Nothing Headphone (1) Pro review: I'm not sure who these premium over-ears are for

Nothing made a bit of a splash, at least in my own estimation, when it debuted the Headphone (1). It arrived in the over-ear headphone market with a bold design, superb controls, and extremely solid sound – and I was won over (more so than some of my peers).

Now, after already having made a cut-price version, the Headphone (a), Nothing's going even higher-end with the new Headphone (1) Pro, on review here.

These over-ears pose the question of how you could make the Headphone (1) fancier, and come up with answers that vary from expected to baffling. I've had them for a few weeks to formulate my detailed thoughts on how they shape up.

Price and Availability

When you announce a "Pro" version of an existing headphone, most people's first question will rightly be how much the price is going up. It's what people recently asked of the Sonos Ace Ultra over the original, for example.

The Headphone (1) Pro launches at $399 in the US and £349 here in the UK, exactly £100 more than the Headphone (1)'s launch price (which hasn't been cut down since then, despite some sales bringing temporary discounts).

The headphones will be available to order imminently, if you're keen on them, and that price rockets them right into the same bracket as a whole heap of flagships. They're in contention with the likes of Sony's WH-1000XM6, Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless and more, making for an extremely competitive field.

Design and Features

At a glance, it would probably be pretty hard for the uninitiated to tell apart a pair of Headphone (1) Pro from the older Headphone (1), since they very much share the same design foundations.

The new headphones retain most of the main elements of the older pair's design, including their squared-off earcups and a leaning towards transparency. It's not the biggest difference, but the Pro's earcups are actually a little less jazzy than last time out, which I welcome. Some of the details inside the transparent windows have been toned down and made less eye-catching.

That said, the windows themselves have technically been upgraded, since they're now faced with actual glass – scratch-resistant, Nothing assures me, something I've been loath to test – framed within aluminium. That's a tip-off about one of the ways the Headphone (1) Pro differs – its materials are more premium, although the headphones are in fact 2g lighter than the Headphone (1).

There's now more metal and less plastic, that new glossy glass, and some plusher cushioning in key places: the headband in particular, and the earcups, too. This honestly changes very little about how they sit on the head, but I had no comfort issues with the older version. If you found those too clamping, however, then you might have a better time with the Pro.

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Also nearly unchanged are the borderline revolutionary controls that Nothing came up with for its first over-ears. You get the same roller button for volume and play/pause, a rocker for skipping tracks, an external customisable button, and a hidden button for pairing.

There's now a new switch inside the other earcup to activate a new Flat EQ mode. This is important because Nothing's pinning quite a lot on the new audio tuning offered by the Headphone (1) Pro, and the EQ presets that come with it. In the Nothing X app, you can now tinker far more deeply with the headphone's sound, including some spatial presets to mimic different types of venues.

Much of this is gimmicky (and Sony does the same with its Collexion top-tier offering), but the Flat EQ mode is pretty interesting. It does what it says on the tin, basically turning tuning off at your beck and call, to return you to a sterile, studio-style listening experience that doesn't bring anything to the table to influence your listening. I like it a lot, and being able to toggle it so easily is fun.

Like the Headphone (1) before them, these cans bring active noise-cancelling (ANC) to the table, and it performs solidly again – although I couldn't necessarily discern a massive improvement when I surreptitiously used them on a few long-haul flights recently. More microphones should mean more accurate noise suppression, though.

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Battery life is a curious topic this time, with the estimated 30 hours with ANC turned on actually lower than on the Headphone (1), although turning it off will net you a really chunky 68 hours. Not that many people are likely to opt for that.

I'm an outspoken fan of Nothing's previous design work on its headphones, but that position has been tested enormously by one part of the Headphone (1) Pro: its case. Rather than a soft-touch case like every other headphone you've used in the last few years, Nothing has stepped out and instead gone for a sort of hardshell plastic halfway design, which leaves the headband exposed as a carrying handle.

