Best Cheap Headphones: The top budget efforts for less than £100

The Nothing Ear (a) are a great-looking pair of true wireless earbuds, with the yellow colourway offering a vibrant option for those looking to stand out. 

These affordable earbuds have a transparent build, allowing you to peer inside the ear stems and creating a retro look that matches Nothing’s other devices. The case is also transparent and is more compact than the case that houses the higher-end Nothing Buds. The earbuds are rated IP54 for sweat and water resistance, though the case only carries an IPX2 rating so you’ll want to avoid dropping it in water. 

The gesture controls are on the earbud stem, allowing you to skip tracks and switch on active noise-cancelling with a series of pinches. You can customise these gestures in the Nothing X app, though we found the volume gesture controls unreliable. 

The Nothing Ear (a) also aren’t the comfiest true wireless earbuds around, with the design digging in far more than the AirPods Pro, though there are three ear-tips included to customise the fit. 

The earbuds take advantage of a considerable amount of features for their price, including adaptive ANC, a transparency mode, in-ear detection for auto play/pause, and a low lag mode for gamers. Bluetooth multi-point audio allows the buds to connect to two devices at a time, and LDAC support for higher-quality streaming on Android devices. There’s also an EQ with four presents in the app, along with the usual SBC and AAC codec support. 

Nothing claims the Ear (a) should last 5.5 hours per charge with ANC switched on (or 9 hours with ANC off), with five charges in the case. We found similar results in our own tests, though the earbuds offered a little under 5 hours of playtime with the ANC set to High. This is a pretty average result, but does place the Ear (a) behind more expensive earbuds like the Cambridge Melomania M100. 

There’s no wireless charging support on the Ear (a) with Nothing reserving this feature for the Nothing Ear. 

Moving to audio quality, the Nothing Ear (a) deliver a thoroughly impressive sound, with crisp vocals and plenty of bass when required. The earbuds offer a pleasing neutrality in their sound that is comparable to that of the AirPods Pro. They don’t offer as much clarity, but at less than half the price the Ear (a) boast an endearing, expansive sound that gives real depth to songs. 

There’s no spatial audio support but, at just $100 / £100, there are few earbuds on the market that offer better quality sound at this price. There’s also the cheaper CMF by Nothing earbuds to consider, but the noise-cancellation isn’t as good.

Reviewer: Max Parker
Full Review: Nothing Ear (a)