Copyright VICE
Nothing’s best known for its smartphones, but after the launch of its Headphone (1) this summer, it’s increasingly known for its spread of products. Nothing is the brand name, by the way. I’m not just getting cute with the English language. The Headphone (1) is on sale for $44 off, for a very temporary sale price of $254. But you’d better be quick, because once Amazon sells a certain number of units, the price goes back up to $299. Videos by VICE How many units is that? Amazon doesn’t say. Instead, it provides a meter, and as of the time of my writing this, the meter indicates that up to 12% of the units have already been claimed. It looks like nothing else Nothing’s signature design language is a transparent case that shows off the internal guts of its devices. No surprise, then, that the Headphone (1) stands out from the sea of lookalike over-the-ear headphones. You can expect up to 80 hours of playtime from the Headphone (1), according to Nothing. That drops significantly to 35 hours if you turn on active noise cancellation (ANC). ANC cancels out background noise even more effectively than just regular, passive over-the-ear cups by playing opposite sound waves to cancel out the ambient environment’s sound waves on headphones that feature it. I use ANC for plane rides, loud cafés, and subway trips, but otherwise I leave it off to stretch the battery life. Nothing’s support for lossless audio is significant for audiophiles. Lossless tracks are the unadulterated forms of music that prioritize preserving all the data from a piece of music’s recording without regard to making its file size smaller.
