The Nothing Ear (1) wireless earbuds appear in black in newly leaked images

The rather oddly named Nothing Ear (1) wireless earbuds have so far only been available in white, but that could be about to change – new image leaks have added to a growing pile of evidence that a black variant of the earbuds is on the way in the near future.

We first heard rumblings about this a few days ago, and now pictures have shown up on Reddit (via Android Police) giving us an idea of what the finished product will look like: pretty much as you would expect, with no other design choices besides the change of color to black.

Noted tipster @evleaks has also weighed in with an image, so this is about as confirmed as an unconfirmed rumor can be. As yet though, no one is predicting a launch date, beyond saying these updated earbuds could "soon" be here.

There's a reason I never use this word... https://t.co/RqW6a6zE8z pic.twitter.com/wrgG5yEZCaNovember 25, 2021

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In the pipeline

According to the originator of the Reddit thread, the images it contains are renders produced by Nothing itself, so expect to see them in future official promotional materials – they aren't concept renders put together by a third party, in other words.

More context: just a couple of weeks ago Nothing tweeted about bringing out black versions of its Ear (1) product, although at that stage it wasn't clear just how serious the proposal was. These new variants were apparently already in the works back then.

And as one user has pointed out, if you look carefully at one of the official videos used to promote the Nothing Ear (1) wireless earbuds, you can just about see a black version of them – although it's difficult to tell for sure.

Analysis: Nothing could use a boost

If you're new to Nothing, it was launched near the start of 2021 by Carl Pei, one of the original co-founders of OnePlus. So far the Nothing Ear (1) is the only hardware product launched by the company, though there are likely to be plenty more on the way.

We've heard talk of smart home devices being manufactured by Nothing, and there are also persistent rumors of a Nothing phone arriving in the future – something that makes sense considering Nothing acquired the makers of the Essential Phone earlier this year.

So far Nothing hasn't had the dramatic impact on the electronics industry that Pei's previous company OnePlus had. We found the Nothing Ear (1) wireless earbuds to be somewhat underwhelming in our time with them, with the audio quality and noise cancelling tech in need of some improvement.

Still, it's very early days for Nothing. A black version of its earbuds could be a relatively straightforward way of drumming up more attention for the brand, while it continues to work on more ambitious hardware projects – including, perhaps, a smartphone.