- Nothing’s confusing numbering is designed to stop numbering confusion
- True Wireless earbuds; specs are still secret
- Launching on September 18, 2025
Nothing has announced the launch date for the new Nothing Ear (3) earbuds, the confusingly named fourth generation of its true wireless buds – and an update on both the Nothing Ear and Nothing Ear (a) which of course don’t have a ‘second-gen’ idea within their respective monikers.
The Nothing Ear (3) will be officially unveiled next week on September 18, 2025.
If you’re wondering why the fourth-gen earbuds are number 3, it’s because Nothing has experimented with a different naming convention but reverted back to the original after widespread confusion.
That means the timeline goes like this:
First-gen: Nothing Ear (1)
Second-gen: Nothing Ear (2)
Third-gen: Nothing Ear – and Nothing Ear (a), which launched on the self-same date
Fourth-gen: Nothing Ear (3)
There’s also the October 2022 Nothing Ear (Stick) which are indeed in-ear earbuds, unlike the Nothing Headphone (1) or Nothing Ear (open), say, and slip between the first- and second-gen products in the timeline above. But perhaps it’s best we leave those to one side.
Now we’ve got that out of the way, what can we expect from the 2025 model?
What we know about the Nothing Ear (3) so far
The short answer: next to nothing. Nothing has kept its cards very close to its chest, revealing only the name and the teaser images shown on this page, and there haven’t been any significant leaks so far.
The teaser images suggest that the design language is sticking with the house style, with the familiar silvery gray colors, but beyond that there are no credible reports of what specification the buds will have.
The third generation, which we reviewed last year, were impressively bassy but suffered from relatively short battery life, so hopefully that’s improved for the new generation. And it’d be nice if they went a bit louder too, as that was our other main concern with the third-generation flagship Ear (no number or letter suffix) buds: even with ANC on, we struggled to hear our music as loudly as we like it when we were outdoors. The current buds are Bluetooth 5.3 so Bluetooth 5.4 or possibly 6.0 is likely.
Last year’s top-tier Nothing Ear buds had a launch price of $149 / £129 / AU$249, and we’d expect a similar price point this time around: as we said in our review, “there’s not much competition at this in-between price point, with many earbuds aiming at customers who want to spend less than $100 / £100 / AU$200 and most of the step-up options costing double that.” That price would make them slightly cheaper than the AirPods 4 with ANC.
Volume aside, we really like the sound of the Nothing Ear (a) buds so if Nothing can address the relatively minor issues that made them less than perfect, these could be really compelling. We’ll find out more next week.
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