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The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is a budget phone with its sights firmly trained on flagships. It offers a huge 5000-nit AMOLED display, a seriously stylish 0.31-inch / 7.95mm thick aluminum unibody, and a sufficiently powerful mid-range chipset to play games without breaking much of a sweat. More importantly, it continues to champion Nothing’s disruptive attitude to design and brings back the Phone 3’s super-flexible Glyph Matrix.

Let’s start with the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro’s display: at 6.83 inches, it gives you a serious amount of screen estate. I fired up some 2K videos and its picture always looked clean and precise, while its 5000-nit peak brightness is probably enough that you could use it as a reading torch. I did find its colors weren’t quite as rich as my iPhone 16 Pro’s Super Retina XDR display, but it looked pretty lush all the same.

But for me, the (4a) Pro’s design is what earns it a place among the best phones. Its aluminum unibody feels solid yet light, and while I think some diehard Nothing fans might miss the transparent back plate from its predecessors, it keeps just enough of those iconoclastic design touches in its camera and glyph module to really stand out in a world of interchangeable gray rectangles.

Not gonna lie: I had a lot of fun playing with Nothing’s Glyph Matrix. While it could easily be read as gimmicky, the sheer quantity of functions it offers meant I found a bunch of ways to use it that genuinely felt helpful. From being able to tell when my girlfriend had messaged to seeing a custom dollar glyph every time I got a transaction notification from my bank, I could easily keep tabs on important things without getting distracted by the daily noise. It went beyond flashing lights and started to actively feel really useful.

More generally, software on the (4a) Pro is also seriously polished, feeling fun to use yet knowing when to stay out of your way. Built on Android 16, Nothing OS 4.1 offers a whole load of customizability, while still feeling clean and bloat-free. Its AI tools allow you to analyze notes, screenshots, and recordings but – crucially – you can also choose which files you want this AI to access, and how much you want to engage with it.

This is backed up by the phone’s admirable performance. While its Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset isn’t exactly top of the range, I found that, coupled with the 12GB RAM of my testing model, it handled productivity tasks and multitasking without complaint. On top of this, the (4a) Pro happily crunched through any game I threw at it on the highest settings without any perceptible lag or frame rate drops; its 5,300mm2 vapor chamber cooling system keeps it from getting too hot during these kinds of heavy loads.

Unfortunately, this can’t be a total love-fest, and I’m a little less enamored with the (4a) Pro’s camera system. On the positive side, the images I shot with it felt sufficiently sharp and detailed – the 3.5x optical zoom produces deliciously crisp images, for example – while night photography is bright and grain-free. However, I did find color reproduction to be a little more subdued than on the best phones on the market, and the exposure on my snaps could be weirdly inconsistent at times.

There’s a slightly mixed picture with the (4a) Pro’s battery, too. While it offers a seriously ample 5,080mAh cell, I couldn’t quite eke out the 21 hours of YouTube vids that Nothing indicated it should deliver – I found it delivered a little over 13 hours of 2K streaming instead. Still, that’s very decent and, thanks to its 50W wired charging, you can quickly top it up to full in a little over an hour.

Of course, if you want top-of-the-range power and an unimpeachable camera, you’ll want to pick up a flagship. But if you’re after a mid-range handset, I’d happily recommend the (4a) Pro.

Phone (1) was released, it both felt a little too brutalist and yet not quite as outré as the pre-release hype had led me to expect. I’ve gradually come around on this, particularly as more concrete innovations like the series’ Glyph notifications have been introduced alongside those stark looks.

Why do I mention this? To add a little context to what I’m about to say next.

I love the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro’s design. There’s something effortlessly understated about its build, which manages to remain both unique and instantly recognizable. I know some will be sorry not to see the series’ full transparent backplate here – you might want to opt for the base (4a) if you prefer that look – but the (4a) Pro’s aircraft-grade aluminium body still looks suitably industrial while also feeling pleasingly premium to the touch.

It’s also Nothing’s slimmest phone to date, measuring just 7.95mm / 0.313 inches and weighing in at 210g / 7.41oz. As a result, even taking into account its expansive 163.66 x 76.62mm / 6.44 x 3.02 inches height and width, the (4a) Pro never felt anything less than comfortable in my hand. Yet it’s no delicate flower either – its Gorilla Glass 7i screen should help protect it against scratches and drops, while its IP65 rating should entirely keep dust at bay and, Nothing promises, allow it to endure a dunking in 25cm / 9.84 inches of water for up to 20 minutes.

Undoubtedly, the phone’s most prominent feature is that chunky camera module on the back. Nothing is very much on board with the full-width camera trend we’ve seen from the Google Pixel series and the iPhone 17 Pro. But while these blocky camera bulges sometimes look a little unsightly to my eye, I have to say, Nothing has nailed it here – not only has the brand broken it up by using its transparent design language, but that expansive Glyph Matrix turns it from dead space into a striking visual feature.

Speaking of: the Glyph Matrix itself is also seriously well designed. Comprising 137 mini-LEDs, it offers fantastic versatility, allowing you to display a wide range of moving and still glyphs to accompany various functions on your phone, which I’ll explore more in the software section below. And it’s also ludicrously bright at 3,000 nits – when I first excitedly showed off what it could do to my partner, she winced as if I’d just let off a flashbulb in her face. Oops. Fortunately, you can turn the brightness down if you don’t want it set to ‘stadium floodlight’.

