Is it REALLY the phone of the YEAR?! Nothing Phone (2a) Review
In my Nothing Phone (2a) review, I reveal my thoughts on whether or not this budget smartphone is the phone of the year, as some have suggested. At just £319, is it worth your money, or is it too cheap to consider worthy of contention?
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CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
01:06 - Pricing and specs
02:36 - Design
06:06 - Performance
08:20 - Camera
11:28 - Conclusion
What would make you buy a budget phone over a flagship phone (apart from price)?
Nothing
Easy. Battery endurance. I'm 6 weeks in with the Pixel 8 Pro and I don't like how the percentages tick downward way more often than I'd like. I'm considering selling up, and buying the 12gig Nothing phone 2a.. and maybe with the money I recovered - getting the 3a next year too. I do think that Carl Pei is doing what he did at OnePlus - treating us to insane value right now but steadily increasing the prices each year until we get full on flagships in 5 years with flagship prices. Time will tell.
Maybe so that we don't have nearly £1000 in our pocket waiting to be dropped, lost or stolen? And it's not that most of us actaully really need flagship specs anyway... As it relates to Nothing 2a, I actually preferred the design of this phone to the Nothing phone 2, and it was significantly cheaper so all good.
software experience, and performance ( Gotta be good for the price)
No features I want or need that the flagships provide over cheaper models
You have provided an honest review and its really good to have youtubers like you who have good work ethics. Nothing is going to be something special soon. Watchout apple, Samsung, google etc
Thanks!
I love how, when you said "it's very impressive for the price" the Vision Pro in the background slowly faded into the bokeh blur. Well played!
waited for you reviewing phone 2a!! i'm Japanese and I often recommend your videos to my friends!
That's awesome to hear!
I got my 2a yesterday, and i must say it feels more premium than the iphone , quality and performance exceeded my expectations.. tbh.. the back with glyph is something that has turned out to be very useful just in one day. once you get used to it, you cant buy a phone without glyph
We had "the eyes" on the LG G6 and theres a decent amount of homage to that phone in the 2a's design language...which I'm always a fan of if done right. Seems like a nice budget option.
I am getting my unit tomorrow, and am very excited to check it out. Thanks for this review. You just got a new subscriber!
Welcome onboard!
Hey mate loved the review! Are you a Warwick resident too? I live in Warwick so will keep an eye out for you!! Subbed :)
Great review, love the format. I don't heavily use my phone either using it as a phone. I don't need performance and all I care about is if it is nice to use. Great battery life, amazing screen and the cameras are a good upgrade over the Phone 1. I got my white Phone 2a 12+256gb on Monday and it is amazing. I decided to get the case and screen protector from Nothing with it. I had the Phone 1 and this is a perfect device for me, plus it came with a year free of Perplexity Pro which is great fun to play with!
Mark, since I subbed to your channel, I honestly love your genuine reviews spiced with your complete utter british humor, keep up the geat work!!!
I appreciate that - thank you!
This is a really intriguing phone - I've been buying the flagships for years, but all I'm really interested in is a decent screen and a reasonable camera. What Nothing are achieving at this price point is incredibly impressive.
Theyll make it a 500 dollar phone once the phone gets popular
Love yhe presentation. Was the camera test done after the latest updates ?
Liked the review, but I would love it if you upped the frame rate of the video - I found it detracted from the rest of the video, which I found very smooth and polished.
Stunning! I wish it was fully compatible with Verizon's network in the US.
Honest and clean review! I will buy Nothing phone 2A for my mom as I already have NP2 😂 Thank you!
How do you rate the cameras of np2 ?
@@raveendhana7084sometimes It requires me to take multiple shots to get the right one, I'd rate a solid 9 out of 10.
Would love to see you review against the Honor 90, if you get a chance, particularly on a bad weather day which I think is more representative of the user experience in the UK, for instance, and some of continental Europe, also.
