Nothing Headphone (1) Pro review: An incredible collaboration with Metropolis Studios

Not a lot of people I’ve come across know the name Nothing. It’s almost a hushed word, one of those things where those who know, know, and I like that in a brand, but this London company, founded by Carl Pei in 2020, now describes itself as the fastest growing smartphone and consumer audio brand in the world. That’s a big claim, but what interests me more is how it got there. More than 11,000 community investors sit alongside the usual backers, and it has built a following that genuinely talks back to it.

The Headphone (1) arrived last year as its first over-ear model, and the Headphone (1) Pro is the follow up, with a partnership with Metropolis Studios behind it. This is a ground-up build rather than a sticker slapped on something that’s already selling (no shade on some other brands).

If you don’t know Metropolis, it’s a proper working studio, set up in London more than thirty years ago by producer and engineer Gary Langan, whose credits include Queen and Yes. It now lives in The Power House on Chiswick High Road, and everyone from Amy Winehouse and Adele to Kendrick Lamar has recorded there. Collaborations in this space often stop at the logo, so it’s good to finally see a proper marriage between a headphone maker and an actual audio engineering company, with Metropolis having a hand in the Flat EQ, the Studio B spatial mode and five genre EQs.

I was recently contacted by Nothing to see if I’d be interested in their new Headphone (1) Pro, which has just come out. It has been a while since I last reviewed a pair of headphones, so I knew I would really have to road test these as best I could.

I should say up front that I’ve never really been a wireless headphones kind of guy, let alone one to wear them out in public. Over the years I’ve tried various brands and was never quite sold on the whole thing, which is partly why this one piqued my interest. The other part is that I’m a recent convert to Nothing phones. I spent years as a Sony Xperia fanboy, but a Nothing phone is my go-to from here on out, so I figured, why not? What did I have to lose? As it turns out, I had plenty to gain, which I’m happy to admit, and I’ll get into that below.

Midway through testing, I came down with a nasty flu and head cold, which is hardly ideal when your job is to listen closely. It wasn’t going to stop me.

So, let’s start with the packaging. It’s a fairly typical box, 99 per cent plastic-free, but it felt heavy in the hand. I put that down to having worn little else but my Sennheiser HD-25s for decades, and those barely weigh more than a sheet of paper. Was I put off? No. I was here to learn and keep an open mind. Why bother doing a review if you’ve already made your mind up?

The weight, it turns out, is mostly the case. At 383.5 grams it weighs more than the headphones it carries. It’s a hardshell affair with a soft lining, and at first I assumed it was a charging case. Nope, it’s just a case. At first glance I really didn’t like the grey. That’s a personal thing, I just don’t like that particular shade, and I wish mine had come in black to match the headphones. Nothing has given it a neutral base and an integrated loop for keychains, straps and charms, so it clearly expects people to make it their own, and since then I’ve seen owners turning them into bags and all sorts. You have to give it to Nothing, I’ve never seen a better community than the one it has built. Have a look at their Instagram if you want to see what I mean.

Out of the case, I was surprised by how light the headphones felt. On paper they come in at 327 grams, more than double my HD-25s, yet on the head they feel nothing like it, and that’s with batteries, titanium arms, an aluminium frame and scratch-resistant glass on board. I’ll put the full specs at the bottom for the technically inclined rather than bore you with them now.

Now, I’m not one to read instructions, and like most people I just wanted to turn them on, connect and go. I thought it would be as simple as that, but with a roller, a paddle, a button and a couple of switches to get my head around, I figured either I was getting old, this was all standard on wireless headphones now, or I was about to learn a thing or two. It was mostly the last one.

The layout makes more sense once you know the thinking behind it. Nothing says the controls reference 90s audio gear, with the everyday ones out in the open and the specialist ones tucked away. The roller handles volume and play or pause, and a long press moves between noise cancelling modes. The paddle skips tracks and takes calls. The button can be set to a voice assistant, the camera shutter or ChatGPT, and then there’s a dedicated switch for Flat EQ, which I’ll come back to. 

Remember, I’m using a Nothing phone, so connecting was about as easy as it gets. Nothing says Android and iPhone users get one-tap pairing too, though I can only speak for my own setup. Either way, I do love the all-in-one way Nothing ties everything together, the UI included. A quick connect, a firmware update in the Nothing X app, and we were in. Time to fit and play.

