Tag affordable

Nothing started its maiden journey with a pair of earbuds, followed by the radical phone design, backed by loads of hype and anticipation. Carl Pie’s brand has since then consolidated with stellar second-generation products. Now Carl wants to cater to the more affordable section of the market with the newly launched CMF by Nothing.

Abbreviated Color, Material, Finish – the brand is a direct aspiration of the parent company to bring great accessible design to the masses. The budget-friendly brand announced today has three products in its kitty – smartphone, earbuds and charger. According to Carl, CMF is, “here to question the world.” By our understanding that statement is clearly focused on the high price tags of some of the gadgets out there.

Designer: CMF by Nothing

Keeping with the trend of revealing earbuds as the first product, CMF by Nothing has the $49 Buds Pro earbuds to offer. At that price tag, the active noise cancellation, 11 hours of standalone battery in the buds and 39 hours of battery in the charging case are worth the deal. Compared to the now premium Nothing Ear (2) earbuds, the sub-brand’s buds have a more contoured look.

There’s no transparent aesthetic, normally associated with the Nothing products. Also, the case design is different from the Big Brother as they are stored in a circular puck case. The Buds Pro features like equalizer, ANC settings and more can be toggled via the Nothing X app earbuds. For now, the earbuds will be available in grey, black, and vibrant orange colors.

Next, there is the CMF Watch Pro which is a reflection of the brand’s ‘accessible’ motto. The price tag of $54 will shake up the smartwatch market. There are clear traces of the unannounced Apple Watch design and the Watch Ultra’s orange strap here. At one-tenth the price of Apple’s wearable, the 1.96-inch AMOLED display smartwatch touches important bases with a dedicated heart rate sensor, blood oxygen saturation sensor and multi-system GPS. Also, it comes with a claimed battery life of 13 days and 110 sports activities for fitness tracking to choose from.

The most interesting product in the line-up from the perspective of utility is the CMF Power 65W Charger. The GaN (Gallium Nitride) charger juices up most of your gadgets including phones, earbuds, smartwatches, or portable speakers. With the inclusion of three ports, two USB Type-C and a USB Type-A, the branded accessory is cheaper than most other brands at $39.

The wide range of compatibility for  PD3.0, QC4.0+/3.0/2.0, SCP, FCP, PPS, AFC, Samsung 9V2A, DCP, and Apple 2.4A protocols will make it a value-for-money proposition for users buying new flagships or products that don’t have the charger included in the package.

Apple’s Vision Pro costs $3499, Meta’s Quest Pro had a launch price of $1499, and Microsoft’s Hololens 2 as well as the Magic Leap 2 Developer Edition were both priced upward of the $3000 mark. AR headsets aren’t cheap because of all the complex data they’re made to process in a matter of seconds. However, technology like the NEON Eye Tracker may help make the technology a lot more affordable by cutting down research and development costs. Built by the folks at Pupil Labs, Neon is a modular attachment that clips onto the nose-bridge of specialized eyewear. Armed with multiple cameras that point at your eyes as well as the world ahead of you, the Neon helps track your vision as you perform various activities from working to playing sports, traveling, or doing something that requires a specialized skill set. The gathered data helps “power scientific research and enable eye tracking applications beyond the possibilities of today”. In short, better spatial content, and hopefully more affordable VR/AR/XR headsets.

Designer: Hannes Geipel for Pupil Labs

What powers the Neon is that tiny module that fits right in the middle. Designed to conveniently sit right between your eyes without really obstructing your vision or interrupting your ability to engage with the world around you, the Neon’s eye-tracking module helps capture data of what your eyes look at, creating a heat map of the world around you based on regular as well as specialized scenarios.

The tiny modular unit packs all the necessary technical components (such as high-speed eye cameras, a wide-angle PoV camera, stereo microphones, and inertial measurement units) in a very compact space. The inconspicuous module can be inserted into a range of frames, which are tailored to different application scenarios. Contact points on the front connect to the circuitry within Pupil Labs’ frames, which then allow you to connect charging cables through the ear-stems, easily powering the Neon without having any large charging cables obstructing the wearer’s vision.

The Neon starts working the second you wear the glasses. No need to fiddle around with nose pads or camera positions, or even to calibrate the module beforehand. The module begins working the instant it’s powered on, offering crucial, actionable data in all sorts of environments including the sunny outdoors as well as complete darkness. All the technology is encased within water-resistant silicone, making the Neon just about as weatherproof as any existing eyewear.

The module automatically uploads its readings to Pupil Labs’ secure cloud framework, reducing the latency between data gathering and analysis. The cloud dashboard also offers advanced machine-learning tools like gaze mapping and scene understanding algorithms on the data gathered by the Neon module. The hope is that the democratization of these tools and the data gathered from them will help craft better real-life as well as virtual (or spatial as Apple calls it) experiences that put the user front and center.

The beauty of the Neon isn’t just its compact form factor, it’s also the fact that it’s designed with modularity and scalability in mind. While Pupil Labs offers an entire variety of frame types that support the Neon, its geometry is essentially open-source, allowing you to develop your own frames or modify your specialized eyewear/headsets to fit the module. This could be prescription glasses, protective eyewear, sportswear, glasses for children, minimalist frames that just hold the Neon without any lenses, or even AR/VR headsets that can now track the wearer’s gaze for more user-friendly and data-driven metaverse experiences.