Nothing Ear (3) Review: Nearly There
Our full Nothing Ear (3) review after two weeks of testing: measured performance, battery figures, and whether it is worth £129.
Tech Daily Review Desk
The verdict, briefly
The Nothing Ear (3) is Nothing's 2025 entry in a crowded audio market, and at £129 it is competing against some of the strongest hardware we have tested. After a fortnight of daily use, the headline is straightforward: it delivers lDAC support at a budget price.
Verdict in one line: Buy it for lDAC support at a budget price. Think twice if this would bother you daily: cancellation behind premium sets.
In the hand
There is nothing experimental here, which is mostly to the Nothing Ear (3)'s credit. The detail worth calling out is that in flat EQ they are surprisingly balanced. Against the rest of the audio category it feels considered rather than novel.
Performance
Our testing runs the same suite on every device so figures stay comparable across years. The figure worth quoting is Rating: IP54. That places it comfortably above average for its price bracket.
| Specification | Nothing Ear (3) |
|---|---|
| Type | In-ear, closed |
| Codecs | SBC, AAC, LDAC |
| Battery | 5h 40m with ANC |
| Rating | IP54 |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent two weeks of daily listening, including commutes, calls and at least one flight. A blind A/B panel of four listeners, level-matched to within 0.5dB, using the same eleven-track reference playlist across every pair.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Battery life | Continuous playback at a metered 75dB with noise cancelling on, run to cut-off. |
| Noise cancelling | Attenuation measured against a recorded cabin-noise loop, reported by frequency band rather than as one number. |
| Call quality | Recordings made on a busy street and in a quiet room, judged by the same panel blind. |
| Comfort | Clamping force measured, then a three-hour wear session logged for hot spots. |
| Latency | Audio-to-video offset measured on a fixed test clip over each supported codec. |
We deliberately do not report frequency-response graphs presented without listening notes — they describe a tone, not an experience.
The honest caveat: Fit dominates both isolation and bass response. Our panel has four head shapes; yours is not one of them.
What it does well
- LDAC support at a budget price
- A genuinely good companion app EQ
- A properly pocketable case
Taken together, those strengths make it a natural fit for buyers who want most of the flagship experience for a third of the price.
Where it falls short
- Cancellation behind premium sets
- Average call quality
- Short single-charge life
None of these are dealbreakers on their own. Whether they matter depends entirely on how you intend to use it, which is why the section below matters more than the score.
How it compares
The closest alternatives on price are AirPods Pro 3 and Beyerdynamic DT 700 Pro X. All three have been through the same tests, so the figures below are directly comparable rather than collected from different reviews.
| Model | Price | Our score | Standout | Weak point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nothing Ear (3) (this review) | £129 | 4 / 5 | LDAC support at a budget price | Cancellation behind premium sets |
| AirPods Pro 3 | £229 | 4 / 5 | The best passive isolation of any in-ear we have tested | Half the features are missing on Android |
| Beyerdynamic DT 700 Pro X | £259 | 4 / 5 | A near-neutral response that needs no correction | No wireless or noise cancellation at all |
Nothing at this price scored higher in our testing, which is the strongest argument for the Nothing Ear (3).
Is it worth the money?
At £129 the Nothing Ear (3) undercuts the category average of £302 by £173, against an average score of 4 out of 5 across the audio we have tested. Its own 4 works out at roughly £32 per point. That is the straightforward case: above-average result, below-average price.
If the budget is the binding constraint, the Nothing Ear (3) at £129 is the floor we would still recommend — below that the compromises stop being ones you can live with.
Daily use
Two weeks in, the figure that stopped mattering was type — In-ear, closed is more than adequate and you forget about it by the third day. What kept surfacing instead was that cancellation behind premium sets, which is easy to shrug off in a spec comparison and harder to ignore at 6pm on a Friday. On the other side, in flat EQ they are surprisingly balanced turns out to be the sort of detail you only appreciate after living with the alternative.
Who should buy it
Buy the Nothing Ear (3) if you are buyers who want most of the flagship experience for a third of the price. Skip it if this is something you would notice every day: cancellation behind premium sets.
Buy it if:
- Buyers who want most of the flagship experience for a third of the price
- You want lDAC support at a budget price
- You value a genuinely good companion app EQ
Skip it if:
- You need cancellation behind premium sets to be a solved problem
- The AirPods Pro 3 at £229 already covers what you need
- You upgraded within the last two years — the gap is not worth the outlay
Verdict
Buy it for lDAC support at a budget price. Think twice if this would bother you daily: cancellation behind premium sets.
Score: 4 / 5 · £129 at the time of writing.
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 Nothing Ear (3) vs Sonos Ace: Is the 2025 Model Worth the Change? and Nothing Ear (3): Battery Draining Faster Than It Should.
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.
