The Ear Sticks are Nothing’s newest wireless earbuds and only the company’s third product so far. Ear Sticks are as much a fashion product as they are a tech product, with a stunning rotating case design in what has become the company’s trademark clear plastic.
The Ear Stick is meant to be an alternative to the previously launched Nothing Ear 1. While the Ear 1 has a more common in-ear design, the Ear Stick uses the older half in-ear design like the AirPods. As such, they also lack features like active noise cancellation and transparency mode.
What they get instead is much longer battery life, larger drivers, an improved antenna design, a custom equalizer, and better noise reduction for calls. And of course, that sweet new case design. All for $ 99, which falls short of the recent $ 149 Ear 1 price hike.
Drawing
The Nothing Ear Stick has one of the most unique designs I’ve ever seen, not just for a pair of earphones but for any tech product in recent times. We see the same use of clear plastic for the design of the Ear 1, but while the Ear 1 has applied the clear materials to a more traditional TWS case design, the Ear Stick creates something completely unconventional out of it.
The Ear Stick case design is based on your average lipstick. You twist the bottom of the tube while holding the top up and the earbuds will swing in sight. The case rotates in both directions and can be rotated infinitely in both directions.
The main socket for the earphones also houses the battery and the rest of the electronics for the case and is covered by a clear plastic tubular shell with an opening on one side. The clear plastic ensures that the earphones are always in view regardless of whether they are “open” or “closed”.
The clear plastic shell also extends to the bottom of the case, which houses a red plastic module that contains the USB-C charging port. Next to it is a silver button that visibly extends from the main body of the case. The button sits flush with the bottom of the case so it won’t be accidentally pressed, which also makes it harder to press intentionally.
The mechanics of the rotating cover are well designed. There is a satisfying smoothness in the movement and the mechanism snaps into place when it reaches the end of its stroke. You could run it for hours and not get tired.
The transparent cover of the case is made entirely of glossy plastic. The white part on the inside has a matte finish with a fine dotted texture that makes it easy to grip and slide if you want to open it with one hand.
As attractive as the design of the case is – and it is very attractive – there are several problems with it. The case does not seal at all when closed, leaving it open to dust, debris and, even worse, hair. It is very easy to find random bits of hair or dust inside the case and once it gets in it can only come out on its own, as there is very little you can do from the outside but stare at it.
The lack of a seal means that the case is also not water resistant, even if the earbuds themselves are.
The sleek exterior of the case is also easy to cover with fingerprints and smudges, and while they’re not easy to see, you know they’re there. The case also becomes quite slippery when covered in oil or hand sweat and becomes difficult to open. Plastic is also scratched quite easily and will not hold up well over time, especially if they live perpetually inside the purse or purse.
Finally, the tubular nature of the case means it can only stand vertically. If you put it aside, there is a real danger that it will roll off. And while it’s volumetrically smaller than, say, the Ear 1 case, it’s thicker and protrudes more in your pocket. There’s a joke here about a three-inch pipe you have in your pocket, but I refuse to do that.
While the downsides are notable, it’s easy to look past them simply for how unique and interesting the design is. I’m not sure how well the moving parts will age and the clear plastic has already started to scratch, but in my mind the design will always remain fresh and timeless.
Compared to the case itself, the earbuds look less interesting, probably because we’ve already seen this design on the Ear 1. But while they may look similar at first, the Ear Sticks are very different from the Ear 1.
The most notable difference is the most obvious; Ear Stick earphones are half in-ear design compared to the in-ear design of Ear 1 earphones. This means that they are located just outside your ear canals rather than inside them.
This design style has mostly gone out of style these days, largely due to how categorically worse it is than the in-ear design. The in-ear design offers a better and safer fit, better noise isolation, and most importantly, a better environment for smaller drivers to do their thing. By comparison, the mid-in-ear design must have a one-size-fits-all approach, it can just fall off if they don’t fit well, have the equivalent sound insulation of covering someone else’s ears, and have the drivers take care substantially an infinite amount of air as there is no seal.
The only products that keep this archaic design alive are Apple’s AirPods, and the only reason they sell is that they’re the cheapest AirPods you can get, not because they’re good. It’s a design that should have been left behind in the 20th century along with cassette players, and the four people who still claim to prefer it have to keep up with the times.
