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A flagship with three drivers per ear, a Flat EQ switch tuned at London’s Metropolis Studios, and a Seoul campaign fronted by V.
Two tincture, black and white, went on sale on September 29 at a number Nothing had never put on an audio product before: $399. The Headphone (1) Pro was announced from London the previous day and reached the company’s own stores almost immediately, listed at £349 in the UK, €349 across the eurozone and ¥64,800 including tax in Japan. It sits above the original Headphone (1) and the cheaper Headphone (a) as the first model in what Nothing is calling its Pro audio series, and it arrived with a new face attached. V, the BTS vocalist born Kim Taehyung, has been named the brand’s newest Global Brand Ambassador and stars in the launch campaign.
Signal. What happened: Nothing launched the Headphone (1) Pro, its new flagship over-ear headphone, and named V of BTS its Global Brand Ambassador, with a launch campaign photographed in Seoul by Dorothea Sing Zhang. Exact object: Headphone (1) Pro, a wireless over-ear model with a triple-driver system, up to 46dB of adaptive noise cancellation and a physical Flat EQ switch tuned with Metropolis Studios, offered in Black and White; no public SKU or model code has been listicle. When and where: announced September 28, 2026 and on sale from September 29 through Nothing’s official stores, at $399 in the US, £349 in the UK, €349 in the eurozone and ¥64,800 in Japan, with Philippine pre-orders opening October 1 at PhP25,490, Indonesia slated for mid-October and Singapore still unscheduled. Source: Nothing’s official Headphone (1) Pro product listing and the launch statements from V and Nothing co-founder Carl Pei. Why it matters: it is the most expensive headphone Nothing has made, the first to compete on price with the category’s long-established noise-cancelling flagships, and the first new ambassador since Charli XCX opened the program in May. Earlier: prior coverage of V’s Champion collide and of Charli XCX supplies the backstory for both the new ambassador and the program he now joins.
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The headline change sits inside the ear cups. Where the Headphone (1) relied on a single 40mm driver per side, the Pro splits the frequency range across three. A redesigned 40mm dynamic driver handles bass, using a dual-magnet system that Nothing says delivers 15 percent more punch and 26 percent more sensitivity than its predecessor, with a metal-ceramic coated dome meant to hold distortion down when the volume climbs. A smaller 13 by 8mm precision dynamic driver with a PEN diaphragm takes the vocals, focusing on breath, articulation and the sibilant “S” and “T” sounds that are hardest to render cleanly. Treble goes to a solid-state unit from xMEMS with a silicon diaphragm the company describes as 95 times stiffer than plastic, which in theory means faster transients and cleaner instrument texture. Nothing quotes a combined frequency response of 20Hz to 40kHz.
The signal can arrive by almost any route. The Pro is Hi-Res Audio certified over both wireless and wired connections, supports LDAC alongside AAC and SBC over Bluetooth 6.1, and accepts lossless audio over USB-C at up to 24-bit/192kHz, with a 3.5mm cable in the box for analog listening.
Noise cancellation climbs to a claimed 46dB, up from the Headphone (1)’s 42dB. Ten microphones do the work, three feed-forward and two feedback on each side, paired with a new 8mm silicone baffle wall and two-layer cushions that stop outside sound leaking around the seal. The adaptive system reads both the surrounding environment and the fit of the ear cups in real time, and Nothing singles out wind as the scenario where the new array most clearly improves on the old one.
Then there is the switch. Alongside the roller, paddle and customizable button carried over from the Headphone (1), the Pro adds a physical toggle that drops every EQ adjustment and puts the headphones into a neutral Flat EQ profile. Flick it back and whatever custom sound has been dialed into the Nothing X app returns. It is a small piece of hardware, but it is the clearest statement of intent on the product: a consumer headphone with a dedicated reference mode a thumb away.
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That Flat EQ profile was tuned by engineers at Metropolis Studios, the West London recording, mixing and mastering complex housed inside The Power House, a Grade II listed former power station on Chiswick High Road. The studio has spent more than three decades hosting sessions that range from underground scenes to global chart records, and it bills its mastering suites among the best anywhere. Nothing describes the Flat EQ as a profile built for reviewing, producing and mixing music, one that strips out artificial coloration and processing so a track can be heard close to the way it left the console.
The partnership marks a shift in how Nothing sources its sound. The original Headphone (1), launched in July 2025 at $299, carried tuning from KEF, the British loudspeaker maker. For the Pro, Nothing went to a working studio instead, and the collaboration reaches further than a single preset. Metropolis modeled a new Dynamic Spatial Audio mode, named Studio B, on the wide-angled architecture its own Studio B uses to break up and diffuse sound waves, aiming for an open, airy soundstage built for focused listening.
The studio also tuned five EQ profiles around British genres: Neo-Jazz, Rock, UK Rap and Grime, Electronica, and Bass. They live in the EQ library inside Nothing X, and Nothing presents the set as a nod to its own London roots. Beyond the studio presets, the app adds an advanced EQ that can adjust individual drivers and a Personal Sound feature that builds a profile around how a specific listener hears. Spatial audio with upgraded head tracking rounds out the package, with Live House, Club and Concert Hall modes sitting alongside Studio B.
