Nothing CMF Buds 2 Plus review

The CMF Buds 2 Plus are the premium model among the trio of new earbuds from Nothing. Part of the entry-level CMF range, these are all meant to be relatively affordable, with the most expensive Buds 2 Plus coming in at $69. And if that’s not low enough, they cost just $39 (INR 3,299) in India.

Compared to the Buds 2 and the Buds 2a, the Buds 2 Plus try to provide an elevated experience with improvements to the audio and ANC side of things. There is a 12mm LCP driver along with LDAC Hi-Res Audio and a claimed 50dB noise cancellation. The rest of the specifications are mostly similar but there also isn’t a vast price difference between the models.

We will be taking a look at the cheapest Buds 2 model in a separate review but for now, let’s get on with the Buds 2 Plus.

Design and comfort

The Buds 2 Plus design is nearly identical to that of the Buds 2 from last year. The only differences we noticed were a slightly smaller case and a new logo on the exterior, with the company seemingly doing away with the circular logos in favor of the CMF wordmark.

Starting with the case, the fit and finish of the exterior are immaculate for such an inexpensive product. There is a lovely soft-touch texture to the shell and the panel gaps are impressively tight. The lid also opens and closes with a satisfying tension and clack. The company clearly takes its name seriously as the CMF (color, material, and finish) is done very well here.

In the top left corner of the case is an aluminum rotating dial. Much like the one on the Buds 2, the rotation of the dial is purely ornamental and at best can be used as a fidget spinner. You can attach a lanyard to it but there isn’t one provided in the box. It would have been nice if the dial had a function, like the one on the Buds Pro 2 but perhaps Nothing is saving it for a Buds 2 Pro model in the future.

Getting to the buds on the inside, they once again have the same design as the CMF Buds from last year but without the circular logos. The back of the stalk is capacitive and supports tap-based gestures.

The overall design of the earbuds is comfortable but I wasn’t impressed with the material used for the ear tips. They use tackier, plasticky-feeling silicone that you find on very inexpensive earbuds. Not only does it not feel great in your ears but the material also doesn’t conform to the shape of your inner ear as well as more premium and softer material.

This leaves some gaps that let noise in unless you fastidiously adjust them every few minutes or if you move your head or jaw, even if you pick the correct size for your ears. The similarly priced OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro use the much nicer tips that feel and function a lot better and it would have been nice to see Nothing use those on the Plus model, at least.

Software and features

The Buds 2 Plus interface with the Nothing X app on your Android or iOS device. From here, you can adjust things like the ANC, audio parameters, touch gestures, and update firmware. Like much of Nothing’s software, the Nothing X app is clean and a breeze to operate, something other audio manufacturers could learn from.

The app offers a choice of ANC on, off, and a transparency mode. The ANC on mode has three manually controllable levels and an adaptive mode that automatically adjusts the levels based on ambient noise.

The app has a bunch of audio options for the Buds 2 Plus. Most prominent is the Spatial audio feature, which I found the least impressive as it was a generic surround sound feature that lacks the nuance of professionally mastered spatial audio you get from Dolby Atmos tracks. There’s also no head-tracking support on this model.

Nothing X app

Nothing is also all-in on the Ultra Bass mode on these CMF buds and it comes enabled by default set to the lowest value of 1. You can turn it up to 5 if you hate good sound (and your ears) but I did all of the testing with the feature fully disabled as there’s plenty of bass without it.

Next is the Personal sound feature, which we have seen on other models before. It plays a series of tones and you can pick whether you hear it or not and at the end it generates a custom audio profile for each individual ear.

Audio settings

For this feature to work reliably, you have to be in a dead silent environment, which is not always easy to come by. Otherwise, you will simply not hear the test tones over ambient noise even if your ears are capable of hearing them otherwise, which greatly affects the usefulness of the test.

Also, these tests put far too much trust in the quality of the drivers and audio processing to ensure you hear the correct test tone, and I can’t say I have that much faith in a pair of budget earbuds. This means I’m never quite sure if I’m not hearing a tone because my ears aren’t good enough or because the drivers aren’t good enough to produce it properly. As such, I don’t put a lot of stock in these tests, but you can give them a shot if the end result is to your liking.

Finally, there’s the equalizer. You have a few options here with Pop being the default tuning for the earbuds (it’s also what you hear if you set the custom preset to 0 values). The presets show little visualizations to show you the general type of tuning you can expect but they don’t always make sense; the Electronic preset shows having more bass than Pop even though Pop has audibly more bass.

Equalizer

Speaking of the custom EQ, we once again have Nothing’s incredibly basic and high-key terrible 3-band EQ that is arranged in an odd circular pattern. It’s damn near impossible to get any value out of this because of the broad sweeping changes it makes with no fine control or nuance. It also drastically drops the volume of the sound when you adjust anything.

It’s high time Nothing drops this garbage that is no doubt chosen purely for its aesthetic appeal in favor of a functional EQ with at least 5 bands. Better yet, it can make the 8-band parametric EQ available on the more expensive Nothing Buds available to all models since it is just a software feature already present in the Nothing X app but hidden away from the cheaper models.

