CMF Buds Pro 2 earbuds review: Great value, but with some trade-offs

Note: This review was first published on 11 November 2024.

The CMF Buds Pro 2 was announced earlier this year alongside the CMF Phone 1 and CMF Watch Pro 2, and they’re part of Nothing’s more affordable sub-brand, CMF by Nothing, which looks like it’ll be able to take the entry-level/affordable segment by storm. 

At S$99, it’s one of the most affordable earbuds on the market. Despite the price, it still offers an insane amount of features such as support for the high-res LDAC codec, hybrid Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), and more.

The TL;DR version:



The CMF Buds 2 Pro has decent ANC, a bass-heavy sound signature, LDAC support and a cool new Smart Dial feature for added functionality. Add on the fact that it costs just S$99 and it's a winner at this price point.



Note: You can find the CMF Buds 2 Pro on Shopee, Lazada and Challenger stores.

The case gets a redesign to resemble the Nothing Ear (2)’s square case a little more, but there’s no transparent aesthetic here. Instead, you get an interesting customisable Smart Dial on the case that doubles up as a secondary way to control your earbuds. We’ll speak more about it later in the features section, but the case itself is plastic with a soft touch coating, which feels adequate for its price. 

The earbuds have a dual-driver configuration, which is unusual at this price point. It has an 11mm dynamic driver that apparently comes with a titanium coating on the PU diaphragm, as well as a 6mm micro-planar tweeter for the highs. Each earbud weighs just 4.9g and the charging case is 46g, for a total of about 55.8g. It’s a relatively lightweight product, and the earbuds are very comfortable in the ear even after being used for around four to five hours.

There are four colours available, black, white, blue and red, and the blue really is quite stunning. It’s a nice, deep blue that offers a bit of fun while not being too gaudy. The difference in the glossy and matte areas on the earbuds themselves also offers a nice textural contrast. Unfortunately, that glossy surface is used for the part of the earbuds that sit in your ear, so if you’re prone to sweating, you might find the earbuds slipping out of your ear after a while. 

Features

CMF by Nothing’s products are all incredibly low-priced, and when we first heard that the CMF Buds Pro 2 would be just S$99, there was a fair bit of scepticism going on as to how good these earbuds could be. After all, corners do have to be cut to keep costs low if you’re going to offer products at such an enticing price.

And there were corners cut, of course, but the good thing is that most of the important features have been retained. The CMF Buds Pro 2 still offer ANC, customisable touch controls, an EQ feature for sound tweaks, and more. There’s also Nothing’s ChatGPT integration which can be used if you’re pairing these earbuds with a CMF or Nothing smartphone, but we’ve spoken about how it’s mostly still a gimmick at the moment in our Nothing Ear (a) review. 

The touch controls on the earbuds themselves are relatively standard, although there’s no single tap feature, presumably to avoid false inputs. You’re able to customise the controls via the Nothing X app, and the app even allows for different controls to be assigned to each earbud, so you can have a double tap on the left side to skip forward and a double tap on the right to skip backwards if you so wish. 

Aside from that, we have to talk about the Smart Dial. This physical knob on the case allows the user to control the earbuds without having to raise a hand to interact with them. You could keep your hand in your pocket with the case and control your earbuds that way, even. The control customisation is slightly less flexible here: rotating the dial is locked to either volume control or turning the earbuds off completely, and a single press and hold is set to ANC control by default. However, you could customise this function to either voice assistant or the low lag mode for videos and gaming.

There are plenty of options for double and triple press, so that’s excellent, and a double press and hold is non-customisable as that control locks or unlocks the Smart Dial so you don’t accidentally trigger any controls if you throw the case in a bag or something. 

In the app, you can also tweak the sound signature via the equaliser, and CMF by Nothing has managed to get Dirac Opteo on these earbuds, which is interesting. Dirac is a Swedish audio company that uses algorithms to try and improve sound quality across a range of products such as cars, soundbars and more. We’ll speak more about how the Direc Opteo setting sounds later, but it’s a nice option to have.

The ANC works very well. While ANC is dependent on how good a seal each person gets with the earbuds, I will say that these earbuds do a great job of muting most low-pitched noises encountered during daily commutes on buses and trains. If someone is speaking right next to you, you will still be able to hear them, but you can drown them out easily by just playing some music.

There’s also a Transparency mode which is decent if you need to stay aware of your surroundings. But it isn't the best and you'll certainly want to take the earbuds out if you want to have a conversation with someone.

With three microphones on each earbud and Nothing’s Clear Voice Technology 2.0, call quality is generally quite decent. Wind noise reduction is quite good, but if you’re in an extremely noisy area, the noise reduction gets a bit aggressive, which could result in some clipping and your voice being inadvertently cut off.

For people looking to use these while exercising, there’s IP55 dust and water resistance on the earbuds, which is excellent.

Wireless and audio performance

Usually at this price point, we only see support for the usual SBC and AAC codecs, but CMF by Nothing has somehow managed to include LDAC support as well. It’s very impressive because brands usually need to pay for a license from Sony (who developed LDAC) in order to use it in their products, so for a S$99 product, I was certainly surprised to see it supported.

The earbuds use Bluetooth 5.3 and connectivity is great even when in crowded areas with no stuttering or connectivity issues. There’s also support for Dual Connection, which is essentially multipoint so the earbuds can be connected to two devices simultaneously.

Battery life is relatively average at around 6 hours on AAC with ANC turned on, but this drops to about 4.5 hours if you also stream over LDAC. At this price, there’s no wireless charging support so you’ll have to use wired USB-C charging to juice up the case and earbuds. With the charging case, CMF claims you can get up to 26 hours of music playback.

Audio quality varies considerably depending on how you have these earbuds set up. Out of the box, it’s immediately apparent that these earbuds have average detail retrieval and the overall sound is tuned to a V-shaped signature with a heavy emphasis on the bass. However, that works very well for most listeners of genres like pop and rock, and one thing that the company has done well here is that despite the emphasis, the bass is relatively well-controlled and doesn’t get boomy or distorted. 

That 6mm tweeter also helps elevate the highs, making it so that the CMF Buds Pro 2 have plenty of energy both in the high and low ends. Due to the V-shaped signature, you do get a bit of a recessed midrange that results in occasions where the bass ends up overwhelming the mids a little and losing some of the detail in vocals and instruments.

If you switch to the Dirac Opteo sound profile, however, it does change the sound quite noticeably. There’s more emphasis on vocals and the soundstage opens up. This is definitely subjective, so do play around with the equaliser or try turning off Nothing’s Ultra Bass setting to try and find the ideal sound profile. 

Conclusion

The CMF Buds Pro 2 are by no means perfect, but for S$99, it's really hard to nitpick them. We’re getting decent ANC, adequate battery life, high-res LDAC support, IP55 resistance, the unique Smart Dial on the case and a bassy sound profile that isn’t too offensive. They really offer a lot of value, perhaps even more than other affordable earbuds like the S$159 Nothing Ear (a) and the S$129 Oppo Enco Air4 Pro. 

Their keenest competitor has to be the Creative Zen Air SXFI. At S$109, the Creatives are arguably even greater value because they also feature ANC and for just S$10 more, they throw in SXFI support. If SXFI and spatial audio are important to you, the Zen Air SXFI is arguably the more suitable option. But really, for the money, you cannot go wrong with either of them. Crucially, these earbuds prove that it's now easier than ever to get a set of decent earbuds without spending too much money.

Note: You can find the CMF Buds 2 Pro on Shopee, Lazada and Challenger stores.

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