Whenever I need to focus, or I need some relaxing sounds to calm me down in moments of stress and anxiety, music is always there to help me. But to listen to music, there must be somewhere to play it in.

You could play it on a speaker, or you could play it on some headphones/earbuds.

Personally, I prefer earbuds because they are smaller to carry around and are generally more comfortable for my big ears.

The following paragraphs are meant to add context of the audio listening devices i've used in the past.

If you just want my review, feel free to skip to it.

But my first proper headphones were the Beats Solo 2 (pictured below). The music was pretty bassy, but the cup size was extremely small, so most of the time I ended up using one of those cheap earbuds that you find on aeroplanes.

So, looking for an alternative to these headphones, I asked dad to buy me some earbuds for Christmas. Mind you, this is when I was around 15 years old. I couldn't get anything new that was tech related outside of celebrations such as my birthday or christmas.

And thus began my search for "good" earbuds. Where "good" meant "comfortable", "cheap", and "doesn't give me a headache every time I use it".

First were the JBL Vibe Beam 2's. And it was such a big quality increase compared to these headphones, because the audio wasn't leaking outside, but also because i didn't have to take a break from wearing them for extended periods of time.

I can't stress this enough, but the Beats Solo 2 were the most uncomfortable headphones i've worn and it left me with such a bad experience that I think I won't buy headphones any time soon.

Anyway, the Vibe Beams were good. But then I— oh god, I realize that this is really embarrassing to write about. I somehow lost the case for them, and that's basically a death sentence if the manufacturer doesn't sell a replacement charging case. I could've bought a off-brand charging case off of amazon... but I decided not to risk it and buy other buds.

In the mean time, I was yet again using the aeroplane wired earbuds, which made me realize how good I had it with the vibe beams. I don't know how they do it, but they are really uncomfortable to wear properly. They have this cap to cover off the speakers, but the cap extrudes a bit from the other half of the bud. So it ends up becoming annoying because it doesn't quite fit the , but also because the extrusion is constantly hitting the ear's concha.

Going back to buying earbuds, right. I ended up buying some Nokia earbuds, those of which I still have the case laying around!

They were... serviceable, at best.

Not as comfortable as the vibe beams because these had more of a rounded shape, which I think was to fit in the concha of the ear? But also the tips never truly fit my ear (even the big one), so they kept falling off constantly when I was jogging from my school to the nearby plaza.

Funnily enough, the shape of these earbuds resembles beans. Perhaps these were meant to be some cheapo-clone of the Samsung Galaxy™ Buds Live?¹

Hilarious if true.

Sadly, they died in the most bizarre way possible. They kinda just... stopped charging?

I cleaned the contacts on both the earbuds and the case. I power-cycled the case. Made sure the earbuds still worked (which they did!). But nothing.

These were also, doomed.

It was so annoying to learn this when I was getting used to them! Why did you have to die on me like this!

Next up are some cheap Apple Airpods clone. I think I might have lost the box that these came in, but they were marketed as Gen 3 Airpods, but the Airpod design looked like the Gen 1's. These were bought by my sister, as a gift.

I think she didn't really notice that these were clones? But also they could connect to iPhones just fine? No "These are not your earbuds" popup, or anything.

They did have the warranty expired however, so I assume the serial number was stolen from someone else's airpods.

To not pad this article longer than it already is, they were bad. As in, sound quality. They were comfortable to wear, but also they are kinda just ripping off Apple's design so they don't get any points at all. Also none of the features worked, just audio and calls, like any other regular earbud.

But they also, died.

How? You may ask.

They also stopped charging. The case could charge just fine, but this time around, not the earbuds. So of course I had to buy some new ones. Which leads us to the CMF Buds Pro 2.

First Impressions

Disclaimer: These thoughts come from a week of use, I am not a professional audio engineer, nor an audiophile. So take everything I say with a grain of salt, as it is heavily biased by previous experiences with sub-par earbuds.

Jumping from some cheapo, knockoff airpods, the difference in audio quality is insane. I could finally hear the little details in some of the tracks I listen to, from the reverberations of bassy instruments, to quiet instruments that make the sound more rich and expressive.

Of course, after reading that they had active noise cancelling (ANC), I had to try it out. And it felt weird.