Picking mine up this afternoon! Went for the black, told by my better half that it was the better option for someone of my vintage! 😁Think the glyph's will be more visible on black anyway?
I brought it after spending 4 months researching budget phones it ticks all my needs.. im moving from oneplus 7t and carls from oneplus back when they actually made good budget phones...
Bought it, not brought.
I own both the S24 Ultra and iPhone 15 Pro Max but I'm getting the Phone (2a) I don't care that combination of hardware and software design got me sold. I want to experience that and only Nothing provides that
I'd probably get this phone alongside with waiting Nord 3 after seeing A35 and A55's mediocre offerings at a higher price. Though one concern is emulation compatibility. Thanks for the review!
The mediaktek 7200 pro is actually not bad at all. It sits above the apple a12 bionic and below the a13 bionic. Pretty good for $350.
Thank goodness you got the black model. The silver trim between the bezel makes it look cheap. Also, the glyphs are more visible with the dark contrast when they light up.
I can guarantee you that almost 90 percent of the people buying this will get the white/ milk trim. But I actually dig the black. It has this very understated, stealth look to it. Very star wars like- it reminds me of Darth Vader and his tie fighter with the gliph lights on.
@@bharatjeevan the white looks ugly, the symmetry of black blends better with the bezel.
I got my 2a yesterday, and i must say it feels more premium than the iphone , quality and performance exceeded my expectations.. tbh.. the back with glyph is something that has turned out to be very useful just in one day. once you get used to it, you cant buy a phone without glyph
Cool, I just ordered mine. Even though I heard all the negative things about the black one I just went with it bc in my opinion it just looks cooler.
Video and photos look great to me! It is on my list for my next phone as my A52 is getting a bit old....
I recommend you the Poco x6 pro,it's really good it's 12/256gb for 280 dollar or pound idk but it's way better then this one
@@AdiGoodBoi Its $391 USD in the part of the world I live in... if I could get it for $280 I would probably get it. Let us know where you are seeing that price please.
@@akorejepade1261 I apologise, I meant pounds I live in Qatar and the top model is 257 pound / 350 dollar
@@AdiGoodBoi as a xiaomi fan, it's only better on paper. Nothing comes with 0 bloatware and a much better OS experience.
@@benshiro5008 yeah, but you can download a custom rom, the ufs 4.0 and lpddr5x ram compared to nothing's ufs 2.2 and lpddr4x ram is really not that good
I love what nothing is doing, I’m ready to see what their flashship is going to look like.
Yep, the phone1 was them dipping their toes into the market, the 2nd one was them polishing out the quirks from the first one and this one is them improving on the phone1. Hopefully the phone 3 would have substantial improvements from the 2. Hopefully they don't stray from their identity now which is their focus on aesthetics, user experience and optimization.
Regarding sales in the US, I think the developer program is a way to sell in the US without getting all of the necessary certifications for the big carriers. I've heard that playing ball with the big 4 isn't easy for smaller companies, so the developer program lets them sell phones without all of the extra expense. No inside knowledge, just seems like the most plausible scenario.
Nothing Fun Fact: Carl Pei Nothing's CEO has said that the Nothing 2a design was one of the first prototypes of the Nothing phone 1😲
What charger are you using? The official in my area is in short supply
Been using since day 1 and I'm loving it, only Phone 2 was better imo
Which one do you prefer, nothing 2a or honor magic 6lite?
As requested I am letting You know what I think about the photos which is that I am in Disbelieve as to how Good they are for this Price!
For how long do you have this phone? Did you encounter any build quality issues? Like for example some people complaining they are getting a dust particles inside of camera lens. Did you notice any?
