I’ll say it: Nothing launched the Ear (open) under the wrong logo. The open-ear buds debuted in 2024 at $149, wrapped in Nothing’s signature transparent look, and they were good enough to win a Red Dot Product Design award. Still, every time I looked at them, my brain kept whispering “CMF.” Open-ear buds are the casual, colorful, sweat-friendly second pair you toss in a gym bag, which describes CMF’s entire personality. Even Nothing seems to have noticed, since the Ear (open) now comes in soft blue for $99 in the US. That’s CMF money in a CMF color, wearing a Nothing name tag.

Apparently I’m not alone in this conspiracy theory. Industrial designer Shreyansh Onial, whose CMF Flip foldable concept got a reaction from Carl Pei himself, built the CMF Ear (open) that Nothing never released, and it looks like it rolled straight off CMF’s assembly line. The over-ear hook stays, but the transparent panels give way to solid Coral, Light Grey, and Dark Grey. Each bud gets a chunky physical button, and the pill-shaped case borrows the knurled Smart Dial from CMF’s $99 Clip Pro. It’s the alternate-universe launch I didn’t know I was waiting for.

Designer: Shreyansh Onial

Trading Nothing’s see-through shell for CMF’s candy-colored hooks

Coral, Light Grey, and Dark Grey carry the whole concept, and they match the Clip Pro’s palette exactly. Transparency is Nothing’s calling card, though on the Ear (open) much of the surface is a silicone ear hook anyway. Onial goes fully opaque, with a soft matte finish on the hook and a glossier coat on the round acoustic pod that sits by your ear canal. The outer face is a rounded pill panel with a single round button and a tiny glyph made of a circle, a dot grid, and a filled dot. The battery tail picks up a fine stippled texture, which gives sweaty fingers something to grip.

A real button on each bud fixes the biggest workout annoyance with the Ear (open), which relies on pinch controls that get fiddly with slippery fingers. CMF already gave the Clip Pro physical buttons for exactly this reason, so the move fits the brand’s own playbook. Flip the bud around and you’ll find a perforated metal grille shaped like a little kidney bean, plus two pogo pins on a short collar for charging. That bean grille is my favorite detail, because it gives the bud an oddly cartoonish face. It also mirrors the soft circles of the dial on the case. The whole thing feels friendly and approachable, which suits a pair built for sweat and sidewalks.

The Clip Pro’s Smart Dial case meets a hook built for runners

The case comes straight from CMF’s Clip Pro, a deep pill-shaped capsule with a knurled metal dial set into one end of the lid. On the Clip Pro, that Smart Dial adjusts volume, controls playback, answers calls, and triggers pairing. CMF put the same dial on its Buds Pro 2, and it has since become the brand’s signature move. Onial adds a dot-matrix “cmf” wordmark on the lid, a front status LED, and a USB-C port on the side. Inside, molded cradles hold the two hooks in a neat V, with a charging pocket waiting for each acoustic pod.

Over-ear hooks anchor behind the ear, which keeps them planted through runs, burpees, and sprints for the bus. The Clip Pro’s C-shaped clip hugs the ear’s outer edge instead, a format better suited to commutes and long desk days. That leaves the runner with a CMF-shaped hole in their gym bag, since CMF currently offers nothing for them (lowercase n). A dial makes even more sense here, because twisting a knob on the case beats digging through phone menus mid-stretch. Pair it with real buttons on the buds and you get a workout setup that never asks for a precise touch gesture.

Where a CMF Ear (open) would land in a crowded open-ear market

Open-ear audio got crowded fast, with Bose’s Ultra Open sitting at the top for $299 and Sony’s LinkBuds Clip, Huawei’s FreeClip, and Shokz’s hook-style buds filling out the field. The Clip Pro landed at $99 with LDAC support, a 10.8mm driver, and up to 32.5 hours of total battery. The Ear (open) counters with a bigger 14.2mm driver, 8 hours per charge, and 30 hours with its case. Each Ear (open) bud weighs 0.29 oz (8.1 grams), while each Clip Pro bud weighs 0.21 oz (5.9 grams). A CMF hook could split the difference, pairing the Ear (open)’s stable fit and big driver with the Clip Pro’s dial, buttons, and price.

The blue Ear (open) already sells for $99 in the US, the same price as the Clip Pro, so Nothing has basically priced its own product at CMF level. Moving it under the CMF badge would make that price tag look like a plan instead of a markdown. It would also free Nothing to return later with a pricier transparent sequel, flipping the usual order where the premium brand gets the good stuff first. CMF became an independent Nothing subsidiary headquartered in India last year, and a signature sport bud would give the young brand another reason to stand apart from its parent. Onial’s renders already look ready for the shelf. Sometimes the little sibling deserves the new toy first.