As I mentioned, outside of the studio or decks, I’ve never been a huge fan of over-ear headphones for personal use. They’ve always felt a bit bulky to me, and I tend to prefer in-ear, which is a little more discreet. That said, I always wear over-ears when flying, because for long-haul comfort you just can’t beat them. Handily, it is reported that these will run for up to 30 hours with noise cancelling on and up to 68 hours with it off, which is close to three days of non-stop listening.

I couldn’t believe how comfortable they are. The smoothest feel, the lightest touch. The cushion foam is 50 per cent softer than on the original Headphone (1), the padding is thicker, and the ear cups pivot to follow the shape of your head. Nothing also says the foam flexes around glasses and piercings, which will matter to a lot of people.

Firing up the app, I suddenly realised I could hear my own thoughts. The noise cancellation was clearly doing its job. There are ten microphones in total, five on each side, feeding an adaptive system that shifts between low, medium and high depending on your surroundings, for up to 46 dB of reduction. Before I got too lost in my own thoughts, I figured it was time to put some music through them and have a play around. This is where the fun starts.

There were so many tracks to choose from. I wanted to test a few classics I’d be listening to anyway, plus some recommended test tracks, electronic and otherwise, to give them a good run.

First up was “Giorgio by Moroder” by Daft Punk, a proper test of soundstage and spatial awareness. As Giorgio’s spoken story gives way to that crisp, multi-layered synth progression and the driving 4/4, you should be able to pinpoint the placement and width of each instrument across the stereo field. Toggling through the spatial modes, I settled on Studio B, which Nothing developed with Metropolis Studios to recreate the feel of sitting in the centre of their control room. I began melting into my chair, my mind drifting off to some 1970s room lined with shagpile carpet on the floor, walls and ceiling, immersed in a warm glow of sound. The clarity, the accent on each sound, it was a total immersion. I didn’t want to move. What were these headphones, and why hadn’t I had a pair before? I was a quick convert to over-ears, a statement one of our team later laughed at, but the warmth and depth were hard to argue with.

I wanted to give them a proper workout, so I switched to the Club spatial mode, then went into the EQ library and downloaded the Electronica profile, one of five genre EQs Metropolis tuned specifically for these headphones. I never had anything like that on my Sony WF-1000XM5s. Nothing really does think about the details for the person using them.

Next up, time to test the bass, and I reached for “Psychosis” by Peshay. An absolute classic with orchestral strings and deep bass punches check how well these headphones handle a complex drum texture, rhythm changes and transient speed. What I didn’t expect was for the sound to shift as I moved my head, giving a sort of stereoscopic feel. That’s the head tracking in Nothing’s Dynamic Spatial Audio. Lucky for me, I’m not prone to swinging my head from side to side, and I’m sure it can be switched off. Flicking on Flat EQ certainly turns spatial audio off altogether. The bass itself was clean and deep with no distortion at all, courtesy of a 40 mm bass driver that is one of three in each cup, each covering its own slice of the frequency range.

But this was drum and bass, and I wanted to gear it up a bit with something a bit more driving, to see how they handle techno. Time for Underworld’s “Born Slippy (Nuxx)”. That distorted synth line and driving kick soon reveal whether they have a tight, rhythmic punch or a bloated low end that bleeds into everything else. What I loved here was the volume. Pushing my HD-25s regularly to their peak, and after a while my ears start to hurt. Pushing these was a fairly comfortable experience, much like standing in front of a good L-Acoustics system at an event. Solid and clean, nothing (no pun intended) that leaves you exhausted. I could honestly have them up for quite some time without feeling like my ears had just run a marathon. After 30 years behind the decks, I’m very wary of that, and my ears are probably the only thing I actually take care of these days. This is a big plus for me.

Next up was one of my all-time favourites, Fatima Yamaha’s “What’s a Girl to Do”, to test the nuance between layers. Time for the Flat EQ switch, something most headphones don’t offer. Developed with Metropolis, it’s a neutral profile that strips out colouration and processing, the setting you’d want when reviewing a mix. I’m not sitting in the studio for this road test, but I will in the future, using both wireless and the USB-C wired setup for lossless playback at up to 24-bit/192 kHz, the full FLAC experience. I’ll report on that one later.