@nothingNew V Drop 📍 Nothing Store Soho, London♬ original sound – Nothing
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Physically, the Pro keeps the see-through language that made the Headphone (1) recognizable from across a room, but trades some of the plastic for denser materials. Each ear cup now sits behind a window of 9H-rated, scratch and shatter resistant glass that exposes hints of the driver architecture inside. The frame is aluminium machined from a single block, and the arms are a new titanium alloy that Nothing says is 45 percent lighter than the equivalent parts on the Headphone (1). The finished headphone weighs 327g.
Comfort got as much attention as the shell. Compared with the Headphone (1), the dual-layer ear cushions are 50 percent softer and better at accommodating glasses, the headband is 10 percent wider, and its padding is 12 percent thicker. The cushions are removable, and Nothing says cracked glass can be inspected and, where appropriate, repaired or replaced through its customer service rather than writing off the whole unit.
Battery life lands at up to 68 hours with noise cancellation off on AAC, or up to 30 hours with it on, a step down from the Headphone (1)’s 80-hour ANC-off figure. Five minutes on a cable buys up to four hours of playback with ANC off. The Pro carries an IP52 rating against dust and dripping water, and Nothing says it put the design through more than 50,000 cumulative test cycles across the charging port, hinges, controls, headband and cushions.
It ships in a hardshell case lined with protective TPU and fitted with loops for keychains, carabiners, straps and charms. With those loops built in, the case reads as much like a bag as protective storage, which suits a brand that has always treated its hardware as something to be seen.
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The campaign was photographed in Seoul by Dorothea Sing Zhang, and the imagery keeps things spare. V wears the Pro in both black and white, and he also appears with Nothing’s existing Headphone (1), Headphone (a) and Ear (3), signalling that the role covers the wider audio range rather than a single launch. Nothing has pitched the collaboration around experimentation and versatility, and its co-founder and CEO Carl Pei framed the choice in those terms, describing V as an artist who follows his creative instincts rather than proven formulas and saying that quality was exactly what the company wanted the Pro to carry.
V’s own statement was brief. He said he was excited to be part of what he described as a bold new chapter for the brand, adding that “Headphone (1) Pro is a design grounded in creative expression.”
The appointment adds a technology brand to a portfolio that has so far leaned toward luxury and lifestyle. V became an ambassador for Celine in 2023, and Cartier named him a global ambassador that July, making him the face of its Panthère de Cartier campaign. In September 2025 he signed with Japanese skincare brand Yunth, his first solo partnership in Japan’s beauty sector, and the Yunth products he promoted sold out across major Japanese retailers within 24 hours. With Japan among the Pro’s first-day markets, that history travels with him into this launch.
The timing places Nothing’s campaign in the middle of a crowded year for its new ambassador. BTS reconvened in 2026 after all seven members completed their military service, releasing a group album in March and starting a world tour in Goyang in April that is scheduled to run into March 2027. V’s own solo work, led by his 2023 debut album Layover, leans toward jazz-inflected R&B and soft-focus soul, music built on texture and space, which makes a reference-tuned headphone a more natural fit than the usual celebrity tie-in.
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V is only the second artist to hold the title. Nothing opened its ambassador program in May 2026 by naming Charli XCXits first Global Brand Ambassador and, at the same moment, a shareholder. Her launch campaign, shot in London by longtime collaborator Aidan Zamiri, sealed her in a room for five days wearing the Headphone (a) to demonstrate its 135-hour battery. The equity side of that deal placed her alongside an existing group of creative backers that includes The Weeknd, Swedish House Mafia and Casey Neistat, and followed the $200 million Series C round, raised in 2025, that valued the company at $1.3 billion.
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The two appointments read differently. Charli’s campaign was London-made and built around the brand’s most affordable over-ear model; V’s was shot in Seoul around its most expensive one. Where the first deal paired the ambassador title with equity, the materials rel for V describe his role as Global Brand Ambassador, with no shareholding announced. Taken together, the pair give the brand reach in two directions at once: a British pop provocateur at home, and one of the most followed solo artists in Asia, whose personal Instagram account counts its audience in the tens of millions.
Music has become central to how Nothing describes its ambitions. Alongside the ambassador program, the company has launched Club Nothing, a music fund aimed at a new generation of nightlife curators, and it increasingly presents itself as a lifestyle-led company working at the meeting point of technology and culture rather than as a conventional electronics maker. A headphone tuned by a recording studio and fronted by a working musician fits that pitch neatly.
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The Pro costs $100 more than the Headphone (1) did at launch and roughly double the Headphone (a)’s $199 US price. That moves Nothing into a bracket where buyers expect elite noise cancellation as a baseline and judge everything else as extras, and where the competition has years of category leadership behind it. In the US it is sold through Nothing’s own store and major national retailers. Southeast Asian markets follow through October and beyond, and India already has a listing on Nothing’s site with local pricing still to come.
The launch also lands at a delicate moment for the company. In July, Nothing confirmed it was restructuring, with more than 100 of its roughly 800 staff potentially affected and around 25 roles in its global marketing team, most of them in the UK, reported to be at risk. A separate report that month claimed the company would pull out of at least a dozen markets, Japan among them. Co-founder Akis Evangelidis rejected that claim outright, saying Nothing was not shutting down any markets.
In Japan, one of the countries named in that July report, the Headphone (1) Pro went on sale through Nothing’s own store on September 29, the same day as the US and Europe, in black or white, at ¥64,800.
