CMF from Nothing has proven once again to be the IKEA of gadgets with the new Phone 1, Watch Pro 2 and Buds Pro 2 – all of which have fun designs paired with temptingly affordable price tags.
Nothing’s sub-brand CMF, which launched in 2023, continues its loose but fun theme with this new trio of launches. The Phone 1, in particular, offers a lot (on paper) for its $199 / £179 / AU$399 price tag, making it a strong contender for our best cheap phones guide.
On the specs front, the Phone (1) sports a 6.67-inch AMOLED display (with 120Hz refresh rate) and runs Android 14, which is stocked with Nothing OS. The camera setup is also promising for the price, with a 50MP f/1.8 primary camera featuring a depth sensor for portrait shots and joined by a 16MP selfie camera.
Elsewhere, performance shouldn’t change radically from the Nothing Phone 2a, thanks to a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 chip and a 5,000 mAh battery. Base storage is also 128GB, and it’s IP52 water-resistant, meaning it’ll be able to handle the odd splash.
Perhaps most interestingly, the CMF Phone 1 also has a removable back cover. This means you can unlock it and replace it with other skins to give it a new look. Unfortunately, you can’t swap out components like the battery, which means the Phone 1 doesn’t go as far as the Fairphone, but it’s a neat feature.
You can pre-order the CMF Phone 1 from Nothing’s website now in black, orange or light green for $199 / £179 / AU$399 (for the 128GB / 8GB RAM version), with delivery expected on 12 July. However, it’s worth noting that the phone is being sold through a “beta program” in the US as it’s not yet fully optimized for US cellular networks.
If you’re in the market for an affordable smartwatch or set of wireless headphones, Nothing’s CMF sub-brand can cover you there, too. The CMF Watch Pro 2 is the follow-up to last year’s debut model. For reference, our CMF Watch Pro review concluded that it was “a great value smartwatch, but not perfect.”
As you’d expect for the $69 / £69 / AU$119 price tag, the Watch Pro 2 doesn’t run Google’s Wear OS, meaning no third-party apps. But it promises basic smartwatch features like heart rate tracking along with sleep, stress and SpO2 monitoring (the latter measures blood oxygen saturation levels).
Impressively, you also get GPS tracking, plus the promise of an 11-day battery life. Like the Phone 1, there is also an intriguing customization feature with the option of interchangeable bezels. Throw in a 1.32-inch AMOLED display with auto-brightness (missing from its predecessor) and you’ve got another contender for our best free smartwatches guide, as long as Nothing has fixed the connectivity issues of phone that damaged the previous version.
Lastly, there’s the new Buds Pro 2, which is the follow-up to the brand’s original wireless headphones from last year. The main improvement here is a boost to Active Noise Cancellation, which now blocks sound up to 50db (instead of 45db), plus a claim of improved sound quality.
On the design front, there’s also a new case with an integrated switch that lets you control headphone volume and noise cancellation and activate ChatGPT. This is fair. Like the Nothing (a) earbuds, which made our guide to the best tech of 2024 so far, the Buds Pro 2 have ChatGPT integration, which lets you connect to the AI assistant on your CMF or Nothing phone.
The Buds Pro 2 cost $59 / £59 / AU$99 and are available in orange, dark grey, light gray and blue. They are again expected to be shipped very soon, on July 12.
They’re cheap, but are they any good?
The CMF by Nothing brand deserves huge praise for injecting fun and playful design into the budget space for phones, headphones and smartwatches. On paper, the new launches all look like good value, although they will of course have limitations at those prices.
We haven’t tested the CMF Phone 1, Watch Pro 2 or Buds Pro 2 yet, but we’ve reviewed some of their predecessors and predecessors, and they remain good guides to what to expect.
Our review of the CMF Watch Pro praised its design, stating that it had a “premium shine to everything” from hardware to software. But we also found its Bluetooth connectivity spotty, which made notifications a pain, and it’s worth bearing in mind that you’re not getting any app store with a fairly basic feature set.
It was a similar story in our review of the CMF from Nothing Buds, which are the even cheaper $39 / £39 siblings of the Pro series. We said they were “hard to fault at their low price”, but key features like ANC were understandable.
Still, with the Buds Pro 2 offering a boost in noise cancellation and boasting a similarly impressive 43 hours of playback from a charge, we’re looking forward to comparing them to the best budget wireless headphones, including the Sony WF -C700N and JLab Go Air Pop (our current top two picks), very fast.