Nothing, the company founded by tech wunderkind Carl Pei, has just released the Ear (2) with a familiar design but a host of new features, including adaptive active-noise cancellation.

I've had the Truly Wireless Earbuds (TWS) earbuds for about 10 days and to borrow a phrase from Apple, it just works.

Rarely do I come across a product that works as advertised. But Nothing has truly delivered on its promise with the Ear (2), which features a custom 11.6 mm driver, and, according to the company, was assembled using custom moulds.

Let me break this review down into five parts — sound quality, adaptive ANC, call quality, battery life, and aesthetics.

Also Read: OnePlus Buds Pro 2 review: Solid pair of earbuds with some room for improvement

Sound quality

Nothing has gone above and beyond to deliver a truly excellent sound experience — especially for the price you pay, Rs 9,999. Based on how you customise your sound profile, the Ear (2) delivers rich bass, clear trebles and perfect mids. Thanks to the adaptive ANC — which I'll come to in a bit — this makes for a truly immersive sound experience, whether you're listening to music, watching a movie or show, or speaking to someone. It feels like you're in the room with the sound all around you.

Adaptive ANC

This is by far my favourite feature of the Ear (2). Adaptive ANC is the opposite of adaptive transparency on the Apple AirPods Pro Gen 2. Where the latter detects ambient noise and tamps down the transparency so that you don't deafen yourself, the Ear (2) does the opposite — it detects environmental noise and intelligently adjusts the ANC to provide you the best, quiet listening experience. I've tried it out in malls, crowded areas, an airport and an airplane, and it works without a hitch. Like most other ANC earbuds, it has difficulty filtering out the higher frequency sounds — like a toddler screaming her lungs out — but gets it right every single time.

Call quality

This is another impressive implementation by Nothing. Touting its Clear Voice Technology, Nothing claims the Ear (2) can filter out 20 types of environmental noises. This apparently includes a loud air cooler — I made a call to a colleague sitting right in front of said air cooler at full blast; neither the colleague could detect any drop in call quality due to the air, nor could I struggle to hear the colleague speak, thanks to the excellent ANC.

Battery life

Battery is notoriously difficult to judge if it works as advertised. In my experience, with ANC turned on, I got about five hours out of a single charge before I had to pop the earbuds back into the case for a quick juice-up. So, for the most part, I suppose the battery life works, but only time will tell if this holds up.

Also Read: Nothing Phone (1) mid-term review: Still quite something and never boring

Aesthetics

The Nothing Ear (2) look remarkably similar to the Ear (1) with a few, transparent design flourishes that help it stand out. For one, the ear stems are shorter, which means a shorter battery life, but the company has compensated for that by including a bigger battery in the case. It's quite easy to find the tactile button that will help you skip, pause music and take and end phone calls. However, I wish Nothing had retained the touch controls from Ear (1) wherein you could increase or lower the volume by sliding your finger up or down the earstem. I understand why the feature was removed, but I still miss it.

What else?

Fast Pair, Swiftpair, and dual connection work as well as they can. I was able to switch between watching a movie on my laptop to taking a call, ending that call, and switching back to the movie without any trouble. And Fast Pair adds the earbuds to your Google ID — every device that you sign in on using that ID will automatically have the buds paired.

In conclusion

With the Ear (2), Nothing has not only made one of the best sub-10k TWS earbuds, but also one of the best out there that can compete with some of the more expensive high-end earbuds. For a company that is less than three years old, with a release history of about two years, Nothing has come a long way. I, for one, am excited to see how the Phone (2) will shape up.

Also Read: Nothing releases Ear (2) buds with adaptive noise cancellation for Rs 9,999