How We Measure Battery Life, and Why Manufacturer Figures Differ (Nothing Ear (3))
How We Measure Battery Life, and Why Manufacturer Figures Differ explained, with the Nothing Ear (3)'s own measured figures as the worked example: quoted battery figures are produced under conditions...
Priya Raghunathan
The short version
Nothing Ear (3), battery 5h 40m with ANC — How We Measure Battery Life, and Why Manufacturer Figures Differ. Measured on hardware rather than argued from theory, on a device we rate for lDAC support at a budget price.
Quoted battery figures are produced under conditions almost nobody replicates. Ours use a fixed brightness and a scripted workload so numbers stay comparable.
Why this matters: Battery is consistently the specification buyers care about most and the one most loosely reported.
The mechanism
We set the display to a measured 200 nits rather than a percentage, disable adaptive features that vary between devices, and run the same mix of browsing, video and standby. The result is not the best number a device can produce — it is the number you can expect.
What you actually notice
Take the Nothing Ear (3) as a worked example. In flat EQ they are surprisingly balanced. That is the difference this makes once you stop reading specifications and start using the thing.
| Specification | Nothing Ear (3) |
|---|---|
| Type | In-ear, closed |
| Codecs | SBC, AAC, LDAC |
| Battery | 5h 40m with ANC |
| Rating | IP54 |
The same concept across four devices
One worked example is an anecdote. Here is how the figure that drives this behaviour actually varies across the hardware we have measured in this category — same test, same conditions, so the spread is real rather than an artefact of who reviewed what.
| Model | Type | Price | Our score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nothing Ear (3) | In-ear, closed | £129 | 4 / 5 |
| Sonos Era 300 | Powered speaker | £449 | 4 / 5 |
| Beyerdynamic DT 700 Pro X | Over-ear, closed, wired | £259 | 4 / 5 |
| Sony WH-1000XM6 | Over-ear, closed | £399 | 5 / 5 |
What counts as good here
It helps to have a number in mind before you start comparing. Across the audio we have measured, the useful thresholds are the ones where a difference stops being visible: below them you notice, above them you are paying for a specification rather than an experience. The Nothing Ear (3) reports In-ear, closed for type, which sits comfortably on the right side of that line, and SBC, AAC, LDAC for codecs. Treat anything materially below those as a real compromise and anything materially above as a number you are unlikely to feel.
How to verify this at home
- Reproduce the conditions rather than trusting a one-off reading — run the same task three times and take the average.
- Note the figure your device reports and the figure it actually achieves; on the Nothing Ear (3) those diverge under sustained load.
- Change one variable at a time. Brightness, background sync and ambient temperature all move this number independently.
- Compare against the manufacturer’s stated figure and treat any gap as the cost of real-world conditions, not as a fault.
- Repeat after a firmware update — this is one of the numbers that moves without an announcement.
How to use this when buying
Compare figures from one source measured the same way, and ignore cross-site comparisons of quoted numbers.
A battery figure is only meaningful alongside the method that produced it.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the audio we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are How We Measure Battery Life, and Why Manufacturer Figures Differ (Sennheiser Momentum 4) and How We Measure Battery Life, and Why Manufacturer Figures Differ (Sonos Ace).
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
