Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
I have a genuine fascination for Nothing branded smartphones, their unique designs are just so refreshing in a world of bland. I’ve been using the Nothing 4a Pro now for several weeks as a complete daily driver and it’s been an absolute joy. With some limitations.
At $949 this isn’t a mid-tier phone. I classify mid-tier as the $500-700, maybe $800 in these days. At $949 this edges into premium, yet not flagship of course.
Key Takeaways
- The Nothing 4a Pro offers unique designs but lacks features like wireless charging at its $949 price point.
- While it provides a satisfying user experience with excellent screen and design, it falls short in power for video editing.
- Camera performance is impressive, mainly rivaling the more expensive Nothing Phone 3 with good capabilities in bright conditions.
- The Nothing experience is best achieved by enabling specific settings, which aren’t default, leading to a more generic Android feel otherwise.
- At $949, the 4a Pro is pricey; $799 would make it more appealing, while the standard Nothing Phone 4a at $649 might be a better option.
Nothing’s “Phone (3)” is a whole different ball game – at $1500+ it can certainly be considered flagship for the brand.
What you get with the 4a Pro is a paired back 3, of course and for the most part the experience and the look really are the experience.
No Wireless charging?
I’ll share some photos in a moment, but the reality is this is a phone that lacks features at this price point – Wireless Charging key among them. How can a phone costing almost $1000 not have Wireless Charging? It’s about as outrageous as Samsung not having Qi2 in their flagship S Series.
My whole life is setup for Wireless charging, bedside, in the car and at the office. So carrying cables and remembering to plug them in every night is frustrating.
The Nothing experience on the Nothing 4a Pro
For the “Nothing” experience itself, the brand needs to embed itself better and push it’s features harder.
If you don’t choose the “Nothing” icon interface during the setup process, you will be left with just another Android Phone – pretty vanilla actually. While I appreciate Nothing isn’t building their own OS here, it’s just an Icon pack to give all your apps the clean, minimal “black and white” look that Nothing has.
On the back of the phone is a thing they call the Glyph Matrix and while “lower res” in this than on the Nothing Phone 3, it’s still pretty useful. But again, it’s not on by default. I had to go into the settings to enable some notifications for apps I wanted to hear about.
I know people don’t like having settings “forced” apon them, but in the case of Nothing, I think it would be in their interest to make a first step option for the “complete Nothing experience” and onward from there.
Aside from all that, this is a great phone. The screen is excellent, the design delightful and while under specced in Power, seemed slick and responsive to me.
The only time I felt it may have lacked something was when editing a video in CapCut the audio was out of sync and the export took time. Still worked though!
AI in the Nothing 4a Pro
Some of Google’s AI features are on board, like Gemini via the side button, and even circle to search.
But this one shocked me, Image editing – epic. I took the below photo out the plane window, went into Gallery, Edit and remove reflections – done. That’s cool.
Does the camera stack up?
As with every smartphone, the most used feature – the Camera
To get a sense of the camera on this phone, I thought it best to compare to the better phone Nothing offers – the Phone 3 – so my son Harri took his 3 out with my 4a Pro to compare.
Honestly, I’d struggle to tell you that for $600 more the phone 3 is really offering better photography, so the 4a Pro really does shine here, time after time.
Perhaps, if we’re picky, there’s a more natural set of tones to the 3 in the below flower photos, the 4a Pro seems to lack depth in the detail of the flower petals – but how close did you need to look to notice that?
When tested with bright sunlight and the darker foreground the 4a Pro did very well.
And here are it’s zoom capabilities within the default photos app:
The Ultra Wide at the start was really the only one that could have benefited from a screen tap to determine exposure levels.
Nothing 4a Pro Overall Thoughts
Overall, this is an outstanding phone. Not sure why you’d jump up a level from here, other than to get Wireless Charging (that is to say, give me the Nothing Phone 3 any day).
However, I think the price is off the mark. At $799 this is a game changer and sets the market alight.
At $949, it’s just another option in the market, and frankly, you might even be better off just getting the non-pro Nothing Phone 4a – perhaps at $649 it’s the real winner.
Trev is a Technology Commentator, Dad, Speaker and Rev Head.
He produces and hosts several popular podcasts, EFTM, Two Blokes Talking Tech, Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars, The Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, and the Private Feed. He is the resident tech expert for Triple M on radio across Australia, and is the resident Tech Expert on Channel 9’s Today Show and appears regularly on 9 News, A Current Affair and Sky News Early Edition.
Father of three, he is often found in his Man Cave.
