Nothing launched its Ear 3 wireless earbuds with notable hardware upgrades, including larger drivers, LDAC support, and longer battery life. There’s also the built-in case microphone that enables the “Super Mic” mode. With a higher price to match, the Nothing Ear 3 are a tougher sell at their full $179 price compared to mainstream options. However, there’s one thing Nothing does better than almost any audio brand, and that’s software.
The Nothing Ear 3 connect with your Android phone via the Nothing X app, and it’s a dream for audio fans who want to personalize and customize their earbuds. There’s an eight-band equalizer, personalized sound, and a bass enhancement mode to help you find the right sound signature. That’s on top of classic features like ANC and spatial audio. These are the Ear 3 features in the Nothing X app that’ll help you make the latest Nothing earbuds your own.
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Personal sound
(Image credit: Brady Snyder / Android Central)
Everyone’s hearing is different. There is a general audio frequency range for humans that gives us a general idea of what sounds people can actually hear. There’s also something called the “Harman Curve,” which shows the frequency response most people find enjoyable. However, these are just general guidelines rather than rules. To get a sound that someone will love, it needs to be personalized.
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Nothing helps you do just that with a feature called Personal sound. It’s an optional Nothing X feature that tests your hearing and automatically adjusts the Nothing Ear 3’s sound profile accordingly. The test determines your ability to hear sounds at various frequencies along a distribution curve, and based on the results, the app applies an EQ setting to match your hearing profile.
To start, open the Nothing X app and tap Personal sound under your earbud’s device settings. The personalization process takes roughly three minutes to complete. It works by playing tones intermittently. You have to tell the app whether you hear a tone or silence. By analyzing which tones you hear and which you miss, the app can identify the frequencies you can perceive. It then adjusts your earbuds’ sound profile to match the results of the hearing test.
When you’re finished, you get a Nothing Ear 3 sound signature personalized to your individual hearing capabilities.
Bass enhancement
(Image credit: Brady Snyder / Android Central)
Nothing headphones and earbuds are known to be on the bassy side, but there’s a chance that’s why you bought the Nothing Ear 3 in the first place. The rich, deep lows are what make the Ear 3 stand out in a crowded audio market. If you need even more bass than the earbuds provide by default, you can enable Bass enhancement in the Nothing X app. It’ll place even greater emphasis on low frequencies to deliver the booming bass you’re looking for.
To enable Bass enhancement, flip the toggle for it on in the Nothing X app with your earbuds connected. Then, tap it to choose a Bass enhancement level between one and five. The default setting is three, but you can move the slider up or down to make the enhancement more or less pronounced. To find the right setting, listen to your favorite songs — the ones you know the best — at various bass enhancement levels.
Find the one you like, and don’t be afraid to keep the setting disabled if you think the Nothing Ear 3 sound better without it.
Low lag mode
(Image credit: Brady Snyder / Android Central)
This setting is simple, but it’s important to keep it in your portfolio and pull it out when needed. It’s called Low lag mode, and it reduces the amount of audio lag between the Nothing Ear 3 and your device. This is useful for certain applications, like gaming, where response times are crucial. While other earbuds hide this option behind gaming modes and experimental settings, it’s right on the Nothing X home page when the Ear 3 are connected.
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This option, when enabled, drops the input lag to under 120ms. It’s turned on by default when Game Mode is active on a connected Nothing Phone. You should turn on Low lag mode when gaming or during other specialized tasks, but you can leave it off for daily listening.
Equalizer
(Image credit: Brady Snyder / Android Central)
For manual tweaks to the Nothing Ear 3, the Nothing X app offers an eight-band equalizer. Essentially, this means there are eight sections of the audio frequency spectrum that you can increase or decrease in volume. Instead of adjusting the earbud volume, you can pick specific sound ranges to limit or enhance individually, like bass or treble.
The Nothing X app equalizer is really robust, with three modes: Simple, Advanced, and Explore. Using the Simple mode gives you quick, self-explanatory EQ presets including Balanced, More Bass, More Treble, and Voice. There are also custom EQs you can build in the Simple mode using a graphic visualizer. The Advanced tab offers the more sophisticated toggles, with individual sliders for the eight bands listed across the frequency spectrum.
As one final trick, there’s an Explore tab with EQ profiles curated by Nothing and created by experts. In other words, you can instantly download and apply a customized EQ profile made by an audiophile that takes the work out of your hands.
Dual connection
(Image credit: Brady Snyder / Android Central)
Finally, there’s Dual connection, which helps you seamlessly switch your Nothing Ear 3 between devices. It works by letting your earbuds connect to multiple host devices. Then, in the Nothing X app, tap the Dual connection toggle and flip it on. Open the menu, and check the boxes beside the device names you want to use the Dual connection feature. For example, I chose my Nothing Phone 3a Pro and Google Pixel 10 Pro.
Then, the earbuds will automatically switch between audio sources while maintaining a connection to both phones. Nothing Ear 3 will prioritize the sources that are currently playing audio or are on a phone call. This feature saves you the hassle of manually switching Bluetooth connections between multiple devices.
It’s one of the many Nothing Ear 3 features that help enhance your sound or improve daily device connection. The Nothing X companion app is one of the best parts of daily driving a pair of Nothing headphones or earbuds, so you’ll want to start using it.
Nothing’s best earbuds
The Nothing Ear 3 are a flagship pair of wireless earbuds with a hidden trick — the “Super Mic” found within the charging case. The earbuds are pretty solid themselves, with software features like personalized sound and dual connection rounding out the experience.