The post Nothing’s Ear (open) should have been a CMF product all along… Here’s proof first appeared on Yanko Design.

Everyone has held a milk carton, which is exactly why CMF’s new speakers are so hard to stop looking at. CMF, the budget sub-brand of Nothing, shaped its first Bluetooth speakers like gable-top cartons, a form that toy manufacturer John Van Wormer of Toledo, Ohio, patented in 1915 as the Pure-Pak. Your brain files that silhouette under breakfast, fridge door, and home before it even registers the grille. Then the colors and a deliberately mismatched knob finish the job. Black cylinders and bricks have run the speaker aisle for a decade, so a carton is practically a plot twist.

The CMF Speaker S ($59) and Speaker M ($109) launched October 12 at nothing.tech and select retailers, in white, dark grey, turquoise, and orange. CMF’s own product pages cite a carton’s sharp geometry as the inspiration, so the resemblance is deliberate. A sloped roof carries the knob where a carton’s screw cap would sit, and the M’s top fin doubles as a carry handle. The front panel and knob pop off, which turns each speaker into a base for swapping or 3D printing. Both are IP68 too, so the carton can sit on a patio table without a worry.

Designer: CMF by Nothing

The carton’s anatomy, rebuilt as a speaker face

A carton has three recognizable parts, and CMF kept all three. The sloped gable roof becomes the top edge of a folded color panel that wraps over from the front face. The sealed top seam becomes the M’s raised fin with a handle cutout, while the S settles for a round cutout in the corner. The screw cap, a carton upgrade Elopak dates to 1991, becomes a knob you press and turn. On the orange and turquoise models, a dark grey body sits behind the panel, so the color reads like printed paperboard around a core.

The grilles do the decorating. On the turquoise model the mesh is a deeper teal, on the orange it turns brick red, and on white and dark grey it goes black, so each face is a flat field with big circles punched in. The M stacks two of them, the S gets one, and a small pixel-style cmf wordmark sits above like a tiny brand stamp. An oval button with a white light bar is the only other mark besides the knob. That is very few elements, all of them deliberate.

Pint-and-quart proportions and a color system with a mismatched knob

The S measures 5.1 by 3.3 by 1.7 inches (130.5 by 85 by 44mm). The M stretches to 8.7 inches (220mm) tall at the same 85mm width, so the pair reads like a pint and a quart of the same product. Helen Sanematsu’s 1999 AIGA Journal essay on milk packaging argued that cartons get their punch from standing in rows, with color separating the varieties. CMF’s launch imagery lines up four colors across two sizes, which plays that exact game. Put them on a shelf together and you get a dairy case designed by someone with great taste.

Each colorway gets its own knob: a black X on orange, a white ring on turquoise, a red paddle on dark grey, and a teal paddle on white. That deliberate mismatch gives every speaker a single accent, like a bright cap on a carton. Pop it off and you can mix freely or 3D print your own, a habit that follows the CMF Phone 1, whose community printed everything from Lego-friendly backs to a foam dart launcher. We once featured a fan concept for a CMF speaker that went retro radio. The carton is the braver call.

Drivers, battery life, and durability behind the carton

The S pairs a 1.8 inch (45mm) driver with two passive radiators, unpowered diaphragms that beef up bass, for 10W. The M adds a 2.8 inch (70mm) woofer and 0.6 inch (16mm) tweeter for 35W RMS, a continuous power rating. Both claim 18 hours at 50 percent volume with Ultra Bass on, enough for a workday and the commute. A 10 minute charge buys an hour while you hunt for your keys. They survive 30 minutes in nearly 5 feet (1.5 meters) of water and passed a 30 inch (0.76 meter) drop test.

The S costs $59 and the M $109, and both are on sale now at nothing.tech and select retailers. That puts a distinctive object within impulse-buy range, which is unusual for a design this committed. It is the rare budget speaker that makes you want to rearrange a shelf. Van Wormer’s carton survived a century by being easy to hold, stack, and carry, and a portable speaker wants the same three traits. Somebody finally noticed a great speaker shape was sitting in your fridge door all along.

The post Why CMF’s New Milk Carton Speakers Are So Irresistible To Look At first appeared on Yanko Design.

Nothing OS 5.0 starts with Phone (3) and expands through January 2027. Here are the eligible devices, major features, rollout dates, and beta risks.

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