CMF has debuted two new products in India, including the Neckband Pro and the Buds, out of which we have already reviewed the former and now it’s time to do the same for the latter. The CMF Buds, priced at Rs 2,499, serve as the younger sibling to the CMF Buds Pro which were launched last year and were received well by us. Will the same happen with the CMF Buds? Let’s try to find out.
Design & Comfort
The CMF Buds follow the same design language as Nothing’s Ear (2) with a similar shaped case and earbud placement inside the case. On the other hand, the case itself looks quite different and attractive in CMF’s signature orange colour. It’s also available in Gray and Black with a more subtle appearance but orange is the colour which stands out the most.
There’s a rotary dial at the corner of the case that can be used for lanyard attachment. CMF is also selling its own lanyard which it also sent us alongside the buds, and we can say it’s made of decent quality and has a long length as well.
The case has strong magnets to keep the lid shut and to keep the earbuds in position. The lid doesn’t feel flimsy at all while the case gets a compact form factor making it pocketable as well.
There’s also a spring mechanism in the case that opens it automatically once you reach a certain angle. Same is the case for shutting it close as well. An LED on the front of the case notifies you of the pairing status, the case battery as well as the buds’ battery also. The case seems well built, however, is prone to scratches. The unique design element though, is the lanyard dial which looks really neat and adds to the appeal of the case.
As for the buds, they have a shape similar to the Nothing Ear (2) and the Ear (1) as well. That means they should ideally be comfortable to wear, same as Nothing’s buds, which is exactly the case with them. The CMF Buds didn’t come off while doing extensive tasks such as working out or running. Further, they felt light in the ear and didn’t bother at all.
Similar to the CMF Neckband Pro, the buds also have aligned pill-shaped cutouts acting as speaker grille, thereby outlining the brand’s attention to detail, especially in terms of design. These are also IP54 rated meaning those sweaty workouts or a walk in the rain shouldn’t be an issue.
The Buds also sport touch controls which are also customisable. Double tap can play/pause and answer or hang up calls, a triple tap can skip forward or decline incoming call, tap & hold will activate ANC or go to Transparency mode, while double tap and hold can be used for volume control. The touch controls also work well and aren’t overly sensitive to the touch.
Performance, Nothing X App Features
The CMF Buds pack 12.4 mm bio-fibre drivers along with ANC support for up to 42dB. It has four mics, and is digitally enhanced by Dirac Opteo patented correction technology. In other words, there’s an EQ mode available for the buds, named Dirac Opteo which aims to digitally upgrade the audio quality. The sound signature has been tuned by both Nothing and Dirac.
As for the audio quality, it was quite a decent experience listening to music on these earbuds. With the Dirac Opteo EQ selected, the audio signature is more towards the balanced side. There’s that thump in the bass, which is further enhanced by Ultra Bass 2.0 technology that’s heaven for bass lovers. It enhances the bass without compromising on other characteristics of the track which actually seems useful.
You can either turn the feature off completely via the app, or you can set it across a 5-level system with 5 being the maximum possible amount of bass on offer. The mids mildly overshadow the high-end frequencies but the clarity of the vocals and the instrument separation are on point. You can opt for the custom EQ setting to tune it according to your preferences.
In comparison to the CMF Buds Pro, the audio signature on the Buds have more importance to the mids along with a much stronger thump in the bass. While some would prefer Buds Pro, those who love bass would prefer the CMF Buds, thanks to the Ultra Bass 2.0 technology as well which the Pro model doesn’t get.
There’s a unique feature on CMF Buds which we haven’t seen from Nothing or CMF in the past, and that’s five popular EQ settings tailored to various music styles available in the Nothing X app. These include Rock, Electronic, Pop, Classical and Enhance Vocals. However, I liked Dirac Opteo the best, followed by my custom EQ setting.
The Buds have Microsoft Swift Pair and Google Fast Pair support as well. This makes the pairing process simple, as the pop-up to connect to the buds appeared on my devices as soon as I’d opened the case.
Next, the ANC feature can cancel noises up to 42dB in depth, which is slightly lower than the Buds Pro’s 45dB support. However, that doesn’t mean the ANC on CMF Buds is unimpressive. It still cancels out most environmental sounds without any major issues, such as traffic noise. However, higher pitched sounds couldn’t be canceled out as effectively, but weren’t bothersome either.
Wind Noise cancellation is decent but isn’t as good as it is on the CMF Neckband Pro. The transparency mode also isn’t the best, as the ambient sounds still have a muffled effect and aren’t very clear.
The CMF Buds support in-ear detection meaning it’ll pause the music when you take the bud out of your ear and will resume the track once you put it back in. The Latency performance in gaming isn’t ideal, but things can be improved slightly if you turn on low-lage mode via the Nothing X app.
There’s support for dual-device connection as well and similar to the Neckband Pro, it had no issues in handling the audio from two devices. It could switch between them smoothly without any major delay or connectivity issues, also thanks to the use of Bluetooth v5.3. This feature can be enabled via the Nothing X app.
A Find my Earbuds is also available in case you misplace your earbuds while the Buds also support software update functionality.
Call Quality, Battery Life
The call quality of the CMF Buds is handled with four mics and in a nutshell, we can say the call quality is average. It can fail to cancel background noises if there’s a lot of it, which can hinder your voice quality, making it difficult for the other person to hear you. The other party also complained of echo in my voice at times. However, when you are indoors, the call quality suddenly improves as the background noises drop.
Coming to battery backup, CMF claims 35.5 hours with case and 8 hours with buds when ANC is off. Then, they claim it can run for 24 hours with case and 5.6 hours with buds when ANC is ON. As impressive as these numbers look, fortunately, we can back them as we did get close to the figures during our review of the CMF Buds in both scenarios. When you do go on a call, remember the battery will drop faster.