Nothing Ear 3a priced at $99
The Nothing Ear 3a earbuds retail at $99, matching the price of the original Ear A, making them Andrew's top non-iPhone earbud recommendation.
Snapshot · Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast
Nothing Beats Phone 4b with Ear 3a?
Explore episode
Jul 10, 2026
Where this was said
Nothing Ear 3a: The $99 Earbuds Andrew Can't Quit
At 27:02 · chapter starts 26:40
At $99, the Nothing Ear 3a is Andrew's top earbud pick for anyone not locked into the Apple ecosystem — and he admits this despite giving Nothing plenty of criticism elsewhere. The case design is nearly identical to the Ear A, which Andrew actually prefers. The new feature that generated the most discussion is Audio Snapshot: the case packs 32MB of storage that can record what you're hearing — calls, media, ambient audio — for up to 2 hours, accessible and editable through the Nothing X app. The crew debates the legal implications of call recording, notes it's already possible on iPhones, and broadly concludes the feature is primarily useful for meeting transcription. David suspects Carl Pei's AI ambitions are the real driver behind Audio Snapshot, positioning the earbuds as a wearable second-brain device. The colour options — white, black, yellow, new pink — have the accent colour on the inner earbud housing rather than the stems, which the crew finds a missed styling opportunity.
Nothing Ear 3a: The Best $99 Earbuds for Android Users
The Nothing Ear 3a costs $99, matches the original Ear A on price, and earns Andrew's top recommendation for non-iPhone users looking for quality wireless earbuds. Available in white, black, yellow, and new pink colorways, it also adds a novel Audio Snapshot feature for recording calls and media.
Ear 3a Audio Snapshot: 32MB storage
The Nothing Ear 3a case contains 32MB of onboard storage to record audio snapshots of calls, media, or conversations for later review in the Nothing X app.
Similar snapshots
MVP built in one week
Sam's initial MVP was coded in approximately one week using ChatGPT voice mode and copy-pasting code, with no prior technical experience.
Discord vs email for young users
Sam argues Discord is 10x better than email for building relationships with younger users who rarely check their inbox.
Monthly infra costs ~$780–$980
Sam's monthly operating costs include Cursor ($200), AI image generation ($100), AI video generation ($200), hosting ($100), email marketing ($80), and AI compute ($300–$500).
ChatGPT-powered pain point research
Sam recommends copying days of Discord chat history into ChatGPT and prompting it to list recurring pain points as a fast, free market research technique.
50 free tools built total
Bhanu and his team built approximately 50 free tools to attract search traffic, each linked back to SiteGPT.
New tool built in under 5 minutes
With AI coding tools like Cursor, Bhanu can now create a new free marketing tool in less than 5 minutes by referencing existing tools.
KD filter < 10 for rankable keywords
Bhanu filters Ahrefs keyword results to show only those with a keyword difficulty below 10, making them realistic ranking targets for any decent website.
Minimum 1,000 monthly search volume
Bhanu sets a minimum search volume of 1,000 monthly searches when selecting keywords to target with free tools.
20 downloads/day at launch
PropGPT averaged 20 downloads per day right after launching on the App Store through influencer marketing.
