for the premium: combining a dynamic driver for low-frequency response with a planar driver for high-frequency detail produces an audio tuning approach that the competition at this price point has not done. Whether the implementation is good enough to match Sony’s and Samsung’s established ANC and audio processing advantages is the question that reviewers are spending this week answering.
The US launch is the more significant strategic move. Nothing has been essentially absent from North America since launch. The ear (1) could be imported, but was never officially supported or sold through US channels. Adding the US to the Ear (2) launch territory, even as a direct-to-consumer online sale rather than through carrier or retail channels, establishes Nothing as a brand American consumers can actually engage with. It is a prerequisite for what the company clearly wants to do eventually, which is sell a phone in the United States.
The transparent design continues
The Ear (2) continues the transparent aesthetic with a cleaner implementation than the ear (1). The internal component arrangement is more refined, the color coding of the internal elements is more considered, and the overall finish quality shows the manufacturing maturation that comes from a second product cycle. The design is still definitively Nothing without being derivative of the first generation. That is harder than it sounds, and it is the evidence that the Teenage Engineering relationship is still doing real work rather than just lending a name to an existing design language.
£149. First US launch. Dual driver. 40dB ANC. Nothing is climbing the premium ladder deliberately. The question for the brand is whether the community that bought into Nothing at £99 sees the Ear (2) as the natural next step or as the beginning of the same price escalation story that damaged OnePlus’s community relationship. Too early to say today. First reviews will tell us a great deal in the next 72 hours.
Part of Nothing Company: The Complete Story, my running diary of Nothing from founding to global expansion.