New CMF Clip Pro (2026) — Clip-On Earbuds With a Control Dial on the Case for $79

CMF has introduced the Clip Pro — open-ear clip-on earbuds with a physical control dial on the charging case. The earbuds themselves also get a mechanical button, which is a rarity among true wireless models. There is LDAC on board and up to 10 hours of playback, all at $79 on pre-order. The launch did not go entirely smoothly, though: people mocked the company for using a neural network instead of human models in its advertising.

Key specifications:

• Dynamic 10.8 mm driver with dual magnets and a TPU + LCP diaphragm.
• LDAC, AAC and SBC codecs. Bluetooth 5.4 with BLE.
• Playback: 10 hours on their own and 32.5 hours with the case; 36 hours in the long battery life mode. Ten minutes in the case give 4 hours of playback.
• 4 microphones, 2 per earbud.
• Water and dust resistance: IP54 for the earbuds, IPX2 for the case.
• The earbud weighs 5.92 g, the case 38.81 g.

Our ranking of clip-on earbuds is in the works. If you want to know where the CMF Clip Pro lands in it, support this story.

Controls — A Dial on the Case and a Mechanical Button

The defining feature of the Clip Pro is the mechanical dial on the case together with a button on the earbuds. A real button on the earbud is a rarity among true wireless models of any shape. Rolling the dial changes volume, a short press pauses playback, a double press skips tracks, a triple press answers a call, a two-second hold starts pairing, and a ten-second hold resets the earbuds to factory settings.

A similar control on the case appears on the CMF Buds Pro 2. And the controls on the full-size CMF Headphone Pro and Nothing Headphone (1) are a benchmark in their own right.

On the earbuds themselves, separate physical buttons handle the classic actions: a press pauses playback, a double press skips a track, and a hold changes the volume.

It only works with the app. By default the dial functions are switched off and have to be enabled in the Nothing X app for Android or for iOS.

Sound — LDAC Is On Board

Inside sits a single dynamic 10.8 mm driver with a TPU + LCP diaphragm. The stated frequency range is 20 Hz to 40,000 Hz, with the in-house CMF Custom Tuning. The app offers five equalizer presets and one manual three-band equalizer, which looks thin next to most rivals. There is spatial audio without head tracking. LDAC is here too, although our experience with CMF models that support it suggests you should not count on a noticeable gain.

Worth a look — our fresh ranking of the best earbuds with the LDAC codec. It also explains which codec is better, LDAC or LHDC.

Bass. Open-ear designs normally lose bass, and every brand compensates for it in its own way. CMF is no exception and added Ultra Bass technology — three levels of low-frequency boost in the app. There is also a private listening mode that damps the frequencies leaking outward, with three settings: on calls, always, or never.

Voice Calls

There are 4 microphones, 2 per earbud. One picks up your voice while the other reads the surrounding noise. CMF says this pairing delivers a clean, clear voice to the person on the other end. From our experience with other CMF models, the microphone gives no reason to complain, at least in quiet conditions.

No noise cancelling and no transparency. Neither mode is available because of the open design. And clip-on earbuds hardly need transparency: any pair of clips already lets through about 95% of what is around you.

Battery Life — On Par With the Best

The earbuds run for 10 hours, the case adds another 22.5 hours, for 32.5 hours of playback in total. A long battery life mode is claimed at up to 36 hours of playback. CMF does not explain how that mode works; the reasonable guess is that it trims the bass. JBL speakers have a similar mode and it works rather well. Talk time is shorter — 6.5 hours from the earbuds and 25 hours with the case. Fast charging gives 4 hours of playback from 10 minutes in the case.

How the figures were measured. As usual, every number is quoted at 50% volume on the AAC codec. In practice earbuds often deliver the claimed time at 80% volume. The battery champion among true wireless models on MyChooz is still the CMF Buds 2 Plus, at 15 hours on a single charge.

Build — Shaped Like a Desk Lamp

Inside the arm runs a titanium wire 0.5 mm thick. The arm is flexible, takes the shape of the ear and returns to its original form. The body is made of soft thermoplastic polyurethane. The earbud weighs 5.92 g and the case 38.81 g. The case measures 52.1 × 26.69 × 51.01 mm.

Design. Looks are a strong suit of CMF and its parent brand Nothing: an unusual approach and a shape that stands out among rivals. The Clip Pro is no exception and looks rather like a desk lamp. People online are already joking about it — tell us in the comments what you make of the design.

Water and dust resistance. IP54 for the earbuds and IPX2 for the case: the case is rated for water drops only, dust resistance is not claimed for it.

Cutting Corners, by CMF

A render of the Clip Pro turned up on the social network X shortly before the launch. The post was pulled quickly, but people had already noted the poor quality of the promotional posters, in particular the earbud in the ear. The more attentive ones spotted a line at the bottom: «CONTAINS AI-GENERATED IMAGERY. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO REAL PERSONS IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL».

All of the promotional material was produced by a neural network, without real earbuds and without real people. A similar approach shows up at other brands, SoundPEATS and Creative among them. Savings like these often reflect the real state of a company. The price crisis in memory and storage appears to have forced cuts across the board, marketing included.

People were quick to mock the move, though the brand found its defenders, who pointed at the «quality» of other companies’ promotional renders. Does it actually matter to you whether the person in an advert is real or generated? Drop a comment.

In the Box — No USB Cable

The bundle is a minimal one: two earbuds, the charging case, a quick start guide and a safety and warranty leaflet. There is no charging cable — savings here as well, so you will have to bring your own.

Connectivity — An Older Bluetooth Version

The Clip Pro supports dual connection. There is a low latency mode, quoted in the footnotes at roughly 120 ms. The Bluetooth version is 5.4, which looks modest now that models with Bluetooth 6.0 and 6.1 keep arriving.

Ecosystem. Calling up ChatGPT is available only on CMF and Nothing smartphones.

Price and Availability

Pre-orders are open on the official Nothing store: $79 instead of $99. Sales are promised to start on 15 August 2026. The model is not on AliExpress or Amazon yet — direct links will be added here once it is. There are 3 colours: light grey, dark grey and coral.

What Are the Alternatives?

The CMF Clip Pro is not what you would call cheap, and LDAC is far from exclusive, with a gain of a couple of per cent. We have had the SoundPEATS Clip1 with LDAC at $55 at the time of writing, and it is still the best pair of clips under $50. The realme Buds Clip is on our test bench right now and the sound impressed on the basic codecs. The EarFun Clip at $50 is an interesting one — LDAC, a physical button on the earbud and Bluetooth 6.0. The freshest arrival among clips is the Sennheiser ACCENTUM Clip — Bluetooth 6.0 and LDAC, but the price is close to $200. The benchmark on MyChooz is still the Huawei FreeClip 2: at roughly $156 you get two dynamic 10.8 mm drivers and IP57 water and dust resistance, though only with the basic codecs, since the proprietary L2HC works with Huawei devices alone.

What to Expect

The model is an interesting one and the mechanical controls are its draw. We plan to put together a ranking of the best earbuds by ease of control, and the CMF Clip Pro fits it perfectly. We do not expect much from the sound: CMF tends to be a background listen for comfortable everyday use. Everything else is modest and «cheap».

• See the ranking — Best Wireless Earbuds 2026

Would you like a full review of the CMF Clip Pro? Drop a comment.

Source: official Nothing website