Nothing Phone (4a) Pro review: the best-looking Nothing phone yet

Nothing has built its reputation by making phones that feel different from the samey slabs, and the Phone (4a) Pro continues that, but with a more mature design while not losing its sense of fun. But this mid-ranger is up against some very strong competition from phones like the Pixel 10a, Samsung Galaxy A57 5G and iPhone 17e, so it needs to offer more than looks alone.

This is the second model the duo of new devices in Nothing’s more affordable (a)-series launched earlier this month, and sits just above the regular Phone (4a). The (4a) Pro offers a more premium metal build, a new Sony main camera, superior zoom processing, the Glyph Matrix from the flagship Phone (3), and a more powerful Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chip.

Specifications

Price & Availability

The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro starts at $499 / €479 / £499 for the 8GB + 128GB version, while the 12GB + 256GB model rises to $599 / €549 / £549 / AU$949. The 8GB + 256GB configuration will be exclusive to India only.

That pricing puts it right into one of the busiest and most competitive parts of the phone market, where it faces off against dozens of devices from Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, and Realme, as well as big hitters like the Pixel 10a, Samsung Galaxy A57 5G, and iPhone 17e. The (4a) Pro also shares a fair amount of DNA with the regular Phone (4a).

With so many devices sharing the same processor and camera setups, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to separate these devices on hardware alone; however, the metal build, NothingOS, and distinctive Glyph Matrix do help the (4a) Pro stand out a little more against the competition, where I think choice now comes more down more than ever to the look of a device rather than its spec sheet.

Design

The (4a) Pro brings a fairly substantial change in design direction for Nothing phones, with the (4a) Pro stepping away from its signature full transparent-back look to move to an “aircraft-grade” aluminum unibody. While this does sound like every other phone on the market, Nothing has still kept a distinctly Nothing twist. While the rear panel is mostly solid metal, the camera island still keeps that industrial, exposed internals aesthetic. The design feels like a clash of two competing ideas, but somehow they come together really well, and the result, I think, is that the Phone (4a) Pro is one of the best-looking phones around right now.

That is obviously subjective, and I think it will still have a bit of a polarising appeal, but it is also a little more restrained than models, which I actually think is a good thing. Its phone equivalent of the Headphones (1). If this is the direction Nothing is taking its design language, I’m all for it.

I have the Silver version, which I think looks fantastic, especially with the industrial details around the camera block. Black is the safer, more understated option, while Pink is fresh and fun. I do think the Pink finish would have looked better with a color-matched camera island rather than the Silver one, and the mismatch makes it feel slightly less considered than the other two options, but that is a small complaint in the grand scheme of things.

Then there is the Glyph Matrix, which I absolutely love, although maybe part of that is just that I am a 90s kid and it taps into some Tamagotchi nostalgia. The Glyph Matrix is made up of 137 mini-LEDs, and it can display practical information such as timers, a battery indicator, a digital clock, and custom contact notifications. It is the sort of thing that sounds like a novelty, but actually living with it for a few days, I did come to appreciate that every time I put the phone face down on a desk and still got useful information without picking it up. Next to the Glyph Matrix, there is also a tiny red recording indicator, which is invaluable if you are filming yourself and cannot easily see the front screen.

Button layout is the same as previous Nothing phones. On the right, you have separate volume buttons and the power button, which can be long-pressed to summon Gemini, while a double press opens the camera. On the left-hand side, there is Nothing’s Essential Key, which is slightly shinier and more rounded than the other buttons to visually and physically stand apart. This button lets you quickly capture screenshots, voice notes, and other bits into the Essential Space (but more on that later).

Image 1 of 3

The display is great for a phone at this price. It is a 6.83-inch AMOLED with a 1260 x 2800 resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, and a quoted peak brightness of 5,000 nits. There is also 2,160Hz PWM dimming for sensitive eyes. In use, the screen looks sharp, colorful, and bright. I did find it a little reflective, but it is easily good enough for viewing or editing photos and video outdoors.

The screen is protected with Gorilla Glass 7i on the front alongside a factory-applied screen protector. For durability, the (4a) Pro also comes with an IP65 water resistance rating, so it can survive a dip in fresh water and low-pressure water jets. Nothing also says the (4a) Pro is 42% more bend-resistant than the previous model, although I have resisted the urge to test this.