Aside from this rather large downgrade, the Ear Stick earbuds are as beautiful as those of the Ear 1. In fact, they’re a bit cooler because they now employ more reliable controls that require you to squeeze the stems rather than just touch. The antennas have been moved further away from the face to make the connection more stable. The driver inside is also larger, albeit only by a millimeter. The rest of the design is as clean as on the Ear 1 but the transparency is still limited to just the stems and you can’t see inside the driver chamber.
The Ear Stick is currently only available in white, but at this point it’s easy to guess that there will be a black version in the future.
Comfort
The Ear Sticks are a moderately comfortable pair of earphones. While comfort may be a subjective topic, it is particularly subjective when it comes to semi-in-ear headphones. These will look good on you or not at all. To me, they fit well as they appear to be about the same size as the AirPods, which fit me well too.
However, just because they look good on you doesn’t mean they’ll be comfortable. While in-ear buds primarily anchor to your ears using the soft tips and gasket inside the ear canal, the semi-ear buds have to put pressure on the walls of your concha to secure, and they do so with hard plastic. This causes the entire inner ear to feel a little sore after a couple of hours of use, which has also been my experience with the Ear Stick.
And that’s if the earphones fit you well. There will be many people for whom the earbuds will simply fall off and at that point you might as well return the product.
Software
Nothing Ear Stick supports the new Nothing X app, which is an updated version of the previous Ear 1 app with unified support for all current and future Nothing audio products. The app is available on Android and iOS.
The Nothing X app features a slightly updated design with a few more features. From the main screen, you can see the battery percentages for the earbuds and the case. You can also access the equalizer or control settings.
The equalizer setting for the Ear Stick has four presets and a custom three-band equalizer. The EQ is displayed in a rather odd circular pattern as if the audio spectrum is a circle rather than a flat line. You have to choose one of the EQ presets and there is no option to disable it completely. For my testing, I chose to use the default Balanced preset as it seemed to act like the “flat” profile since there was no discernible difference between it and the custom preset at zero values.
One cool thing about this app is that the custom EQ is only available for the Ear Stick and disappears if you pair the old Ear 1. All you get are the four presets that were available before in the old Ear 1 app. The cheapest Ear Stick has a custom equalizer, and the $ 50 more expensive Ear 1 is no mystery.
No X apps
Control customization allows you to change the attachments for double press, triple press, long press and double press and press gestures for both earphones. You can choose between skip tracks, voice assistant or adjust the volume. The single press is always meant to play / pause. While press gestures work better than tapping on the Ear 1, the earbud stems are a rather small target to find on the ears.
Other features of the app include disabling in-ear detection, a low-latency mode for gaming, a Find My Headphones feature, and the ability to update firmware.
If you have a Nothing Phone 1, all of these options are built into the Bluetooth settings, so there’s no need to download the app. You can also access many of the features from the quick settings.
In terms of software stability, the Ear Stick performed very well. This was a big problem on Ear 1, which had several bugs even months after launch. Ear Sticks are inherently simpler, so it may also be why things are working out better this time around. The app is also well designed (aside from the silly circular equalizer) and easy to use.
Performance
Audio quality
The Ear Stick has a single 12.6mm dynamic driver on both sides. They support SBC and AAC codecs over Bluetooth 5.2.
The Ear Sticks have a very medium-high, treble-forward sound that makes them sound aggressive and bright. This, coupled with the lack of an enriched low end, makes the overall tonality rather metallic and sometimes elusive.
Low-end driver response is weak. This is to be expected from a mid-in-ear design, although Nothing claimed to have solved it with software-based “Bass Lock technology”. Whatever it is supposed to do is not going very well.
Speaking purely from a reference level perspective, the low end lacks most of the rumble and warmth found in recordings. You get a milquetoast punch and slam with a hint of rumble, but it lacks depth and sounds hollow. Maximizing bass EQ adds a little more energy to the low end, but sounds somewhat disjointed from the rest of the sound. It also pushes the driver to its limit, which can introduce some distortion into heavy bass tracks.
The midrange, released from the low end, has a lot of presence in the mix. The lower mids sound a bit hollow, but the upper mids can be quite powerful, almost to the point of being aggressive. Unfortunately, the midrange has rather disappointing tonal characteristics, as many voices and instruments have a somewhat nasal and metallic tone and lack their natural warmth and tonality.
