Nothing CMF Buds Pro 2 review: A good but not great pair of earbuds
Nothing's back with a fresh new pair of earbuds for all bargain hunters out there. The new CMF Buds Pro 2 are here with a multitude of intriguing features, excellent audio quality, decent noise cancellation, and finally, a killer price.
How do these new earbuds stack up against Nothing's higher-end earbuds as well as the all-encompassing AirPods Pro?
CMF Buds Pro 2 specs
| Specs | CMF Buds Pro 2 |
|---|---|
| Colors | Dark Grey, Light Grey, Orange, Blue |
| Audio | 11mm bass driver + 6mm micro-planar tweeter, LDAC, AAC, SBC |
| Noise cancellation | Hybrid ANC, Up to 50dB depth, 5000Hz frequency range, Transparency mode |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth 5.3, Dual Connection, Google Fast Pair, Microsoft Swift Pair |
| Battery life | ANC On: 6.5 hours from buds, + 26 hours with case ANC Off: 11 hours from buds, +43 hours with case |
| Ingress protection | IP55 buds only |
CMF Buds Pro 2 Design and Colors
Both the earbuds and the case are well-designed (Image by PhoneArena)
With the CMF Buds Pro 2, we get a distinct design language that's mostly in line with the CMF Watch Pro 2 and CMF Phone 1. The charging case is squircle-shaped, mostly flat on the sides, and made of soft plastic that feels great to touch.
That's intended, as you're supposed to often interact with the charging case. Sadly, the soft plastic gets smudged pretty easily, so be prepared to clean it thoroughly from time to time.
The Smart Dial is a genius feature (Image by PhoneArena)
The reason for that is the multi-functional round dial in the corner, dubbed the Smart Dial. Aside from looking cool and in-line with the rest of the CMF lineup, the Smart Dial also serves other purposes.
For example, you can control the earbuds volume by rotating it, pause your music with a single tap, switch between different active noise cancellation modes by a double-tap, triple-press to enable Low Lag mode off, and so on.
Everything is customizable in the app, so you can personalize things your way in the Nothing X companion app. The Smart Dial is a mich better way to interact with the earbuds than the touch-sensitive earbuds themselves.
The design of the buds themselves is a pretty standard AirPods-like one, with long stems and a bulbous main section that helps the earbuds fit snug. Both earbuds feature touch sensitive areas at the top, which let you control the playback, accept/decline calls, and switch between noise control modes.
The CMF Buds Pro 2 come with some extra ear tips in the box, which will maximize the chances of the earbuds fitting properly. The standard ones that come as default should fit most adults, but there are a larger and a smaller set available as well.
The earbuds themselves are comfortable to wear. They are lightweight and they don't cause ear fatigue. Sure, it will hurt if you lay on your pillow with your head sideways, but other than that, using the CMF Buds Pro 2 for long periods of time is a pleasant experience.
CMF Buds Pro 2 Sound quality
Sound is okay, but don't expect these to knock your socks off (Image by PhoneArena)
On to the most important question: how do these sound?
One word: solid! The CMF Buds Pro 2 deliver decent sound quality. They are not AirPods Pro-like good, but they are good, especially in their price range. That said, after a quick reference test with the new Nothing Ear earbuds, the latter surely deliver a higher quality sound, albeit less bassy and not as loud.
The sound stage isn't particularly wide, but it's not tiny either. The EQ response certainly leans into that standard V shape that's so easy to love. The vocals are clear, and the bass is more than enjoyable.
The companion Nothing X app, which you'll use to customize the Smart Dial of the case, is also home to the various sound quality and noise-cancelling controls. There's a customizable equalizer that you can use to fine tune the output sound.
By default, there's an Ultra Bass option enabled in the Nothing X app, which surely does what it says on the tin and amps up the low frequencies. I'd recommend using this feature at level 1 or 2 out of 5, as things could get excessive at the maximum bass boost level.
There are five presets (pop, rock, classical, electronic, enhance vocals) as well as a dedicated DIRAC Opteo EQ setting, which sounded the best to me. Nothing says DIRAC Opteo digitally enhances the "sound of headphones" to provide an optimized listening experience, and honestly, I'll take those claims for granted.
You can also customize the EQ yourself, but in a very limited way. You get 12-step control for bass, mids, and treble, but no direct adjustment of bandwidth and frequencies. The advanced equalizer that's available for Nothing's higher-quality earbuds is missing here, which is a pity.
The buds can also get very loud, even excessively so. Anything past 80% volume might feel uncomfortable to listen to, at least it felt that way to me.
CMF Buds Pro 2 noise cancellation and transparency
The noise-cancelling works well most of the time, but has some issues (Image by PhoneArena)
The new CMF buds come with hybrid active noise cancellation, which promises to shush out sounds of up to 5KHz all the way down to -50dB. Each bud has three mics, which help with the Smart ANC algorithms and adaptive ANC.
Like most ANC earbuds, we have a transparency mode that lets you hear outside noise. In proper noise-cancelling mode, we get three levels of noise-cancelling strength, as well as an adaptive setting that is enabled by default. In real-life, however, there doesn't seem to be such a huge difference between the various ANC modes.
The noise-cancelling feature is mostly okay. It filters most consistent noises for the most part, but really struggles with speech and other high-pitched noises. Just like with the latest Nothing Ear earbuds, it sometimes feels as if the noise-cancellation feature doesn't work. A certain way to fix that is to quickly pop the earbuds back in their case so that they "reset", and you're good to go.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend getting these for the ANC alone, as it's just okay. Those ANC issues likely can be fixed with a software update, so… here's to hoping?
Battery Life and Charging
The battery life of the CMF Buds Pro 2 is better than the average. We get 6.5 hours of music playback or 4.8 hours of talk time with ANC on, or 6 hours of talk time and 11 hours (!) of music playback with ANC off. That's more than most earbuds out there; even beats the AirPods Pro 2, which deliver around 6 hours of music playback on a single charge.
In my experience, the earbuds will lose around 25% of their charge in an hour of listening with ANC on, which is normal considering I had all features enabled and the volume above 60%. With a more "frugal" listening experience, I believe CMF's battery life figures are most likely correct.
The charging case, on the other hand, extends the overall battery life of the earbuds to 43 hours, which is more than sufficient.
In terms of charging, it takes an hour to fully charge a pair of CMF Buds Pro 2. If the case is also out of juice, it will take an hour and 10 minutes to fully charge both the case and the earbuds. Just like the CMF Watch Pro 2, you get an old-school USB-A to USB-C cable in the box, which isn't ideal: a fully USB-C cable wouldn't have raised my eyebrows.
Conclusion
Overall, a pretty decent bang for the buck (Image by PhoneArena)
Starting at just $69, these deliver more than a decent value for your money. They are well-designed and the multi-functional case is a pretty interesting concept that works beautifully. However, the sound quality is mostly okay and the active noise-cancelling isn't as good as the Nothing Ear or other earbuds.
Should you get a pair? I mean, if you really want to get a pair of earbuds with adequate sound quality and ANC that works okay most of the time, there are possibly no other options that will set you back just less than $70.
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