Camera Performance

Whether you love or hate the new design, the cameras are the main reason to pay closer attention to the Phone (4a) Pro over the regular Phone (4a). The headline upgrade is the superior Sony LYT-700C main camera, which replaces the Samsung sensor used in the cheaper model. On paper, both sit at the same 50MP resolution, 1/1.56-inch size, and f/1.88 aperture, but the Pro’s sensor is more capable, especially in lower light, where it produced cleaner results that are genuinely pretty impressive.

Image 1 of 5

In the day, the main camera performs well. Images are sharp; if you pixel peep, detail isn’t as strong as flagships, but the (4a) Pro avoids attempting to fix this with too much oversharpening, which can just make the situation worse. The 50MP sensor also allows for a 2x in-sensor crop, which, unlike some images I captured on the regular (4a), looks as good as a 1x image.

The ultrawide is not bad, but it's the weakest of the three cameras, though that is hardly unusual, especially at this price. It is still decent enough, especially in good light, but it does not have the same sharpness or consistency as the main and telephoto cameras.

Image 1 of 7

The telephoto is a 50MP periscope with a 3.5x optical zoom equivalent to 80mm, and is backed by OIS, and is the same sensor as found on the Phone (4a), but the more premium Snapdragon 7 chip allegedly improves the imaging pipeline, which enables better processing and the headline 140x zoom.

The telephoto is usually always my favourite lens on a phone as it's the best for capturing details, and tighter framing, which fits my style perfectly, and the (4a) Pro’s is the one I gravitated to again here as it's just a really good one. Images from the telephoto came out clean and sharp. In the daytime, I can’t say that I see any noticeable difference between this and the regular Phone (4a), but at night, the shots on the (4a) Pro do look slightly cleaner and suffer from less motion blur.

You also get a 7x in-sensor zoom, which produced some solid photos with only a very minor loss of detail if I pinch in, but generally, you wouldn’t notice. Up to around 10x, I still found the zoom performance pretty good, which is enough reach for most real-world situations.

Image 1 of 8

Where the phone falls over is at the long end of the zoom. Nothing advertises up to 140x ultra zoom, but I personally wouldn’t ever really stray over 30x if I wanted anything I might actually use. While AI-assisted super zoom does visibly improve on the raw capture, the results look very synthetic and overprocessed. At extreme zoom levels, the images get that unmistakable AI-painted look that just gives me the ick.

Image 1 of 8

Overall, I would also say the consistency across all three cameras is good, but I did see some white balance and color discrepancies when switching between the cameras, especially in blue skies.

And on the subject of color, if I am being picky, while colors generally look pretty good, they feel generally more muted and not as exciting as other brands. Take a look below at the same photo taken on the (4a) Pro and the Oppo Find N6. I personally much prefer Oppo’s more accurate and vibrant colors.

HDR balance is good, and I like that Nothing tends not to overdo the deep-blue that some rivals use to force a more dramatic look, but one ongoing frustration is the preview-to-capture mismatch.

Like the regular Phone (4a), the Pro does not always show an accurate live preview of what HDR processing is about to do, so the final image can look noticeably different from what I thought I was taking. Other brands are better at showing something close to the final image in the viewfinder, and if you are trying to be intentional with your exposure, just trying to imagine it is quite annoying.

My absolute favorite Nothing camera feature, though, is the ability to add LUTs, which are custom photographic styles you can save as camera presets. You can create your own, import them via QR code, or browse community-made options online.

These are essentially the same idea as Fujifilm’s uber-popular film recipes, and you can do anything from tweaking colors, contrast, white balance, and adding film grain for ready-to-share images without editing.

Macro is handled by the telephoto rather than the ultrawide, so you get a much more flattering perspective. Sharpness is excellent across the frame, but especially in the centre. Nothing does employ a little less artificial falloff (blur) than some other brands, I think plenty of brands really overdo it, but I would like to see a little more from Nothing, just to make the photos look a little more “proper” camera, rather than a phone.

Image 1 of 3

Phone Performance

The Phone (4a) Pro runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, which is a reasonable step up over the non-Pro (4a) model with better multi-core and graphics performance. And in day-to-day use, the phone feels quick and responsive. App launches are snappy, and the UI is smooth. Speaking of, Nothing OS 4.1 remains one of my favorite Android skins, built on Android 16; it is one of the cleanest Android skins, and not far off the stock Pixel experience. But NothingOS still manages to stand apart enough with Nothing’s fonts, icons, and widgets. Nothing promises three years of Android updates and six years of security patches, which is respectable, even if some rivals now go further.