By most standards it’s quite a minimal track, but the layering is complex and about as close to studio perfection as you can get. That’s my own opinion, fight me in the comments. I almost felt like I was hearing it for the first time. The clarity, the subtlety, the cues it picked up, all clean and crisp, just as intended in the studio. This is where the triple driver setup earns its keep, with a dedicated precision driver for the mids and a solid-state xMEMS driver handling the top end. I have to hand it to Nothing, they’ve excelled.

I’m not saying these are the best headphones for the studio, and I’m sure plenty of people will be quick to point me elsewhere. But for the Nothing user who wants one pair for daily listening that can also handle opening Ableton on the tube and putting a track together between stops, they work perfectly. Plug in the 3.5 mm cable with Flat EQ on and latency drops below 15 ms, which matters when you’re laying down parts. Not many headphones can cross so many borders of sound and usability, and for that, I’d recommend them. If you’d like me to have a sound engineer road test them in another review, let me know.

Switching Flat EQ back off, I wanted something away from electronic music altogether, so I reached for the live version of Alanis Morissette’s “Uninvited”, with spatial audio switched on in the Nothing X app. It was spine-chilling, and it’s one you really need to hear in spatial audio. A good reminder that these aren’t just built for the club.

By this point I’d started going through track after track, down the musical rabbit hole, and I almost forgot I was supposed to be reviewing them. Honestly, I could write another 4,000 words on the EQ settings alone. There’s a Simple EQ with presets, an Advanced EQ where you drag tuning points anywhere between 20 Hz and 20 kHz rather than working with fixed bands, a Personal Sound profile built from a hearing test in the app, and the community EQ library. Some of these features go above and beyond most brands, especially at this price. You get a lot of headphone for your money. I’d expect this from some much higher end brands, a few of which are sitting in my drawer. I won’t name names, but they cost a lot more and come without any of these features.

Then there’s a little quirk, something I hadn’t even thought to look for. Take the headphones off and, well, the music stops, then picks up again when you put them back on. It’s the little things we don’t think about, I guess.

Not everybody wants a mass of features, and that’s fine, but I doubt Nothing users would tolerate anything less. And Nothing hasn’t simply thrown features at something to one-up another brand, the way some of the newer Chinese electric car makers keep doing. Do you really need a fridge in your glovebox? Instead, it has built a community of designers, audiophiles and people who genuinely care about the interface, the touch and the tactile feel, while keeping it practical. And to my mind, they look very cool.

What really gets me about the brand is that it listens. Nothing actively encourages feedback from its users, good and bad, and builds on it. I can’t say that about many other brands.

So, I should wrap up with what I think is good and bad, and I’ll start with the bad. I don’t like the case. I thought it looked a little tacky and very plastic for what is otherwise a premium package, and it didn’t quite identify with the brand. It just seemed off. It’s not a big purchasing factor for me, and to be honest I doubt I’d ever use it, so it will be relegated to the back of the cupboard. But it lets down the overall quality of the headphones and packaging, and for a lot of people, look, style and feel are everything in a consumerist, social media world.

I also think a small welcome note would go a long way, a letter that invites you to sign up to the community, so you feel like part of an exclusive club that knows good tech and style, and you know what it means to be in it. Maybe make that part of the welcome QR code that installs the app and firmware. It’s the little touches that make a brand, especially one as niche as Nothing. I want to feel like one of the cool kids.

One more, and rightly or wrongly, I feel I can’t quite drive the sound to get that extra bit out of them. We all know the feeling. You’re in the vibe and you want to push it that little bit further for a tad more, and here it somehow feels limited. Now, I can totally understand why, given what I said earlier about looking after your ears, but with the cool factor this brand has, is there a way to make them go to 11? Just for a tiny bit? Maybe it’s just me, harking back to another day.

