The Nothing Ear and Ear (a) earbuds are set to get a Transparency Mode boost

Nothing Ear (a) earbuds
The Nothing Ear (a) (Image credit: Future)

The Nothing Ear and Nothing Ear (a) are the latest wireless earbuds from Nothing, unveiled earlier this month – and the updates are already getting underway, with an upgrade to the Transparency Mode coming soon.

That's the word from Nothing CEO Carl Pei, who says the improvements will be "noticeable". He's also asked for users to keep on providing feedback on the wireless earbuds, so further tweaks can be made in the future.

In our Nothing Ear (a) review, we were massively impressed with what the earbuds had to offer, praising the "superb" sound quality, the comfort, the battery life, and the noise cancellation technology – and the $99 / £99 (around AU$192) price.

The Nothing Ear earbuds are a little more expensive at $149 / £129 (around AU$250), but both feature a Transparency Mode you can use if you want to hear what's happening around you without taking the earbuds out.

Coming soon

We didn't notice any problems with Transparency Mode when we were testing the Nothing Ear (a), and we haven't seen any widespread complaints from other users – but it's always good to see improvements and enhancements added through software updates.

Transparency Mode is perfect when you're chatting to someone face to face, for example, and want to leave the earbuds in your ears. The on-board mics pipe in sounds from your environment, so you can hear what the other person is saying.

Pei didn't give any timeline for when the update for the earbuds might appear, only that it would be "soon". There's also no indication of what other tweaks could be included in the same software update when the time comes.

We'd rank both the Nothing Ear and the Nothing Ear (a) as being among the best wireless earbuds available on the market right now, and if they're going to get regular software updates over time, they'll continue to get even better.

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David Nield
Freelance Contributor

Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.