Performance

Audio quality

The Buds 2 Plus have 12mm single dynamic drivers with an LCP (liquid crystal polymer) and polyurethane diaphragm. You get your standard SBC and AAC codecs along with LDAC with a maximum bitrate of 990kbps. There is, however, no LC3 support.

The audio tuning, done in-house by Nothing, is pretty much what we have come to expect these days from consumer audio products. There is a strong emphasis on bass, even with the Ultra Bass feature disabled, along with mellow mids and highs.

Starting with the low end, I found the bass on the Buds 2 Plus to be overbearing at times. This was especially true for the kind of music the Pop preset was designed for, which I’m assessing here since it’s the default. In other genres, the bass paints a layer of mush over the rest of the sound, which reduces the overall clarity and makes it a bit murky.

The mid-range has a good presence in the mix and is not buried all the way in the back as with a typical v-shaped tuning. However, the vocals sound slightly congested and compressed with an ever-so-slight honkiness to them. However, this is quite subtle and not readily noticeable.

The high-end is unremarkable. The default tuning has enough treble for it to not be dark but it doesn’t stand out in its presence or detail retrieval.

When seen from the lens of a first-time buyer who is most likely the target audience of the Buds 2 Plus, the audio tuning is fine. A buyer in this segment is likely to be inexperienced and undemanding and should find the audio enjoyable. While using the earbuds while just walking around or working without paying attention to the sound, I found the sound reasonably pleasing with only a few tracks being distracting due to the overwhelming bass presence.

Unfortunately, the EQ is useless for getting anything close to reference audio and your best bet is to use the Classical preset, which while not perfect is fairly close. I found the combination of the Classical preset and level 2 on Ultra Bass more balanced than the default Pop preset.

In comparison, the Nord Buds 3 Pro have a similarly bassy sound but the mids have better timbre and the overall tonality is a bit more pleasing. The CMF Buds 2 Plus also don’t get any points for having LDAC as you don’t hear the added resolution in the sound.

Microphone

The Buds 2 Plus have good microphone performance. Voices sounded natural without too much garbling. The level of your voice would go up and down a bit as if you were moving further away from the mic, even though the mic is on your ear. That aside, the overall microphone quality is pretty good for voice calls.

The microphone performance is also better compared to the Nord Buds 3 Pro, which continue to have a garbled noise to them months after launch.

Noise cancellation

The Buds 2 Plus have active noise cancellation using the six onboard microphones. Nothing claims up to 50dB of cancellation in a 5400MHz frequency range.

The noise cancellation performance is good for the price. You get satisfactory attenuation in the low-frequency ranges and decent in the mid-ranges. The high frequencies aren’t as well tuned out, and part of that is due to the cheap ear tips which don’t always create a perfect seal. At times some high-frequency sounds also come in more prominently, which can be distracting. However, for the most part, the ANC performance is decent.

Similarly, the transparency performance was also found to be adequate, with a reasonably natural rendition of the ambient sounds.

There is some difference in the sound between the ANC on and off modes. I found the ANC off sound to be a bit less bass-heavy. That, along with the combination of the ambient sound makes the earbuds sound less congested and more balanced. When at home, I would prefer to turn the ANC off instead of keeping it on all the time.

Latency

The Buds 2 Plus have decent latency performance. When tested with a Nothing Phone (2), some titles had good latency performance while others didn’t. The Low lag mode in the Nothing X app didn’t seem to do much, as apps that worked well had low latency even with the option disabled and those that had poor latency saw no improvement with the option enabled.

Connection

The Buds 2 Plus had reliable connectivity performance. I only noticed some warbling when using 990kbps on non-Nothing phones but on the Nothing Phone (2) even that mode was rock solid.

Battery life

The Buds 2 Plus have a claimed battery life of 14 hours with ANC disabled and using AAC. With LDAC, that number drops down to 8 hours.

In my testing, I got 14 hours and 23 minutes when using AAC and 8 hours and 34 minutes when using LDAC, so the company’s figures are accurate.

Nothing also claims 4.5 hours of continuous playback with AAC after a 10-minute charge. I got 4 hours 35 minutes, which was once again within spitting distance of the claimed figure. And while Nothing does not mention the LDAC figure, I got 2 hours and 51 minutes, which is respectable.

Conclusion

The CMF Buds 2 Plus offer good overall performance for the price. The design and build quality are good, the earbuds are comfortable, the battery life is excellent, the microphone performance is commendable, and the Nothing X app is clean and easy to use.

Downsides include unremarkable audio quality coupled with a limited and clumsy custom equalizer as well as cheap-feeling and underperforming ear tips. For the price, these are easy to look past, especially since the target customer is unlikely to know any better. Still, it would have been nice if the Plus model didn’t have these shortcomings to justify its higher price over its siblings.

The Buds 2 Plus can’t quite stand out from the crowd with similarly priced options, such as the OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro, which perform more or less the same. They are, however, a competent all-rounder and if you like the design of the hardware and software over the competition then that would be a good enough reason to pick them over the rest.