CMF Buds Pro 2 review: Some of the best earbuds you can buy on a tight budget

It’s remarkable how little you need to spend to get decent-quality wireless earbuds in 2024. I remember well that only a few years ago cheap headphones were of a pretty poor standard, and that you’d need to spend between £150 and £200 for something reliable and impressive.

Those days are gone. You can now get previously flagship features like multipoint, transparency, active noise-cancelling, customisable sound and compact, pocketable sizes in buds that cost way less than £100.

I’ve been hands-on with several recent models, including the Nothing Ear (a), the Moondrop Space Travel, Soundcore’s P40i, the Soundcore Liberty 4 NC, and much more.

The latest contender? It’s from Nothing’s sub-brand CMF, and it’s packed full of features. Building on our previous recommendations of the £49 CMF Buds Pro and £39 CMF Buds, the brand-new Buds Pro 2 has dual drivers for richer sound, improved noise-cancelling, and a unique customisable knob on the charging case. All this, and they cost just £59.

CMF Buds Pro 2

CMF Buds Pro 2

£59 at Amazon

£50 at nothing.tech

Pros

• Comfortable and compact
• Effective ANC
• Impressive sound, once customised
• Lots of features
• Customisable “Smart Dial”

Cons

• Room for improvement with touch control
• Still feels a bit cheap
• The audio signature will only appeal to bass-lovers
• Customising the sound is essential

Noise-cancelling	Yes, hybrid ANC
IP rating	IP55 buds / n/a case
Weight	4.9g per bud (55.8g with the case)
Battery life	6.5 hours on a single charge with ANC on (up to 26 hours with case)
Charging	USB-C only

If you’ve been following the design of Nothing’s CMF earbuds so far, you won’t be surprised by the look of these. The case looks a little bit like the one that comes with the flagship Nothing Ear model, but just if it was covered in a fresh coat of paint. The colours available are dark grey, light grey, orange, and blue. I’ve got the blue one for testing, and it’s a really lovely shade. CMF has done a good job here. The plastic still feels a little cheap, but not as much as on previous releases from the brand.

The unique thing about the case is that one corner features a “Smart Dial” or control knob that you can completely customise within the Nothing X app. You can control what it does for clicking, holding and turning the dial both during playback and on calls. It’s fun, it reminds me a bit of how useful charging case controls are from my recent test of the JBL Live Beam 3, and there’s a real analogue appeal to turning the clicky dial to bump up the volume.

The Buds Pro 2 themselves are small and compact. They’ve got a slightly longer stem than the AirPods Pro or the recent Nothing launches but are otherwise exactly what you’d expect, and they’re comfortable to wear. At the top of each bud, you get a customisable touch surface. These controls are fine and responsive, but, strangely, you can’t program a single tap to do anything. I ended up finding them less reliable than the “Smart Dial” for control.

These buds support AAC, LDAC and SBC codecs, and they feature a dual speaker system with an 11mm bass driver and a 6mm micro-planar tweeter. It’s a setup that should be capable of some great-sounding audio, depending on your tastes, but by default, they’re absolute bass cannons and it takes some effort to sort out the overemphasis on the low-end. Yes, I know you may think you love bass, but without tweaking this sound through the app, I honestly found it tiring to listen to for much longer than an hour.

Luckily, the Nothing X app exists and it’s possible to fix some of this. Out of the box, they come with “Ultra Bass” enabled. I’d recommend turning this off or toning it down, they’re plenty bassy enough without it. They’re also in the “pop” equaliser setting by default. So the next step I’d suggest is finding a different one to make them more palatable.

Initially, I tried the “Dirac Opteo” which Nothing says should make the sound “as the artist intended” – overall, it’s still too bass-boosted. But, once I turned to a custom equaliser mode and set the bass to “-5”, I got much closer to a decent sound. The truth is that even with this setting, they still lean very bassy with loads of thump.

Once I landed on this setup, I found vocals and the mid-range more balanced out with the punch, though, and there’s richness and detail here, after customisation. If this tuning is to your taste, you’ll find them a fun and engaging listen. They’ve also got a subtle “spatial” mode, it works well and I’d consider turning it on for some tracks and films – it makes it seem like sound comes from all around you rather than just the left and right side.

Nothing continues to state noise-cancelling prowess with a decibel amount, and it says that the CMF Buds Pro 2 are capable of 50dB of active noise-cancellation. In practice, this will always be different depending on the frequency of the noise you encounter, but the positive news here is that these are highly effective in several situations. I’ve used them while walking around, while in the office, on bustling London Underground trains and in a restaurant.

In every location, they were able to silence a wide range of sounds, making them a surprisingly great rival to the high-end pairs. I’m especially impressed that they can tackle high-frequency sounds like the chatter from coworkers at the office. And they’re more than good enough for the commute. The only time they faltered was with a few of the sudden screeches I encountered on the Northern Line – there are only a handful of pairs, like the Bose QuietComfort Ultra earbuds, that are able to deal with that, though.

For compact buds, they’re solid in the battery department too, lasting 6.5 hours on the buds, and up to 26 hours with case. That’s for playback with the AAC codec and noise-cancelling on, you can get more life – 11 hours from the buds and 43 hours with the case – if you turn noise-cancelling off.

However, the high-res LDAC codec takes a sledgehammer to this, reducing the life to 4.3 hours. Audiophile listeners using Tidal and Qobuz will need to have a hard think about whether they’re prepared to reduce the battery life this much, especially as the benefits of LDAC are hard to notice on this pair.

Once they’re exhausted, they’ve got quick charge functionality. Ten minutes of charging can get you up to three hours of playback with ANC off.

There are a lot of other handy perks to the CMF Buds Pro 2 that I haven’t gone into in-depth in this review. They’ve got dual-device connectivity with Bluetooth multipoint, a low-lag mode for mobile gamers, an ear-tip fit test and in-ear detection sensors.

Overall, there’s a lot of value for those on a seriously tight budget here, and I’m impressed that these earphones cost just £59. The build quality does feel reliable, albeit not premium, and there’s a lot of control and customisation available. Noise-cancellation is convincing and the sound is solid, but only if you like bass much more than all the other elements of your playlists.

There might be some more well-rounded options out there, given that there are tonnes of earbuds on the market, but these are some decent budget all-rounders that many people won’t find disappointing. As I said at the start, it’s surprising just how affordable solid earbuds have become in 2024.

If you can spend a little more, I’d recommend upgrading to either the Nothing Ear (a), Soundcore Liberty 4 NC or Sony WF-C700N, as these are all excellent and still under £100. The Nothing Ear (a) is a much better-sounding pair with nicer controls and a more stylish appearance.

You can also get some rivals with noise-cancelling for less money, like the decent £39 CMF Buds or the £25 Moondrop Space Travel, the latter of which sounds a lot more balanced and delicate than these.