CMF just launched its first open-ear earbuds, and the interesting part isn’t the earbuds. It’s that Nothing reportedly scrapped a Phone 3 Pro this year and shipped this instead. A $99 pair of clip-on buds is now the sub-brand’s flagship move for 2026.
They Clip On, They Don’t Plug In
The Clip Pro doesn’t seal your ear canal. It clips onto the outer cartilage using a three-point system, a 13.8mm driver housing up front, a small counterweight pod behind the ear, connected by a curved bridge with a titanium memory wire inside.
Each bud weighs 5.9 grams. The whole thing flexes between roughly 40 and 53 degrees to fit different ear shapes, and because the weight’s split front-to-back instead of hanging off one point, it doesn’t swing around when you turn your head, unlike the lobe-clip style some competitors use.
Air Conduction Means No Bass, Usually
Open-ear buds fire sound at your ear canal instead of into it, which means you hear your music and the world around you simultaneously. It also means bass usually suffers, since there’s no seal to build low-end pressure against.
CMF’s answer is a 10.8mm dual-magnet driver paired with something it calls Malleus Bass Boost, plus separate Ultra Bass processing to compensate for what the open design loses naturally. The Clip Pro is Hi-Res Audio certified and supports LDAC, on top of the usual AAC and SBC, so the ceiling on audio quality is higher than the form factor usually allows for, even if actual output still depends on your source device.
Calls Get Their Own Dedicated Chip
Each earbud runs two microphones, one for your voice, one specifically for wind resistance, feeding into a dedicated Voice Processing Unit that isolates your voice from background noise in real time. There’s also an Anti-Leakage mode, adjustable through the Nothing X app across three settings, off, calls only, or calls plus media, aimed at stopping people next to you from hearing your audio bleed out, a real problem with open designs that don’t seal anything.
A Physical Dial On The Case, Because Touch Controls Suck Mid-Workout
The charging case has a rotating Smart Dial for volume, track skipping, call handling, and toggling Low Latency mode, all without touching your phone. Each earbud also has a physical clicker instead of a capacitive touch pad, which matters more than it sounds like it should, sweaty hands during a run don’t reliably register a tap, but they’ll always register a click.
Battery Numbers Actually Hold Up
Ten hours per charge from the buds alone, 32.5 hours total with the case, or up to 36 hours if you switch on Long Battery Mode. A 10-minute charge buys four hours of playback. IP54 rating covers dust and light water exposure, enough for rain or sweat, not enough for a swim.
Pricing and Availability
The Clip Pro launches 15 August in the US, UK and Japan at $99, discounted to $79 for early orders. Wider global availability, including Europe at EUR79, follows on 15 September. India isn’t getting it at all, CMF confirmed that outright.
Malaysia has no confirmed price or date yet, CMF says details are coming, but based on the US pricing, expect something in the RM400 to RM420 range once it lands.
For comparison, Nothing’s own Ear (open), the pricier sibling model from 2024, launched in Malaysia at RM659. If the Clip Pro follows CMF’s usual budget positioning relative to Nothing’s mainline products, it should land well under that.