I don't get it, with some reviews I'm hearing problems focusing - hardly a subjective, right? - and on others I'm not hearing that. Are there review samples sent direct from the company, or samples using different firmware updates, I'm really confused. I'd dismissed this phone on the back of a couple of reviews but your video footage looked far better than I was expecting, so I had a wait a minute, this is confusing moment! I think on the whole it would be best if reviewers buy with their own money, completely anonymously, always saying which firmware version was being used for the test. And about dull weather! I don't know the what the percentage of your viewers is from countries that experience a lot of dull weather, but... This is just an observation, I'm open to the idea that I'm wrong. Would you agree that a lot of cameras on phones are tuned to give overly contrast-ee, slightly oversaturated images, because they 'pop' on Instagram/social media? Would you also agree that in miserable weather, particularly when it's a thick cloud layer, that overly high contrast/saturation can make certain scenes look... nothing like they actually looked when you were there, that some darker scenes can look positively gothic/like some Hammer horror filter is at work, really stark, very dark blacks, a lack of subtle graduation between tones, not the greatest dynamic range? Anyway, as one of your viewers in the UK, I would be more than happy if you only took videos on dull days, because that's a more realistic test, for us lot! A camera test between the Honor 90 - Honor phones seem to be on offer, over here, at the moment - and the Nothing Phone 2A would be outstanding, even a quickie! Thanks for your review/points, as enjoyable as ever.
Here in India, I can get it for roughly 19k (8gb,128gb) after offers (180 pound in conversion). Should I go for it? Currently using a Moto Edge 30 which is riddled with green lines.
the shiny plastic frame immediately disqualifies it from POTY conversation
Would have been nice UFS 3.1 instead of UFS 2.2, my only complain. I think the new A55 will be a better option when its price drops.
Never , never , never get the samaung inhouse chip phones esp if you live in hot countries
Would this be better as a daily driver than the pixel 7a?
I wish they offered the Nothing 2a with a 512GB version 🤔
I think the photos are totally usable, I'd put it into the good enough category, which is impressive for this amount of money. But I have to disagree with the video quality being close to iPhone quality. It was stuttering on every single video sample. To be fair, no Android phone comes even close to the smoothness of iPhone videos. I love (and use) Android, but that's just a fact we all have to accept for now.
Can never understand why apple don't give 120hz as standard thats why android willl all ways win in my opinion
Because Apple name it “ProMotion” that’s why, which means they will reserve it for Pro devices only.Can’t see them changing that anytime soon.
Why you get android phones with 120hz for less then I phones prices
Because iPhone's have bad battery.
Because they don’t need to. If you want 120hz, buy a ProMotion iPhone
wait.. Phone 2a is expensive from phone 1 in UK?
looks similar to LG v30, camera position in the middle is better
Means a thinner phone for what it offers
And you said phone of the year still goes to S24 U. But if we consider phones with range $ 0 - $ 499 .. Do you this this phone has any tough competition ( not just in any one aspect like chipset , camera but overall segments)
Slowly they're gonna update the cameras just like they did with phone 1 and phone 2.
Yes definitely it's the best phone of this year . Everything is awesome, design , processor, camera , software for $350 😮
"We haven't seen anything like this before"....er, you might want to Google "LG V30" because it had 2 cameras in the middle next to each other....I know because I have that phone... This is not new by far. And yes, the black one is way too dark. The white one is the one to get.
Too early to call ANY phone the phone of the year. Too many to come out yet. That said, after watching, excellent for the price. The video was a little choppy but again, for that price? Pretty darn good.
3 years of android updates and 4 of security patches so it's a good package
why isn't there any gallery or a factory audio/video player in Nothing phone 2a?
Because they use stock android so you'll get.. Google files manager, Google photos and KZhead music.
@@Proches91 thank you for the info my man ♥️
Appreciated man@@assassin7creed
Samsung and Apple have nothing to worry about.
Not yet than don’t but in the future, they will both have plenty to worry about.
Samsung is king s24 ultra 🤩
@@AM-dn1iq it should be king it’s way more expensive and a flagship phone.
it was a pun btw @@MDBD2405 ta
Yes they have to, if iPhone user like me, can shift to nothing then it is about to worry
I ordered mine in black because I want to get away with the idea that those camera modules are eyes.
