There's a lot of buzz about the CMF Buds Pro 2 from Nothing's budget brand, CMF, because they're so dang cheap. So, we're going to find out if there's any reason to pay more. I mean, $350 for the kind of flagship buds from the major brands—could these be that much worse?
Colour and What's in the Box
The first thing you notice is the fun color. It comes in multiple colors—I probably wouldn't choose the blue, but it's nice to have these options. And there they are inside too. More comments on those after we look at what else it comes with:
- Cable: USB-A to Type-C (interesting choice, not C to C).
- Ear Tips: Silicone, with sizes small, medium, and large. They match the color of the buds you bought.
- Instructions: Included in the box.
The cable is really short, and there's no adapter, but it's a budget product, so okay.
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Earbuds and Case Design, Fit, and Feel
The earbuds themselves are glossy hard plastic with an injection-molded stem design. They're only glossy on the top part; the stem is actually matte. There are some symbols on them, but I don't know what they mean. These pop off—yep, normal kind of standard. There are three microphones on each one (we'll do a mic test later).
There's a little dot up here that could potentially be a mic, and there's one over here that looks a little bigger—it might be a vent for the drivers. For sure, these two dots at the end of the stems are going to be two out of your three mics. There are two drivers: an 11 mm driver and a 6 mm driver. We're going to see how they sound later on.
Kind of cool how they fit in the case—they just flip on top like that, magnetic. The case has a square design, USB-C charging, and an indicator light for pairing and stuff. What's unique about the case is that it actually has this control dial on it—satisfyingly tactile. It spins infinitely in either direction. Why do I need this? Well, there's always some false negatives when you're trying to deal with the buttons on an earphone. Maybe this is a godsend.
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Setup and App Walkthrough
Alright, let's get these in my ear holes. Pretty good seal—I'm getting a decent amount of passive isolation. My voice sounds different to me; things seem a little quieter out here. This is what they look like. Oh, I think that wasn't passive isolation—I think that was active noise canceling. I pulled it out, and everything changed.
James's famous shake test—they're really in there. IP rating, though: I would say the standard IP rating for truly wireless earbuds is usually IPX4, which means that the X means they did not test it or get a rating for ingress protection of dust and debris, and then the four would be splashes and stuff. These are IP55, which is pretty good. I'd like to see IP65 because there are lots of devices that have the six—the highest rating for dust—but it's nice that they have a rating at all. For the five water protection, normally with a four, you're just saying, "Hey, that's going to be good for sweat at the gym," and I guess you could wear them in the rain like you would hope. But the five gets you sprays from any angle—sprays of water for three minutes. So, I mean, you could probably get away with wearing these in the shower unless you're really shooting at them for your whole shower.
Listening Impressions
Alright, let's listen to these things. Whoa, these are bass-heavy—holy cow! All in all, they seem to be blasting right now. Let's try turning it down. Okay, this is kind of annoying. There is a volume sound like "boop boop boop" with each step, but there's a lag in the volume sound. So, if I go like this, it only makes one "boop" sound even though I went like 10 steps, and that "boop" sound is pretty delayed, so it's kind of bizarre.
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Holy cow, is this the default curve? This is not space. Some people are really going to like this, but this is definitely overcooked compared to what the artist intended. I should note now that these have Dirac Optio on them, and Dirac obviously comes from the home theater space. You can get an AVR that has Dirac room correction on it, and they are a respected brand in that space—they know what they're doing. This product is to help optimize sound using high-resolution filters in headphones and in your car. In other products, they allow a brand to simply use Dirac's own target curve or the brand's own target curve. In this case, I'm pretty sure they're using the brand's target curve because this is far from accurate. That's not to say you don't like it—different strokes—but it ain't flat, man.
Control Woes and EQ Settings
Let's see how the volume works on here. Okay, it worked, but it was pretty slow. I didn't think it was going to work at first. So, I'm double-tap and hold—this is just straight up not working. That's why they have the dial—because the interface sucks on the buds. Yeah, this interface sucks. It appears that the top of the stem is really where the read is—yeah, right here. From here up, you're better off.
Let's check out some EQ options in the app. Equalizer—whoa, they got the Dirac one right there, and then here's custom. They do give you the plus 6 dB. I mean, honestly, with the bass turned all the way down, it's still normal. When you crank it, it is thumpy. I wish it showed those dials when you're on these other ones so you could get a sense of where they are, but I expect that especially the Dirac Optio one is probably tuned with a lot more granularity than those dots that we get exposed to in custom. Oh, they do give you a little cloud for the other ones. Interestingly, you can switch between these so quickly, but when you go to Dirac Optio, it takes longer and actually interrupts the music for a second.
Battery Life and Trying ChatGPT/Google Assistant
They got 60 mAh hours on the buds and 460 mAh hours in the case. That'll net you 43 hours of playback with no ANC on, including charging it through the case, which is 11 hours on the buds themselves. However, I almost always use ANC, and that will net me 6.5 hours on the buds and 26 hours all told. Ten minutes of charging gets you 3 hours without ANC or 1.8 hours with ANC. Do that conversion to minutes yourself.
I'm not in a great environment to assess the quality of the ANC. What I can say is it sounds normal—you know, it's kind of table stakes on a lot of earbuds now. I mean, these are $60, and they have ANC, and they have this ChatGPT thing, which is interesting to me, and I want to try it just very briefly. It seems like it just launches the app—I'm not hearing anything in my ears at all. It's just telling me there that I can't have ChatGPT on when I hold down this button, but a different assistant when I hold down that button. It's one assistant for all. Let's see what happens. Yeah, apparently, the assistant button just launches whatever assistant is on your phone and does nothing in the buds. Not sure what's up with that. Okay, I did hear it say, "Here's what I found on the web," in the buds, but it never went, "What's up?" or "Boink" or anything like that. "Hello, how are you?" "I'm great, thanks for asking." I can hear it, but there's no way to know that it's even listening. That is unfortunate. I don't expect that to be normal. I'm assuming there's something wrong right now with our setup or our firmware, or it's a bug. They'll fix it—it's not working right now.
Pricing and Overall Thoughts
These things are $60 or $90 Canadian. These are really great value. The build quality is cool, the sound quality is not bad at all—it's definitely good enough for the vast majority of people. The case has some cool features. It just doesn't seem like you're compromising very much for this low price, and I think that others are going to struggle to compete with these. Definitely worth at least investigating if you're shopping for earbuds, especially if you're trying to pay more. Maybe you should just take a look at these and save your money.
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