CMF by Nothing's spin-off cheap earbuds are everything Carl Pei said he wouldn’t do

You've likely heard the news: Nothing, the 2021 tech startup from former OnePlus CEO Carl Pei (and most recently, creator of the Nothing Ear 2 earbuds and Nothing Phone 2) has announced a new sub-brand, CMF by Nothing.

In Nothing's Community Update for the second quarter of 2023 (linked below; skip to 8:47 if you're unconcerned about Pei's fear of rollercoasters and just want his segment), Pei asks, "You know how Nothing's vision is about making tech fun again?"

Well yes I do. I just I didn't think that by "fun", you meant cheaper earbuds. I'm not sure that knowing you can't afford the best a brand can offer – and perhaps that you should consider yourself lucky that its kind CEO is offering something lowlier – is fun. But that's not my main issue.

See, for me, fun was covering the May 2021 announcement (for TR's sister publication, What Hi-Fi?) about an intriguing and highly mysterious new Nothing outfit, which was about to launch something big in the world of earbuds. And it was all to be headed by a genius; a gutsy man who simply upped and walked away from OnePlus after seven years!

What made it all so exciting? The tantalizing bits of information drip-fed on Nothing's website at the time. Through these nuggets of what I now have to conclude was just slick marketing, Nothing said its raison d'etre was "A journey towards nothing... Our mission is to remove barriers between people and technology to create a seamless digital future that looks, lives, and feels like nothing."

Hurrah! So actual nothingness – aka the first consumer headphones not to adopt a tangible, physical form, yes?

And even though Nothing explained its initial effort would "fall short" – "For those hoping for a disappearing act overnight, Ear 1 falls short… the greatest visions are not realized with the flip of a switch, but instead through countless small successes. Ear 1 is just the start" – the company certainly didn't lead me to believe that my initial assumption was wrong, did it?

And there was more: "Everything that is Ear 1 is there with purpose. Everything you see and everything you don’t see. Even the name. Mirroring the product’s stripped-down aesthetic, the name Ear 1 echoes our raw ambition – to let things be what they are."

Yet now here we are in August 2023, with two Android phones, three sets of earbuds (one in a novel stick-like case that was paraded down the catwalk at London Fashion Week; two that make significant use of transparent plastics) a design-conscious partnership with Teenage Engineering – see this cute cut-your-own-vinyl record player for reference – and now, a more affordable offshoot brand.

It's hardly shaking up the tech industry is it?

I'm not mad, I just expected more from Nothing

I'm sorry, but I want more from my visionary CEOs who basically promised me they'd do away with the physical format. I need something other than "fun" affordable earbuds in response to user feedback.

Yes, I accept that the move likely comes as a result of customer dismay regarding Nothing's inconsistent pricing strategy. But still, I cannot applaud it. Remember when Carl Pei took to Twitter last October to announce that the Nothing Ear (1) would be getting a price hike to $149 "due to an increase in costs", while the Nothing Ear Stick slotted into its place at $99? That.

It just all feels like a strong pivot away from the quest for nothing. How clearly I remember the early Ear 1 marketing, with tiny lady bugs atop the product, as if to reassure us that shrinking things right down to near-nothing was the only course of action worth pursuing.

And yet, CMF is a known abbreviation in the industrial design space typically referring to "color, material, finish". These, of course, are all essential components of a physical, tangible object. As such, CMF by Nothing is the very antithesis of Nothing. And for me, that is kind of disappointing.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: give me the wild, outlandish, cutting-edge ideas in portable audio! Give me the mind-blowing headphones, the actually-very-cool "eargasm" cans, the first ever wi-fi lossless headphones from a brand you've never heard of. Give me – and the consumer – anything other than design-conscious-but-cheap.

I'm not saying I've no love in my heart for the best budget wireless earbuds; I'm saying I had greater expectations when it came to a company fronted by Carl Pei. I had hoped that aesthetics, colors and materials would not dominate Nothing's future, but rather, the whittling down of them would. I really believed Nothing would "remove barriers between people and technology to create a seamless digital future that looks, lives, and feels like nothing".

I wanted more; I wanted Nothing.