However, Nothing’s AI features are a bit more mixed for me. Nothing’s Essential System (Essential Space, Essential Search, and the Essential Key) is a clever idea. You can capture voice notes, screenshots, and thoughts on the fly, and the AI will analyse them to pull out useful information you can use as well as make it searchable. And there is some real usefulness there, although it's just not really how I interact with AI. I find it easier to drop all my assets in a single conversion with Gemini or ChatGPT. However, Essential Space does just generally stay out of the way, so if you don’t want to use it, it doesn’t hassle you to.

Nothing has also added some AI editing tools to the Phone (4a) Pro through the Gallery app, including an AI Pedestrian Remover for removing unwanted people and a Reflection Remover, for well, removing reflections. These two tools fall pretty far behind the bevvy of options found on other devices, but they are two fairly useful ones.

The pedestrian removal tool is fairly hit and miss; sometimes it just won't find people in a shot, and there is currently no way to manually draw around them. The generation behind the people is also fine, but quite obviously AI if you pinch in.

The reflection remover is the one I’d actually keep coming back to. It feels far more useful than pedestrian removal, as it's a much less "gen-AI", and I regularly shoot cute things behind glass in store windows. I wouldn’t call it flawless, but it's pretty good.

The (4a) Pro handles photo and video workloads well enough. Lightroom and CapCut both run better here than they do on the regular Phone (4a), and the faster chip clearly helps unlock more grunt, but this is not an editing powerhouse. In CapCut, I noticed some sluggishness when scrubbing the timeline, and exports are nowhere near the speed of flagship Snapdragon Elite phones. If you are the kind of person who just does the odd quick social edit or tweaks a few photos on the move, the Phone (4a) Pro is absolutely fine, but if you are regularly editing clips, you might want to invest in a phone with more power under the hood.

Battery life is decent without being a standout. The global version has a 5,080mAh battery, which is pretty average by current Android standards, though still in the same ballpark as Google and Samsung. In my testing, it comfortably lasted a full day of medium to fairly heavy use, but I usually ended the evening in power saver mode by the evening. My lab tests put it at 14 hours and 12 minutes in a mixed-use workload of productivity, video playback, video editing, and photo editing, which is solid enough but not exceptional.

The phone supports up to 50W wired charging. In Europe, there is no charger in the box, although other territories might differ, but you can achieve these speeds with most PD chargers, which most of us probably already have several of. These speeds are behind some proprietary charging solutions, but, in my testing, the (4a) Pro reached 33% in 15 minutes and 59% in 30 minutes, which is quick enough to make topping up painless, and the phone reached full in slightly over an hour. There is also 7.5W reverse wired charging for topping up accessories, though notably no wireless charging.

Final Verdict

The Nothing (4a) Pro is my favorite looking Nothing Phone yet, and one of the best looking phones I have used in some time. The design is excellent, it's mature but still a little playful. While it's polarising, I do really like the gimmicky Glyph Matrix, the front display is bright and sharp, and the camera system is genuinely good for the money, especially if you value having a proper telephoto camera at this price. I also love what Nothing is doing with custom LUTs as camera presets, which, for me, push the (4a) Pro out in front as one of the most personalisable camera experiences you can get at this price.

That said, the (4a) Pro isn’t perfect. The natural image rendering could use a bit more personality, the HDR preview still does not always match the final shot, and the AI zoom becomes AI mush well before Nothing’s headline 140x figure. Likewise, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 is strong enough for everyday use, but it does not turn the Phone (4a) Pro into a serious editing machine. But still, I think Nothing has made a very appealing mid-range camera phone, and easy to recommend to photographers on a budget.

Alternatives

Google Pixel 10a

If you care more about pure computational photography and point-and-shoot consistency than design flair or zoom versatility, the Pixel 10a is a great alternative.

Read moreRead less▼

Samsung Galaxy A56 5G

If you want a more conventional-looking mid-range phone from a bigger ecosystem brand, the Galaxy A56 5G is a strong rival.

Read moreRead less▼