On September 28, 2026, Nothing announced the Headphone (1) Pro, and its product page lists it as available from September 29 through Nothing's site, Amazon and Best Buy. This piece is for someone who already has the Headphone (1) or another pair of noise-cancelling headphones. It skips the price on purpose, since a price goes stale. The short version: most of what is new is real hardware, but the numbers are Nothing's, and nobody independent has published measurements that I could find.
What is new, as Nothing lists it
Everything below comes from Nothing's product page and launch coverage, so treat each figure as declared by the manufacturer.
- Three drivers per side. A 40 mm dynamic driver for bass, a smaller dynamic "precision" driver for the midrange, and an xMEMS driver for treble.
- Noise cancelling up to 46 dB, with ten microphones in total. 9to5Google's launch report frames this against 42 dB for the Headphone (1).
- Battery: up to 68 hours without ANC and up to 30 hours with it. Nothing's page specifies the ANC figure for AAC playback.
- Bluetooth 6.1, with AAC, SBC, LDAC and LC3 codecs and dual-device connection. Wired listening over USB-C is listed at up to 24-bit/192 kHz.
- A Flat switch on the ear cup that turns off the EQ and gives a neutral profile, plus a more detailed EQ in the Nothing X app.
- Build: titanium arms that Nothing says are 45 percent lighter than the Headphone (1)'s, glass in place of plastic on the ear-cup windows, IP52 dust and water resistance, and 327 grams total.
Coverage disagrees on some details, for example whether the (1) had one driver or two, and the ANC gap was quoted differently in different outlets. That is why the figures above are limited to what the product page states and to one outlet's comparison. Where it matters to your decision, wait for a measured review.
Which of it reaches the Headphone (1) you own
Hardware does not travel: the drivers, the microphones, the switch and the titanium are all physical, so none of them arrive on a Headphone (1) by update. I found nothing in the launch coverage saying the Headphone (1) gets any of the Nothing X app features, such as the new EQ. That is an absence of information, not a no; Nothing has not said either way in what I read.
Is it a reason to replace them
For most Headphone (1) owners, probably not, and the reason is the size of the claims. A gap of a few decibels in stated ANC depth is not a difference most people can hear in a commute. The changes that a person will notice are comfort and weight, if they were bothered by the original, and the Flat switch, if they mix or edit audio. For everyone else, the headphones you have still do the same job.
It makes more sense to consider them if you are shopping now, rather than owning already, or if your (1) is the thing that failed. Even then, compare against the other noise-cancelling options: what Bluetooth 6.0 actually adds on Sennheiser's new earbuds covers why a version number on the box is a weaker signal than it looks, and it applies to Bluetooth 6.1 here too. The codec matters more than the Bluetooth version: LDAC needs a phone that supports it, and an iPhone will use AAC.
What is still unknown
No independent measurements of the ANC or the frequency response were available when I looked, and the launch is days old. Battery numbers depend on the codec and volume used. Nothing has not said how long it will keep updating the Headphone (1) app features. These are the questions worth checking again in a few weeks, when reviewers who have the hardware in hand have published.
If the noise cancelling is what you care about, AirPods 5 bringing ANC to the base model is the same kind of question from the earbud side: what a claimed feature changes when you already own something that works. Read both before treating a spec sheet as a reason to upgrade.
Last updated September 29, 2026