There’s a lot of hype around these buds online so I had to get my hands on one. First to see if it’s worth the hype and second to benchmark it against my range of Chinese TWS earbuds. Anyway I snagged one up from Aliexpress, used it for a week and came to the conclusion that – it’s a good, maybe great bud but y’all should chill with the hype. But that’s the short story lets dive deeper into what this earbud brings to the table.
What’s in the box
You get the buds, a fancy looking case with a wheel that I’m guessing has no actual function (it scrolls but all through scrolling didn’t trigger any action) two pairs of extra buds tips and the operating manual. The case design is refreshing no lie but I never got used the non functional scroll wheel.
Design
Put the fancy case aside and this looks like your typical budget TWS earbud. So a somewhat chunky stalk and similarly chunky earpiece. I would say the earpiece are chunkier than the other buds I’ve reviewed recently (they definitely felt tighter in ear) but overall they’re good looking by all budget TWS earbuds standard.
There’s a small round cutout that I assume is part of Nothing’s design language, the whole side panel of the stalk works as a touch sensitive tab, but it does add a bit of sophistication to the overall design of the buds.
Build quality is very solid. It’s plastic as usual. The stalk is finished matte and the earpiece glossy (that has implications for the fit, but more on that soon) and this combo is bread and butter for TWS earbuds at this price point. I have the white buds you can get this in orange or black and for the short while I’ve used them they’re very prone to picking up stains.
Each bud weighs about 4.2g which is again within the weight range of TWS earbuds at this price point.
Fit and comfortability
The slightly chunkier earpiece on this make them fit more snugly in ear compared to most of the earbuds I’ve reviewed recently. However, when used for long periods they tend to wobble about and I’m guessing that’s down to the glossy finish on the earpiece part of the earbud. Glossy means there’s less friction and hold when in ear compared to the matte finish you’d find on the buds like the Haylou Mori Pro.
I also noticed a bit of ear fatigue when I had this on for prolonged periods. Anything beyond two hours and I consistently got some sort of ear ache. It’s not that bad and I’d suffix this by saying for most buds at this price point you’d get some ear fatigue if you have them on for long enough.
Features
The CMF Buds 2A come with:
- Active noise cancellation
- Bluetooth 5.4
- IP54 rating
- Touch controls
- Multipoint connection support
Again this is bread and butter for TWS earbuds at this price point with the notable exception being the IP54 rating which offers both dust and water resistance of some sort. Most of the buds I’ve reviewed in this bucket lack the dust resistance, so that’s nice on the CMF buds 2A. There’s however no support for hiRes LDAC audio which you might find on some cheaper buds and also proximity sensing and wireless charging both of which are actually not commonplace for budget TWS earbuds.
Active noise cancellation
Active noise cancellation on the CMF buds 2A was decent all things considered. The advertised threshold is 42DB which is again kinda standard for buds at this price point. Indoors it worked very well at filtering background noise – a TV humming in background, people talking, low level music, appliances, all of that stuff.
If the noise level gets a bit loud some of it passes through the ANC filter. I was in a room with a very noisy fan and I could hear some of the wind noise with ANC on on the Buds 2A. Outdoors, it’ll also do a great job at blocking out low level noise but again once it gets past that 42db threshold you’ll hear it, so a car honking at you (not that you’ll not want to hear that) will get past. In a busy market place, you’ll hear some of the noise but it still does a good job of filtering out most of it.
There are three ANC modes on the Buds 2A, active, transparent and off. Active turns on ANC in its full form for maximum noise cancellation, transparent lets in some noise and it’s what you’d want to use on a walk, jog or out in public, and off turns it off entirely. You can set your preference via the app or long press on the touch panel to turn it on or off.
Bluetooth 5.4
Most TWS buds available now come with bluetooth 5.4 so no surprises here. Bluetooth 5.4 is good for better energy efficiency, lower latency and better audio quality.
You can pair the Buds 2A to two phones simultaneously.
IP54
IP54 rating for water and dust resistance is perhaps one of the areas the Buds 2A stands out from the competition. IP54 means this is rated to resist water damage from light splashes of water, light rains or sweat from an intense workout.