After using the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro, my trusty iPhone 16 Pro has genuinely felt a little drab by comparison. Given how much I loved the latter’s looks when I first bought it, that shows the high bar the (4a) Pro has set in terms of its design.

The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro's home screen featuring an AI image of flowers, in front of a pink background.

(Image credit: Future)

Samsung Galaxy 26 Ultra’s gargantuan 6.9 inches, although the 2,800 x 1,260 resolution of its AMOLED panel can’t quite reach the 3120 x 1440 pixels offered by Samsung’s flagship.

Still, during my testing, I found it looked impressively crisp. To really try out what it could do, I watched Planet Earth III on BBC iPlayer and was impressed by how clear the footage seemed, rendering elements like the huge, red glistening eyes of a gliding tree frog in gorgeous detail. It also shows off images with bags of contrast; that AMOLED display is capable of hitting deep blacks that offer a real HDR pop to everything you see.

The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is also impressively bright. While it didn’t quite hit the supernova-like glare that its 5,000 nit peak brightness would suggest – I’d peg it as not dissimilar to the brightness hit by the 3,000 nit-peak iPhone 17 Pro – it still absolutely glowed. Whether I was testing under our office’s fluorescent lights or one of those rare guest appearances the sun makes in the British sky, it never appeared anything less than luminous.

There’s pretty much only one area in which I found the (4a) Pro’s display wasn’t quite able to keep pace with flagships: color. Comparing it side-by-side with my iPhone 16 Pro, its hues felt just a tiny bit too cool by contrast – for example, a burning sunset over a colossal river delta looked a tiny bit less amber and glowing, missing out on the rich realism of the more premium phone. But the fact that the (4a) Pro can be credibly compared with handsets nearly twice its price, even if it can’t quite best them, shows just how impressive its display is.

The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro lying facedown in Flip to Glyph mode.

(Image credit: Future)

WhatsApp and an Instagram notification. You can even set glyphs for specific keywords: I set it so any message mentioning my cat’s name would flash the cat glyph.

Not only is the Glyph Matrix an incredibly fun feature, but Nothing has found countless ways for it to actually materially improve your experience using the device. I definitely think that elevates it from a mere gimmick to something I genuinely used.

A closeup of the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro's camera module and Glyph Matrix, which features a digital clock reading '15:26'.

(Image credit: Future)

Samsung Galaxy A56 relies on the weaker Exynos 1580. Add in the fact that you can spec Nothing’s phone with up to 12GB RAM, and you can see why I was expecting some pretty serious performance here.

And I’m delighted to say that the (4a) Pro more than lived up to these expectations. During everyday use, I didn’t experience any hanging or appreciable slowdown. Swiping between various apps, I was able to quickly pivot from watching YouTube videos to navigating on Google Maps. Even when multi-tasking, the phone didn’t seem to break much of a sweat – I cheekily loaded up a game and left it running picture-in-picture while I typed some of this review in Google Docs, and both apps continued to run fluidly, like this wasn’t a slightly outrageous thing to ask of the phone.

On top of that, while we criticized the Samsung Galaxy A56 for its weaker gaming capabilities, I found the (4a) Pro’s gaming performance to be pretty unimpeachable. Loading up Genshin Impact, I found there wasn’t a hint of lag or stuttering, whether I was battling Hilichurls or charging around cities. Meanwhile, Call of Duty: Mobile was silky smooth, seeming to deliver on Nothing’s promise of 90Hz refresh rates and making it easy to gun down my bewildered opponents while they were still desperately swiping their screens trying to train me in their sights.

But this kind of performance is no good if your phone can’t sustain it. Fortunately, I found that, thanks to its 5,300mm2 VC cooling system, the (4a) Pro was able to keep its cooling under this kind of strain. Despite the fact that I spent a couple of hours gaming on the (4a) Pro, there was only very mild warming on the back – and I think that was much more likely from my sweaty mitts than its CPU overheating. Given that quite a few phones still get blisteringly hot from demanding games, I was really glad to see how chill the Nothing Phone was.

A closeup of the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro's ports, showing its SIM slot, USB-C charging port and speaker.

(Image credit: Future)

OnePlus 15 with its voluminous 7,300mAh battery.

What does this mean in practical terms? Well, despite using it pretty intensively during my testing, I found that the (4a) Pro would often last well into a second day’s usage, meaning you’re unlikely to need to worry about it lasting your whole day.

In terms of hard numbers, Nothing estimates it should give you 17 hours of combined usage or 21 hours of YouTube viewing. Putting this claim to the test, I set the (4a) Pro streaming 2K video for hours on end to see how it held up. After six hours, its battery had dropped to 56% – that means I’d expect it to last around 13 hours 40 minutes in total. That’s quite a way short of what was estimated, but this was at max brightness, which likely brought its life down somewhat.

Fortunately, even when the phone does run out, juicing it up again is lightning fast, thanks to its 50W wired charging. Nothing’s estimates weren’t quite borne out by my testing here either: rather than the 0% to 60% they suggested I’d see in just 30 minutes, I got to 47%. Still, that’s seriously fast, meaning you’ll likely be full after just an hour’s charging – that’s still speedier than many mainstream handsets, even if the phone can’t quite hit the absurd pace of something like the 100W charging of the OnePlus 15.

The Nothing Phone (4a) Pro's home screen featuring an AI image of flowers, in front of a pink background.

(Image credit: Future)