Much of this bright, metallic energy is carried into the lower highs as well, which can also be quite aggressive and in the face. It creates an artificial sense of a higher resolution, more detailed sound, but you don’t necessarily want all the details to blow up at you all the time, especially when they have a tendency to sound tinny. After a while, I found myself skipping the brightest songs in my playlists due to how exhausting they could be listening to them.
The upper treble is not as bright and in fact fades out quite quickly. This results in a somewhat dark high-end, which lacks air and sparkle in the high-end.
The overall sound has a tendency to sound somewhat one-dimensional, as most of the energy is focused in the upper mid and lower treble ranges, with opposite ends of the spectrum taking a rear place in the mix. One gets the distinct impression of hearing a rather small set of computer speakers, which often have a very limited frequency response, rather than a set of floorstanding loudspeakers with multiple drivers covering the entire frequency spectrum.
With the mid-in-ear design, bass would never have been a strong point of the sound, so I can understand why Nothing chose to have a mid to high pitch forward sound so that the speakers have at least some personality. However, it is a rather acquired taste and one that may not find many suitors. And this comes from someone who generally prefers bright sounding speakers.
On a technical level, the Ear Stick works well. The sound feels quite lively and detailed due to the bright tuning, so you don’t get the same dark, boxed feel you get from most Bluetooth headsets. The picture is somewhat odd, as the sound appears to be coming from a plane located just behind your head rather than in front of it. The soundstage feels artificially inflated too, with a somewhat elongated stereo separation that sounds as if the speakers are placed further apart in the room than they should be.
Overall, the audio quality of the Ear Stick was disappointing. While it may seem acceptable with some content, it seems compromised mainly due to the decision to have a half-in-ear design. The funny thing is that the sound is somewhat better than the Ear 1, but since the Ear 1 has an in-ear design, it sounds better overall. It would be interesting to see the same drivers with the same tuning within an in-ear design.
Microphone
The Ear Stick has decent microphone quality. There’s some of that telltale clipping towards the end of sentences when the noise reduction algorithm rushes to silence background noise, but overall voice quality is adequate enough for voice calls.
In noisy environments, such as near a running sink, the earbuds struggle to maintain voice clarity, and background noise spreads out enough. This is something where the most premium products on the market are much better.
Latency
The Ear Stick has good latency. When used with an Android or iOS smartphone to watch videos, the delay is essentially zero as the phone will automatically delay the video to sync with the audio.
However, this doesn’t work when watching videos from a PC. I measured a delay of close to 300ms when watching video from a Windows PC, which is extremely noticeable.
The lag is also present when playing games on a phone, which cannot perform the same audio sync trick for obvious reasons. For this, you will need to enable the low latency option from the Nothing X app, which reduces latency to a more tolerable level. If you are using a Nothing Phone 1, this mode is activated automatically when starting a game.
Connectivity
Connectivity performance on the Ear Stick was mostly good. Aside from very few small pauses when playing music, the connection was otherwise fairly stable and reliable.
Battery
The Ear Stick has a nominal battery life of 7 hours of continuous audio playback. In my tests, the earbuds ran for 6 hours and 50 minutes non-stop, which is pretty close to the official statement and a good result overall.
Nothing even claims 2 hours of playback after a 10 minute charge. I found this statement to be accurate enough, as the earbuds rang for exactly 2 hours during my tests.
Conclusion
Nothing Ear Sticks are an attractive product with an ingenious design. There is no one I have shown them to who has not been immediately fascinated by their design and I can see many people buying them simply for their looks.
They also have good battery life, a reliable and well-designed software experience, and decent call quality.
The earbuds are disappointed with the decision to have a half in-ear design. Fit and comfort are bound to be a problem for many with this one-size-fits-all solution as it lacks the flexibility of in-ear variants. Audio quality isn’t impressive either, with subtle and overly bright sound that lacks the balance and warmth of good in-ear models.
At $ 99, the Nothing Ear Stick prioritizes form over function. If you’re absolutely impressed with their looks and don’t care how good they fit or sound, then that’s not a particularly large sum of money to part with to have a cool looking fidget spinner in your pocket. But if audio quality and comfort are a priority, then there are a ton of other options on the market right now.
Start a new Thread