Nothing (4a) Pro review: the Google Pixel has big competition

Last March, British design-focused company Nothing launched what is arguably its most comprehensive range of devices to date. Alongside the budget Nothing Phone (4a) and Nothing Headphones (a), there was a mid-range offering – the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro.

This phone is also the closest to a flagship offering from Nothing in 2026; the company says it won’t launch any official flagship phones this year. But it’s okay. The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro still brings a premium experience at a mid-range price.

The design of the phone returns to the haphazard look of the Nothing Phone (3). Phone design is of course subjective, but I’m definitely taking what Nothing puts here. There’s a lot to like about this phone, including its $499 price tag.

As with all mid-range phones, there are some compromises, and some may be hard to swallow. At $499, you won’t get a perfect phone.

I’ve been using a Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, provided by Nothing, as my primary phone for 10 days, using the company’s Android software, and using T-Mobile’s network in the Chicagoland area. Here’s what I thought.

The Nothing package as a whole

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

Alongside the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, the company has launched two other devices. The Nothing Phone (4a) is a budget offering with a slower processor, slightly slower memory, and fewer cameras than its bigger brother. It is also not available in the United States

The other device was the Nothing Headphone (a) – a budget version of Nothing’s first over-ear headphones launched last July, the Nothing Headphone (1). For a lower price, you get a simpler design, but in more colors. But by all reports, they sound just as good and have the same controls as the flagship earbuds, making for a great deal at $199.

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As for the Phone (4a) Pro, it’s also the whole package. Upcoming tech specs: It runs on a Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 processor, which is decidedly mid-range, but it fits right in with the phone’s price range. There’s also 8GB or 12GB of RAM as well as 128GB or 256GB of storage, all powered by a 5,000mAh battery. Indian SKUs add another 400mAh to that. The 6.83-inch AMOLED display looks stunning with excellent color reproduction. It refreshes at up to 144Hz, so everything is pretty smooth.

TL;DR on the specs: this phone punches above its weight.

The software is excellent with some compromises

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

Design is at the forefront of Nothing’s philosophy, and all of the design choices built into its Android skin are intentional.

For example, Nothing has a grayscale icon pack for apps that turns your home screen into a black and white version of itself. I can support this in theory: the “digital minimalism” of grayscale apps is supposed to help us have healthier relationships with our phones. Your mileage may vary, but my brain focuses much more on color than shape, so I haven’t switched to the icon pack often.

A confusing choice: the inability to deactivate the application drawer. I prefer to have all my apps on my home screen, organized into folders. There is also nothing to easily create folders. Every time I wanted to drop an app, I had to go to the app drawer and then drag the app into an appropriate folder. Not a fan of that.

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

Then there’s Essential Space, a sort of digital notebook activated by the Essential Key on the left side of the phone. This is meant to be a repository of your thoughts and reminders. When you need to remember something, the Essential key lets you take a screenshot and also lets you add a voice note. The AI ​​then organizes your thoughts and notes.

Maybe I’m not a typical use case here, but I generally don’t remember things with screenshots; it’s just not the way my brain is wired. There is, however, another design choice that I like.

Enter the matrix

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

The Glyph Matrix, which we saw on the Nothing Phone (3), returns on the back of this phone. I love it. However, Nothing has reduced its functionality.

First, the dot matrix itself has larger “pixels”, which means lower resolution within that matrix. It’s good for things like letters and numbers, but it’s bad for everything else. The Glyph Matrix has a neat trick that lets you use it as a mirror to take a selfie with the main camera, and on the Nothing Phone (3) it worked really well.

However, on the Nothing Phone (4a), the resolution is so low that you can’t tell what’s in the window when you try to take a photo. It’s very disappointing.

It’s also disappointing that you can only activate the Glyph Matrix when the phone is flipped. This is likely a cost-saving measure, since there’s no capacitive button to press this time around. It’s still a bit off-putting.

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

You can have a persistent display of the time, battery level, or a few other options, but the Nothing Phone (3) version’s fancy toys, like the Magic 8-ball, are nowhere to be found.

Nothing says you can get more toys from the community, but it has a real “we can’t wait to see what the developers do with it” energy. To borrow a cheesy reference, the Glyph Matrix seems nerfed.

Performance and battery

The Nothing Phone comes with a Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 processor – a very mid-range choice. On Geekbench, the phone gives 1,287/3,906 single/multi-core scores. This means it’s suitable for most tasks you’ll throw at it: opening apps, playing simple games, watching videos.

This will start to bog down when you’re playing serious titles like “Genshin Impact” or trying to edit videos. For most people shopping in this price range, this is perfectly fine.

This also means that the phone consumes battery like a champ. I regularly got just under two days of light to medium use on a single charge. That’s the kind of endurance I like to see in a phone. If you’re a heavy user, you’ll easily go a full day and probably a bit more without plugging it in.

Cameras are the main compromise

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

It doesn’t seem, at first glance, that there’s been any cutting corners with the cameras here. The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro has two 50-megapixel sensors on the back for its main and 3.5x telephoto lenses, an 8-megapixel shooter for the ultra-wide, and a 32-megapixel camera on the front.

But when you look at the results, it’s pretty obvious that these are mid-range cameras.

During the day, in good light, the phone is a very capable shooter, although the ultra-wide leaves something to be desired. Details such as masonry are lost. This isn’t surprising given the small size of the sensor, but if you’re looking for consistency between lenses, you won’t find it here.

Macro photos are also spotty, although the phone uses the main sensor for these macros. Most phones upgrade to the ultra-wide lens for macro shots. Nothing goes against this trend, but as a result you can’t get as close to your subject as you’d like.

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

At night, things fall apart pretty quickly. The light sources are exaggerated and the darkness is very grainy. The video isn’t bad, as long as you don’t move. Start walking and the video quality degrades significantly, with lots of stuttering after your steps.

Quality photos are possible at night and may be suitable for sharing on social media. But when you try to enlarge photos, flaws are much easier to spot.

Nothing Phone (4a) Pro Price and final verdict

Overall, there’s a lot to like about the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro. This is a very good mid-range offering with the usual corners cut – the camera being the main one. It’s not that the camera setup is bad; it’s just very mid-range. If this phone lived in a vacuum, it would be a good trade.

Its price is $499, the same as the recently released Google Pixel 10a. I bring this up because the Pixel 10a is not compromised in terms of camera quality; far from it. The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro has a telephoto lens that the Pixel 10a lacks, so there’s that to consider.

The camera array on Google Pixel 10a.
Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable

The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro camera line.
Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

If you like good photos of distant subjects, the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is the better buy. But if you value overall camera quality, get the Pixel 10a.

The two phones are also polar opposites in terms of design. The Pixel 10a is about as boring as it gets with a flat back and no camera bump. Meanwhile, on the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, you get Nothing’s signature transparent design and a sizable camera island.

Your preference will vary, of course, but I much prefer the boldness of the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro and Nothing hardware in general. If you like flair, it doesn’t get more flair than this. If you want great software, Nothing offers that too.

If you want something different, it’s the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro in a nutshell. This phone is for people who like to stand out and have a talking point in their pocket. It’s also for design fans who want a phone that makes a statement. It’s a true mid-range phone, and it’s very good value at $499.