I heard directly from Nothing's designers about how this would save space in bags, and how its handle loops could make it a fashion statement worn as a sling, but in practice I think it's a design disaster. At a criminal 384g, it more than doubles the headphones' weight (327g on their own) in a bag, and has room for precisely no extra accessories like wires, adapters, or anything else.

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It's the definition of aesthetics over purpose, and I can't quite believe it made it out of the door – not least because of its similarities to the AirPods Max case that people have spent about half a decade loudly mocking. At least that one is light and thin, though!

If that over-thought case added anything to the final price of the Headphone (1) Pro, then colour me baffled – I'd back plenty of people to decline it from the package if they could save even £20 as a result.

That's obviously a sour note, but it stands in clear contrast to the rest of the design work on the headphones themselves, which remains innovative and different (both rarities at this point).

Sound and Performance

If you're going to crank up the price of your new headphones by this sort of margin, how they sound becomes even more important than it already was. Nothing has played an interesting hand here, too, leaning on new customisation features as well as a new driver architecture.

The new driver system is a three-part one that its engineers are clearly proud of, and the end result is more precise and detailed, just as promised. The Headphone (1) Pro builds on the solid foundations of the standard version, but it does have more heft and verve.

Listening to Jungle's new album, there's a really nice amount of separation between vocals and backing elements, and the high-end sounds great. Rerouting to older material from J. J. Cale, the acoustic soul of the tracks comes through really nicely, and the same is true of some Creedence Clearwater Revival.

It's all very impressive in isolation, but it's also fair to say that when I got my Headphone (1) back out, I confirmed fairly quickly that the gap between the models is not massive. Yes, the (1) Pro has a bit more to it, but it's improving on a great skeleton.

The same is true of that newly improved ANC system, which did indeed dull the noise of the flights I took to a strong degree, but not in a way that made the previous version look too substandard. It blocks more noise, but still falls short of the best I've used in this price bracket (which remains Sony's WH-1000XM6).

Many of the other features Nothing's keen to spotlight reside in the Nothing X app, and I'm curious how many people will be moved particularly by them. Flat EQ, as I've mentioned already, is a winner in my book, not least because it has a physical toggle.

Another addition is spatial audio presets designed to mimic different listening environments, from a studio to a club or a concert venue. I'll be frank: I experimented with these but almost immediately confirmed they're not something I'd want to use regularly, and I'd be surprised if many people diverged from that.

Some new EQ presets are a bit more traditional in their approach, and their changes to the Headphone (1) Pro's sound are clear to hear when you swap between them. It feels generous to count that as a standalone feature, though, when you can just do your own EQ customisation when you want it.

Nothing Headphone (1) Pro review: Verdict

I don't want to draw any overly grand conclusions about the Nothing Headphone (1) Pro and what it says about Nothing's wider market approach, but at a time when it claims to know it might have made too many phones in recent years, I wonder if this new launch fits into a similar bucket.

I like it plenty when assessed in isolation, but in the context of the cheaper and, in my opinion, much better-value Headphone (1), I don't see enough in the Pro to warrant an upgraded version with this sort of price jump. You get better sound and some add-on features, but a considerably more inconvenient case and little meaningful change in design terms.

At this price, I'd point people towards other options, frankly, and I'll be extremely interested to see how Nothing fares with a launch that might not really have needed to happen at all. If it could only have brought some of these improvements to a later-launching Headphone (2) without a price rise, it could have been cooking with some gas.

Also Consider

No prizes for guessing the headphones that I'd recommend most if you're enticed by the cool design of the Headphone (1) Pro but aren't sure about the price. The normal Headphone (1) remains excellent, in my view, and while you'll save a chunk of cash, I think it's almost certainly one to keep an eye on through the coming autumn and early winter sales – if its price doesn't budge, I'll eat my hat.

Alternatively, my favourite recent over-ears are the Momentum 5 Wireless from Sennheiser, which are far stealthier in design terms. They sound brilliant and have excellent battery life, too, and a normal case. Plus, they're actually cheaper than the Nothing Headphone (1) Pro here in the UK, making them a comprehensive winner by comparison.