It's a bit hard to explain the feeling of experiencing it for the first time, since I can't usually remember those little details of my first experiences with something. But I think I remember it very clearly.

See, the buds make this noise in order to indicate that ANC is on, it's like a low-pitch bassy tone. Kind of like that, I'm not the best at describing sounds.

When I heard this for the first time, and then just... silence, I was in shock.

I genuinely couldn't hear the noise of the cars in the distance, or the chirping of the nearby birds in our backyard, or the sound of the leaves whooshing as wind comes and goes. It felt surreal.

Another feature that I've been kinda anticipating ever since I ordered the product was the fact that these support high-resolution bluetooth audio using LDAC, a proprietary audio codec developed by Sony.²

The difference between the default codec (AAC) and LDAC isn't a big one. The only noticeable difference is that music gets a bit louder and cleaner-sounding, despite both being "lossy" codecs. But to be fair, I don't have a good point of comparison to be able to know if quality actually got better.

In theory, it should make high bitrate files sound better since the codec allows for faster audio streaming to the device, at a higher rate, and therefore better.

Another standout feature of the Buds Pro 2 is it's rotating dial. Which, let's be honest, it's very much a niche gimmick.

But also, Nothing likes adding gimmicks to their devices. From the Nothing Phone's clear back cover, to the dot-matrix display in the back of their flagship Phone (4a) Pro, they are no stranger to niche and fun gimmicks, and this one is no exception.

However, I do wish it was a bit more customizable...

Which leads me to my first complaint of the Buds Pro 2.

There is no single tap action on the buds themselves.

I mean, fine. I get it, you are supposed to use the double, triple, tap and hold, and uh... double tap and hold(?) gestures.

But something I really miss is being able to just press once to pause whatever I was listening to. I mean, you also can just take the buds off your ears and the music will automatically pause, but the convenience missed from being able to perform such a quick action is lost.

Another issue is that the rotating dial's rotating gesture can only be used for volume control. It would be so cool to use the bud's dial as a zoom and shutter dial for taking pictures with, but alas, I can't.

Though, it's not really a complaint per-se, but rather a missed opportunity since the dial could've been a lot more useful that way.

Another thing that is quite annoying is that the buds constantly fall off my ears. I assume this is an issue with the tip size that I am using? Perhaps it's not sealing well?

I've only been using these buds for a week, so I have a bunch of things to lock in properly, tip size being one of them.

As for the other features... we first have "Ultra Bass", which you can think as "adding more bass per bass". It makes the bass stand out more, which could be nice for bass enjoyers, however it's definitely not for me. I'll give it another go soon though, since I do have some very bassy music that could benefit from this. I think.

Then we have this "low-lag mode", which seems to reduce audio delay? Could be useful for games that need fast reaction times. However, I do Mario Kart Wii time trials and play casually online, so I think I'm fine without it...

The final feature I could say that "stands out" from what I've used before is the "Dual Connection" mode.

And let me say this, it's probably the best thing ever.

I constantly context switch from being on my phone to my laptop and then back to my phone. And before having these buds, I just left them connected to my phone since it's where I store my music and leave my laptop on mute. Now I don't have to do that!

I just connect them to my laptop and my phone at the same time! Though, it seems to cause issues on my laptop when audio is playing on my phone and I have a controller connected. The controller suddenly gains half a second of delay between inputs and it makes games completely unplayable.

However, I think this is mainly an issue with my laptop's bluetooth stack and not fault of the earbuds themselves.

Finally, the battery.

It's pretty good! It lasts me the entire day in AAC mode, but the battery life almost completely halves when you are using the LDAC mode, and this could be a problem for most people.

However, most people also don't listen to music for 6 hours without interruptions, so it's tolerable (I'm most people, hi.)

Conclusion

I think it's a bit early to say whether you should buy these earbuds or not, however, I did promise my good friend v1per2477.bsky.social a review of these.

My verdict is that these are pretty damn good buds.

At least compared with my previous experiences, it's definitely a step up in sound quality, comfort, and in features. And I would definitely recommend them to other people if given the chance.

However, they definitely carved a hole in my wallet that I am still trying to recover from. But that's on me for not waiting for a discount first 🐇