There was a time when buying a pair of wireless earbuds meant choosing between a white plastic stem or a generic black pebble. Then Carl Pei’s Nothing arrived, bringing transparent plastics, exposed circuit boards, and a stylized retro-futurism that made consumer tech feel fun again. Today, the London-based company is pushing that playful aesthetic even further with the debut of the Nothing Ear (3a), a budget-friendly pair of earbuds that proves “affordable” doesn’t have to mean “boring.”

Priced at a remarkably aggressive $99 (£99 / €99), the Ear (3a) doesn’t just iterate on its predecessors; it takes a hard left turn into eccentric design. Nothing says the look was inspired by a mix of bubbled pill packaging and the boutique pink synthesizers of Swedish audiovisual artist Love Hultén. The result is a rounder, friendlier form factor that subverts the clinical look of modern audio gear. While tech purists can still opt for the classic black or white, the real stars of the show are the vibrant yellow and a striking, head-turning new pink colorway. It’s a bold choice that signals Nothing is fully embracing its status as the fashion-forward disruptor of the tech world.

But look past the candy-colored shells and you’ll find that Nothing is introducing some genuinely clever utility here, most notably a feature called Audio Snapshot. Think of it as a screenshot for your ears. We’ve all been listening to a podcast or a live stream when someone drops a profound quote or a hilarious one-liner, leaving us scrambling to find a pen or skip backward to note the timestamp. With the Ear (3a), a simultaneous pinch on both stems captures up to one minute of whatever you’re listening to—including a 30-second buffer of what already played before you pinched. Powered by 32MB of internal flash storage on the buds themselves, these snippets sync to the Nothing X app, where you can replay them, generate text transcripts, or even format them into shareable quote cards.

That same on-board storage enables a seamless, phone-free call recording feature. A single pinch of both earbuds starts recording the entire conversation, syncing the audio to your phone afterward for easy summarizing or editing. Because recording conversations can wade into murky legal waters, Nothing has built in an automatic privacy notification that alerts the other party when recording begins—a smart, necessary guardrail for a feature that is bound to be incredibly useful for journalists, students, and remote workers alike.

Of course, quirky features don’t mean much if the earbuds sound like tin cans. To combat this, Nothing packed a larger 12mm dynamic driver into the Ear (3a), promising a significant 5dB boost to the low end compared to the previous Ear (a). On the noise-cancelling front, the company has upgraded to wideband Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) capable of cutting out up to 45dB of ambient racket. Crucially, they’ve tuned the ANC algorithm to focus heavily on the human voice range, dampening the chatter of a crowded office or a noisy morning commute by up to 6dB. Combined with adaptive switching that adjusts to your environment and a new, extra-small eartip option for better physical sealing, the isolation promises to punch well above its price tag.

On the practical side of things, the Ear (3a) seems built to be a daily workhorse. It boasts an IP54 dust and sweat resistance rating, making it perfectly safe for gym sessions or unexpected rain showers. The battery life is equally ambitious, stretching to 10 hours of continuous playback on a single charge with ANC turned off, and topping out at a massive 42 hours when factoring in the charging case. If you do run them down, a quick five-minute stint in the case juices them up with another hour of listening time. Under the hood, the inclusion of Bluetooth 6.0 ensures a rock-solid, low-latency connection, which should satisfy mobile gamers and video bingers who can’t stand audio delay.

Even the charging case has received a subtle, functional makeover. Moving away from ambiguous blinking dots, the case now features a refined 1×3 LED status light array that communicates distinct patterns for battery levels, pairing modes, firmware updates, and error alerts. It’s a small, thoughtful touch that shows Nothing is paying attention to the friction points of daily usage.

The earbuds will be widely available on Nothing’s website starting July 7, with early birds in London getting a chance to snag them first at a special drop at the Nothing Store Soho on July 11. In a mid-range market that often feels oversaturated with uninspired clones, the Ear (3a) stands out. By combining a sub-$100 price tag with standout software tricks like Audio Snapshot and a design that refuses to blend into the background, Nothing isn’t just offering a cheap alternative to the tech giants—they’re making a compelling case that the giants are simply getting lazy.