The 5 in the rating means it’s also resistant to dust. Most other buds in this price bracket don’t ship with this although it’s there to be seen how much of difference this makes to overall usability.
Sound quality
For what you’ve been waiting for, how does the Buds 2A perform sound wise? Very good I would say. The soundstage is detailed and immersive. There seems to be an emphasis on bass, more so if you use the Dirac EQ or activate the ultra bass function in the app, but overall it evens out so that you can still get a good capture of mids and trebles.
The bass is deep and vibrant. In rock, pop or amanpiano songs you’re going get very very thrilling depth of bass. Certainly not as controlled as what you’d get on the Melobuds N50 and like I said earlier it tends to blur out some segments of the other listening frequencies.
So mids while detailed enough can come off muffled especially at higher volumes. If you love synth infused music like me, you might find yourself hunting for those interspersed guitar lines and synthesizer addons . Listening to my benchmark song Timeless by the Weeknd, I didn’t get as much feel of the rolling drums, guitar or synth infusions. It’s not so much that it’s not there as it is that it’s not being projected with as much clarity as you’d find on buds like the QCY Melobuds N50 in my opinion.
Trebles are decent and very pronounced across all volume levels. You’ll get a decent feel of vocals for both males and females voices. It’s not as filling as the bass or mids experience, certainly comes off with lesser clarity, is less separated from the soundstage but it’s still good enough.
Tried as much as I could but couldn’t really enjoy the surround sound on the Buds 2A. It’s there, I can feel the buds trying to speak to me from different angles it’s just that it’s not very well separated from the other components of the soundstage – so again clarity is an issue.
Overall I’d say these are buds to get if you’re the type with bass cravings. Bass is deep, punchy and thrilling. Other details in the soundstage come second to bass in my opinion.
Calls
I used the Bud 2A to take several calls over Christmas a lot of them for periods, as long as 2 hours, and I’ve got to say it performed exceptionally well. Really had no complains. Audio quality in call was excellent, audio delivery to the counterparty was more than excellent as well. And impressively on a 100% charge I routinely got down by about 30% or so after taking 2 hour plus calls. That’s impressive battery life numbers but more on that later.
Nothing says this comes with 6 mics and even though I couldn’t find up to six I’m going on a limb to say that’s true cos the calls performance was nothing short of great.
Gaming and media playback
The Buds 2A come with a low latency mode function that drops latency to an almost zero level. This helps eliminate the lag or delay between sound and picture you might experience while gaming on traditional TWS earbuds.
Media playback is great as well, and thanks to that low latency feature there’s effectively no delay between audio and video when watching video content whatever the source.
Battery life
Battery life on the Buds 2A was superb. On a full charge you can go up to 5 hours of active listening before needing a recharge. Passively the buds will stay on and connected to your phone for more than 24 hours. Turning on ANC drops the hours by one or two, so about 4 hours for active listening and say 22 hours for passive connection.
The carry case houses a beefy 460mAh battery that’s capable of doing up to 5 0-100 recharge cycles for the buds.
The nothing X app
Its simple and clean and I like that. And unlike the apps from brands like QCY you don’t need to sign up before login in and connecting your buds.
On the app you can turn ANC on or off or set it to transparent mode. You can activate ultra bass or adjust the EQ settings You can also modify the touch controls, connect to another device with the dual connection tab or turn on low lag mode for gaming.
Should you buy the CMF Buds 2A?
As at the time of this review the CMF buds 2A cost about $46 dollars to get. And while it does feel like a great bargain when you consider the sound quality, design, battery life and call quality (most especially call quality) it’s hard to ignore the fact that better buds can be had for less. The QCY Melobuds Pro, for instance, is about $14 dollar s cheaper and that comes with support for hiRes audio and has more balanced soundstage in my opinion.
If you love very thick bass, then maybe this is the earbud for you, otherwise I’d say save the extra bucks and get other cheaper similarly performant, maybe even better Chinese earbuds.