There is no charger in 329 QUiD
Lpddr4x and ufs 2.2 bad deal 😅
For me Sony Xperia phones have best "minimalist industrial" design. Nothing phones are going that way. Mobile devices have to look more serious,not like children toy. And one thing I don't get it,if you starting new mobile phone company you have to include charger and protective case. But now is in fashion to not do so(like they think about planet, that's just bollocks). Cheap 350 euros? No. For example,Infinix mobile is only cheap budget friendly for now.
I mentioned in my rather long comment that the 2a apparently has focusing issues. I went back and read over and rewatched the reviews, and those issues, whether present on review samples or shop bought, I don't know, seems to be just with the wide angle lens. Something to keep in mind, perhaps, to keep looking to see if fixed in a firmware release, if that is a feature of interest to you, though personally I can't remember the last time I used the wide angle lens on my Xiaomi phone. I consciously wrote the phone off because of that criticism but... the images/4K from the main lens do look intriguingly good, both in Mark's review and elsewhere. I need to find a group test. Would love to see you review against the Honor 90, if you get a chance, particularly on a bad weather day which I think is more representative of the user experience in the UK, for instance, and some of continental Europe, also.
India ❤ is Biggest Market🇮🇳🇮🇳
319 for a 8gig/128 NP2A? I got mine for 269pound for 12/256 in my county 😂😂😂, Made In London , doesn't mean is cheap
It's always the bald people with soothing voices
It’s okay at best. I demand much more quality for photo and video and willing to pay for it.
That's why there are phones available at higher price points with better camera systems.
nothing phone 2a is a good phone but i would give poco x6 pro the title of phone of the year
Poco x6 pro is great, but the non stop advertising is extremely annoying.
@@MDBD2405 just turn the advertising off?
@@hanspeter9592 don’t think you can get rid of all the advertising, plus software experience is very up and down on poco
I dont think so
Even if you turn off, they will push it back with updates😂
Definitely
It's over for Apple. I think they should sell their mobile phone department before it's too late.
You underestimate fanboy/loyal users power
@@bremsberg Nokia had its fanbase too
The poco x6 beats the nothing phone 2a hands down!
poco notious for deadboot and bloatware
@@p.a.2712 Not the new phones different motherboards. Yes they have bloatware but you can uninstall it plus the new xiaomi hyperOS allows you to uninstall everything you don't want on the device including pocos own apps. I'm using the poco X6 not had one problem with it so far. Even the signal is stronger than my old samsung phone. Poco and xiaomi devices are getting better and better if i was samsung or nothing id be worried because poco and xiaomi are doing what huawei did a few years ago and climbed to the top!
319!!!!!! 😂
I'm waiting for the Nothing 3a in 2025🤔
All I will recall from this video is "319"
It uses 8gb of your storage to make up 20gb of ram it really isn't that hard
Stop it, Mark - I had bad dreams about that last night.
319 quit
People are crying over smudge magnet as if they're gonna use it naked without case, ofcourse it is magnet but it is also true that most of the homies will use it with minion or transparent case on it
Crying?
Buy an old flagship, i guarantee you it's better than buying all of these mid range crap. I talk from multiple experiences. Example, S21 is few years old, much cheaper nowadays and DEFINITELY far much superior than ALL the mid range garbage in every sense.
It's my first time seeing the nothing phone but Try to talk about the basics like what kind of charger is it using, the screen resolution ,play video ,can you do games why do they call it nothing phone for nothing,show the screen to the viewers , we are not here to just listen to what you are talking about show in all angles not only the cameras
You are here to listen to what I talk about, I’m afraid, but if my review doesn’t give you the info you need, others will. It’s very important you shop around with reviews before committing to buying anything.
Bruh, milk/white that's one color choice, not two.
