CMF Speaker S review: this little milk carton sounds better than it has any right to

Clever design and unique multi-speaker performance make Speaker S a novel little speaker. Its good audio quality also makes these budget speakers worth the money.

I've got two CMF Speaker S models on my desk, one black and one reddish-orange, and when they arrived, I was pretty sure I'd be keeping the black one. Black goes with everything, doesn't it? But the more I see that orange milk carton sitting there, the more I like it, and now I'm not so sure. It's a silly thing to get hung up on with a Bluetooth speaker, perhaps, but that's part of the appeal of CMF's little box of tricks; it makes you care about what is essentially a small plastic box that plays music.

CMF is Nothing's more affordable sibling brand, and it has a knack for making everyday tech look a bit different. Previously, I've been impressed with CMF Headphone Pro, a budget version of the excellent Nothing Headphone (1) Pro. The Speaker S is a pint-sized milk carton with a square body, tapered shoulders, and a pinched top, and it looks fantastic. The larger Speaker M looks more like a two-pint milk carton but retains the same approach, with an extra speaker.

The shape also serves a purpose, which is always nice to see: the top doubles as a handle (it has a slight soft give), and the little circular hole lets you hang it from a hook in your room, clip it to a bag, or dangle it inside a tent when you're off camping. At 334g, it won't weigh you down, and with IP68 dust and water resistance, you don't have to fuss over it as much as some of your other gadgets.

Then there's the front button, a chunky cross-shaped toggle that could easily have been a boring round switch, but isn't. It turns smoothly for volume and presses in with a soft, satisfying clump, and I keep finding myself fiddling with it. There's thought behind how it works, not just how it looks, too: a single press plays or pauses, a double press skips forward, a triple press goes back a track, and a long press toggles Ultra Bass. It's the kind of physical control I enjoyed on Nothing's headphones, where standard buttons are swapped for toggles and paddles and do enough that you don't have to keep reaching for your phone. Same here with Speaker S.

How does Speaker S sound?

All very nice, but a speaker has to play music, and I was genuinely surprised when I first pressed play. I ran through tracks from The Postal Service, The Jayhawks, and Failure, and the sound coming out of this tiny milk carton had much more weight than I expected. The music has decent body, the bass has some punch, and it doesn't immediately fall apart into the thin, tinny sound you get from cheap little Bluetooth speakers. Given the size, I found myself turning it up and wondering how CMF had managed to squeeze quite so much sound out of it.

The hardware is fairly straightforward: a single 45mm full-range driver, two passive radiators, and 10W RMS output, but the radiators add some extra oomph to the low end. The Nothing X app also offers EQ tweaks, including presets for more bass, treble, and voice, so you can fiddle if the default sound isn't quite right for you.

I'm not going to pretend this is a miniature hi-fi system, and anyone who spends their weekends arguing about speaker placement and the finer points of instrumental separation will find things to pick at. But for music while I'm working, listening around the house or sticking something on while cooking, the Speaker S sounds really good for the money.

Take it outside, though, and things change a bit. The sound can spread out and lose some of that focus, becoming more diffuse than it does indoors. It's not terrible, and I don't expect much more from something this small, but it's worth knowing if you're planning to use it as the soundtrack to a garden party or a weekend at a festival. Personally, I'd take that trade-off for something I can sling in a bag without thinking about it, rather than lugging around some hefty Bose monster that takes up half the space I've got for everything else.

With that said, Nothing / CMF has a workaround. You can connect multiple speakers (including the larger CMF Speaker L using Auracast Party Mode to spread music around a space, or pair two Speaker S models in Stereo Mode. I tried two together in Stereo Mode and Wide Soundstage Mode, and the result was much more spacious than I expected from a pair of these little things. The Postal Service's bleepy 'Such Great Heights' felt like it was bouncing around the room. The sound filled the space with a rounder, more spread-out feel, and it made a real difference compared with listening to a single unit on its own. So that's the caveat: Speaker S sound is full and wraparound if you buy two or more.

I'm sure anyone who takes their speakers seriously will have a field day moving them around, trying different positions and working out how to get the best sound from a pair. There's something appealing about placing two small speakers where they work best, rather than relying on one big box to do everything.

And at $59 / £49 each, you don't really need to spend a fortune to try it. Two will set you back $118 / £98, still a reasonable price for a stereo setup, while Party Mode gives you another option if you want to spread the sound outdoors and hook up even more speakers. I'd definitely opt for at least two Speaker S, see how you get on, and add more later if you fancy it (or if you're huge Pink Floyd fan and what the full experience).

Make it your own (literally)

The boxy, compact design makes it easy to use multiple speakers, hooked and hung around the room. And it means I keep coming back to the design because it's what makes the Speaker S stand out. Plenty of small Bluetooth speakers do a decent job, but most are black cylinders or little fabric-covered bricks, and you forget what they look like about five minutes after you buy one. CMF Speaker S doesn't want to be forgotten, and like other Nothing devices, it wants to start a conversation.

And you can mess around with it too, which is even better. The front panels and knobs can be swapped out, so you can change the colour scheme, and Nothing has released official design files for 3D printing your own parts. If you've got a printer, you can try making something that suits your desk, your room, or whatever odd colour combination you've decided you need this week. (For example, my black and orange Speaker S also have different shaped buttons.) I'd love to see what people come up with, especially if they push the milk-carton idea in stranger directions.

The rest of the spec is pretty good for the price, too. Nothing claims up to 18 hours of battery life, and you get Bluetooth 6.0, NFC pairing, USB-C audio and the ability to connect two devices at once. Battery life depends on how loudly you play music and how you use it, of course, but it's enough to make it useful beyond sitting on a shelf looking pretty.

Should you buy the CMF Speaker S?

For $59 / £49, I reckon CMF is onto something. The Speaker S looks great, sounds better than its size suggests and has enough practical touches to make it a genuinely useful little speaker, whether you're listening at your desk, taking it away for the weekend or hanging it up in the garden. It won't satisfy anyone looking for huge bass or the last word in audio detail, and the sound loses a little focus outdoors, but those are reasonable compromises for something this small and affordable.

What I like is that the design hasn't been left at the level of a novelty. The handle and hanging hole make sense, the cross-shaped control is a joy to use, and the removable panels and 3D-printable parts give you a reason to keep playing with it long after you've unboxed it. Add a second speaker, and you get a surprisingly good little stereo setup, too.

I started out thinking the black model was the one for me, but that orange one is winning me over by the day; and, since it sounds best as a pair, I don't really feel forced to decide. It sounds daft to say a Bluetooth speaker has a bit of personality, but this one does, and at $59 / £49 I can forgive it for not sounding like a much bigger, much more expensive speaker. Speaker S is a fun little thing that also plays music well and can be expanded to play music really well, which is pretty unique and very Nothing by design.

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