As for the good, I’m still a little in awe, and as I said above, I could write for days on each feature, the styling and the ease of use. Would I wear these out daily? Hmm, I don’t think so, and that has nothing (again, not a pun) to do with them. I’m just not a fan of wearing over-ears on the street. Maybe it’s from living in Hackney for so many years, but I don’t want to attract attention. On the train, the tube or a flight though? You bet. Anyone who lives in London knows how loud the tube is, and for those five seconds of peace you crave, these with noise cancelling on will send you into Narnia. Everything around you fades away, and it’s just you and your music.

That said, I’d love to hear the difference between these and Nothing’s Ear (3) in-ears for commuting. As someone who flies a lot, they’ll be very welcome on board, and I’m road testing them on a flight this week, so I’ll post an update for those interested.

One caveat. Everything above has been about electronic music, but on the side I loaded up Pearl Jam’s “Alive”, Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” and Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place”. What does one say? All three call for something a little specialist from a pair of headphones, and two out of three landed. On that side of things, I’d give them 8/10.

Now, you might think that’s harsh. To some it’ll be about right, to others no way. Given a test bed of FLAC files to work through, I could see that score going up, but I felt they were being pushed a tad on these tracks, with a slight distortion creeping in.

Which brings me to the final stretch of testing. I had to stay sceptical. I couldn’t let these headphones suck me in completely, I had to find some sort of fault. So how did I go about it, and did I manage it? It had to be Jamie xx’s “Gosh”. I mean, who cares, I had to put it in. That bass, the push of the vocals, that siren of sound. I just had to hear it once at its peak. I’ll leave it to you to work out what I got from it.

Then there was one track I simply had to test, Rone’s “Human”. A few years ago I had the real pleasure of spending time with him and his orchestra at the Barbican in London for what was then his new album. It’s a song that means so much to me, but it’s also a brilliant track for putting headphones through their paces. Test with anything less and, well, I can’t help you.

And finally, the vocal range. For that, it had to be Agnes Obel’s “The Curse”. I’ll leave you to discover the power and the nuance for yourself. And if you’re going to check the vocal range of a pair of headphones and slip into a sublime hole of pure bliss while you’re at it, you have to put on Talk Talk’s “Wealth”, to my mind one of the most beautiful songs ever made.

All in all, I’d rank them 8/10. Would I buy a pair for the aforementioned travelling? Without a doubt. What you should take from this review is that these are headphones I’d absolutely recommend, for day to day listening with a nod to the high end.

I want to leave you with one last track, not to test these headphones but simply to hear them. Rest in peace, William Orbit. “Water From a Vine Leaf”. If you want to lay back, forget the stats, forget the reviews, forget life going by, then forget everything I’ve said. Put on these headphones and slip back to a better time. You won’t forget it.

For the technically inclined, here’s what’s under the glass. Find out more at Nothing

Spec	Headphone (1) Pro
Drivers	40 mm bass dynamic, 13 × 8 mm precision dynamic (PEN diaphragm), solid-state xMEMS treble
Frequency response	20 Hz to 40 kHz
Hi-Res audio	Up to 24-bit/96 kHz wireless and 3.5 mm, lossless USB-C up to 24-bit/192 kHz
Codecs	AAC, SBC, LDAC, LC3 (broadcast audio only)
Noise cancelling	Real-time adaptive ANC, up to 46 dB, 10 mics
Spatial audio	Five modes with head tracking: Standard, Studio B, Live House, Club, Concert Hall
Studio tools	Flat EQ Switch and five genre EQs by Metropolis Studios
Battery	Up to 30 hours ANC on, up to 68 hours ANC off (1060 mAh)
Fast charge	5 minutes gives 2 hours ANC on, 4 hours ANC off
Full charge	2 hours via USB-C
Connectivity	Bluetooth 6.1, dual connection, Auracast broadcast audio, Google Fast Pair, Microsoft Swift Pair
Latency	Under 120 ms in low latency mode, under 15 ms via 3.5 mm with Flat EQ on
Materials	Titanium arms, aluminium frame, 9H Panda Glass
Headphone weight	327 g
Case weight	383.5 g
Dimensions (H × W × D)	190.2 × 174.4 × 78 mm
Headband adjustment	132 mm to 169 mm
Durability	IP52 dust and water resistance
Colours	Black, White
In the box	Headphones, carry case, 3.5 mm cable, USB-C cable, Quick Start guide, 2 lanyard connectors

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