Bruh, they are literally separate colour choices on Nothing's website.
@@MarkEllisReviews Lol, don't believe everything you read until you see it. I wonder what color is the milk color...😄
@@NyPk92 you might want to have a look at the Nothing website, old chap.
Don’t think snaps or video is any where close to iPhone. Probably poor man iPhones at best
Everytime there's a bracket i press dislike
Why?
Designed by Chinese in London😂
Into the dumpster with it. Get a Samsung A54. More value for the pricd
Interesting info on this British phone, but I’m in America so I’ll stay with IPhone
this is OPPO😂
Samsung a35 or 55 much better
Nothing is smart enough to copy Apple. Flat edge design with rounded corners, no charger in the box, no real fast charging. Add a horrible flashing back panel and take away a horrible notch cutout
Complete Nonsense. Apple, Samsung, OnePlus have nothing to worry about. Give me the OnePlus Nord over this any day
It would be helpful if you added something constructive rather than “complete nonsense”. How can Nothing improve and win you over in the future?
@@MarkEllisReviewswell said 👍😊
He's too poor to afford a better phone at the same price point as a nord
How come you.sound worried ? 😂😂
Am using phone 1 for over a year and two months , am from India , here the market is flooded with chinese phones and they are known for their specs The thing that nothing does better is its software and usable cameras They listen to their customers and push updates regularly, One important thing is they don't seem to degrade the camera via updates , and their software makes even a weaker chip like 778g look fluid
ALL THE REVIEWER'S SCAMMING PEOPLE. GO TO THE NOTHING PHONE COMMUNITY, AND YOU WILL SEE, HOW MANY PROBLEMS THIS PHONE HAVE. FROM OVERHEATING, TO CAMERA ISSUES, TO CHARGING ISSUES, EVEN SOFTWARE ISSUES, AND SLOW DOWNS, LIKE ALSO FREEZING ISSUES OF SOME APPS. GUY'S DON'T BUY IT YET. AS THOSE REVIEWER'S GOT PAID 🤬🤬🤬
This was not a paid review. As stated in the video - I bought this phone with my own money. If the interest warrants it, I’ll do a follow up longer term review, but I haven’t experienced any of the issues you’ve mentioned. No one is ‘scamming’ you, mate. Please chill out.
@@MarkEllisReviews BECAUSE THE REVIEWS NEVER MENTION ANY ISSUES ABOUT THIS PHONE. NONE OF THE REVIEWER'S DOING IT. CHECK THE NOTHING COMMUNITY WEBSITE. IT IS MIND BLOWING, WHAT IS GOING ON THERE. THOUSANDS OF ISSUES, AND GUESS WHAT, NOTHING SUPPORT DOESN'T EVEN REPLY TO THEM. IT LOOKS LIKE A GATE, WHERE ALL THE REVIEWER'S ARE SAYING, WOW BUDGET PHONE, FROM NOTHING, WOW. INCREDIBLE. BUT WHEN YOU TEST THE PHONE ON DAILY BASES, YOU REALIZE, WAIT A MINUTE, WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT IT. MAYBE THE NOTHING COMPANY DIDN'T SEND YOU THE PHONE AND YOU BOUGHT IT BY YOUR SELF, BUT HONEST REVIEWS ARE THE KEY, AS BECAUSE OF YOU, PEOPLE MIGHT SPEND MONEY ON SOME PRODUCT'S, WHICH ARE ACTUALLY RUBBISH. I WAS SEARCHING VERY DEEP THIS MORNING TO FIND ANY REVIEWER WHO COULD MENTION EVEN ONE ISSUE, THIS PHONE HAS. GUESS WHAT. COULDN'T FIND NOT EVEN ONE 😳 SO I GUESS THERE IS A PROBLEM, WHERE YOU GUYS ARE THE KEY TO ALL THE TECH COMPANIES.
I think you should start your own KZhead channel. I think I’d genuinely watch it.