How much do looks matter for consumer gadgets? The pretentious side of me wants to say "not much. I only care about performance."

But we all know that's not true. Humans are visual creatures, and we can all be swayed by style to some degree. And that's true of the Ear Stick.

Nothing, the U.K.-headquartered startup headed by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, is banking on aesthetics in a lot of ways. The company has released three products so far, and to be honest, none of them operate much differently from the dozens of other similar products on the market. But all of Nothing's products offer a visually striking design language wrapped in unique packaging and are priced pretty competitively to boot.

To be honest, sometimes that's enough. Not every product needs to reinvent the wheel or revolutionize the industry. Sometimes a consumer product just needs to look great, work well enough, and doesn't cost too much. Nothing's latest product, a set of wireless earbuds named the Ear Stick, does just that.

Disclaimer: The links in this review are provided by Crutchfield, an audio retailer with a great reputation for customer service, etc.

Nothing Ear Stick Price and availability

• You can get the Nothing Ear Sticks for $99 in the U.S. and are available in other countries
• They'll be available on Amazon starting on Nov. 4.

The Nothing Ear Sticks are priced at $99 in the U.S. and similarly in other regions (in the U.K. and Hong Kong, for example, you can get them for £99 and HK$899, respectively). They're available for pre-order now on Nothing's online store and ships on Nov. 4. After that, it will also be available on major online retailers like Amazon.

Design and hardware: Major pros and cons

• These use a half-in-ear design so it doesn't sit inside your ear canal
• You can potentially get more comfort but weaker noise isolation
• There is no wireless charging in the case

In case you haven't been paying attention to Nothing, the Ear Stick is the company's second set of wireless earbuds. The Ear 1 launched last year and garnered praise for their semi-transparent design and sonic performance, which punched above its price range. The new earbuds bring back the same semi-transparent design but in a tube casing instead of the Ear 1's more conventional jewelry box-like case.

Other than the new case, the Ear Sticks crucially deviate from the Ear 1 in one way: The Ear Sticks are "half in-ear" style buds (another way to call it is "open-ear"), meaning they sit on the ridges of the ears just outside the ear canal. The original Ear 1 are in-ear earbuds with silicon tips that go inside the canal, just like Apple's AirPods Pro.

The half-in-ear design brings major pros and cons. They're usually more comfortable to wear for extended periods of time because there's nothing sticking inside the ear, but it also doesn't block out noise at all. With in-ear earbuds, even without active noise cancelation (ANC), the silicon tip provides enough of a seal to naturally blocks out ambient noise. With the Nothing Ear Stick, you still hear the outside world completely, at full volume.

But this is a feature, not a bug. These types of half-in-ear buds are not supposed to eliminate outside sound. Instead, this design appeals to two groups: those who can't stand the feeling of in-ear buds (I have a few colleagues who fall into this camp) or those who want to be aware of their surroundings when listening to audio.

Nothing reps make it clear, too: the Ear Stick are not successors to the Ear 1 but companions. Consumers choose whether to compromise on either ear comfort or sonic immersion.

Back to the casing. I'm a fan of Nothing going with a different shape simply because it stands out from the crowd. The case is transparent, so the buds are always visible. The case opens via a twist of the knob at the top, which slides the cover over like a revolving door, allowing you to pull the buds out of the slots.

The twisting action to open the case is fun to fiddle with. There's enough resistance to require slight force for the twist, and there's an audible click when the case opens or closes all the way.

The charging port is at the top of the tube, covered by a red plastic material that adds visual flair. Unlike the Nothing Ear 1's case, there is no wireless charging. The earbuds are a bit lighter than the Nothing Ear 1 buds, at 4.4g per bud, and as mentioned, they fit comfortably without the pressure from wearing in-ear buds for too long.

The Ear Stick stems house the usual touch-sensitive panel that most readers should be familiar with. The panel can detect taps and long-press only, not swipes.

There are three microphones on each bud, and they are purely for picking up the wearer's voice. As we previously mentioned, the Ear Sticks do not have any form of ANC. This was a wise decision, given the fit would have made any software attempt to remove ambient sound a bit pointless. The mics do a great job of picking up my voice for phone calls or when I'm summoning Google Assistant.

Inside each bud is a 12.6mm audio driver, which Nothing says was custom-built for the Ear Stick. The battery life is advertised at seven hours on a single charge, and the numbers seem accurate after a week of use. The case carries an additional three charges for a total of about 28 hours of playtime. A USB-C charging cable is included with the packaging.

The Nothing Ear Stick offers multipoint connectivity, so it can connect to several devices at once, and connection has been excellent. I have used these indoors and outdoors, and have never experienced a dropped connection. There's also IPX5 water resistance for the earbuds, so you can wear them in the rain or even briefly submerge them in water without issue. But that's only the earbuds; the case isn't water-resistant at all.

Software and audio quality: Where's the bass?

• The earbuds will pair with just about any phone
• The open-ear design means lower frequencies like bass suffer

The Nothing Ear Stick will pair with any device with Bluetooth, and on many Android phones, simply opening the Ear Stick case lid will trigger a pop-up menu asking if you want to pair. Once paired, the Ear Stick worked fine, whether it was to the Google Pixel 7 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, or MacBook Pro.

To fine-tune audio output or customize touch controls, you must install Nothing's companion app. From here, I could assign additional controls to niche actions like "double press and hold" and play with the equalizer to highlight vocals or bass if I so choose.

Since these are open-ear buds, lower frequencies like bass can be lost due to audio leakage and can be drowned out by outside noise in general. Nothing reps say the company's engineers built a software algorithm named "bass lock" that detects how much bass is being lost due to the shape of the ear and adjusts EQ accordingly. The feature sounds gimmicky, and in real-world usage, I didn't hear much of a difference.

For guitar-driven music or podcasts, the Nothing Ear Stick performs as well as any big-name competition.

You'll just have to accept you're not going to get immersive, in-your-face audio with these earbuds. However, the Ear Sticks sound perfectly fine in a quiet environment. The earbuds do a good job of separating mids and highs, so you can easily identify a guitar riff or backing vocals. The lack of bass kick does make hip-hop tracks sound a bit flatter than I'm used to, but for guitar-driven music or podcasts, these perform as well as any big-name competition.

Should you buy the Nothing Ear Stick?

You should buy the Nothing Ear Stick if:

• You want a well-performing set of earbuds at an affordable price
• You find in-ear earbuds too uncomfortable to wear
• You like Nothing's design language

You should not buy the Nothing Ear Stick if:

• You use earbuds in noisy environments and prefer to have some form of ambient noise blockage
• You already own a pair of good wireless earbuds

Outside of its distinctive look, the Nothing Ear Sticks are standard wireless earbuds. Whether it's audio quality, battery life, or features, the Ear Sticks perform well, but not amazing. But at $99, the Nothing Ear Sticks are priced right and are thus worth a look for those looking for new open-ear earbuds.

When a product category is becoming as flooded as the wireless earbuds space, and when wireless audio technology has been commoditized to the point that they all sound pretty good, then it may just come down to how the earbud looks and feels. I'm a big fan of the Ear Stick's design language, and I enjoy looking at and fiddling with the case. For others, that might be enough.