CMF Headphone Pro Review: A little funky but too much fun

Pros:

Cons:

Price: Rs 6,999

Rating: 4.2/5

The Indian market is flooded with high quality true wireless earbuds, but on/over-the-ear wireless headphones with good sound in the Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 price band are far and few. Hence, when the Nothing sub-brand recently launched the CMF Headphone Pro in that bracket, we were quite excited. Thankfully, the excitement did not die down even after testing it for a fortnight. Here is the detailed review of the CMF Headphone Pro by Firstpost.

CMF Headphone Pro - Build, design and comfort: 7.5/10

While the build quality of the product is quite good, the design is a bit funky for my taste. Clearly, it is targeted at the Gen-Z crowd (what isn’t these days!) with more than a bit of gloss at the back and an interesting shade of light green. While it isn't gaudy at all, it looks a little unusual and slightly on the larger side on an old head like mine.

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We have been testing the green variant, but it also comes in light grey and dark grey options. If you wish to jazz it up further, the earpads are user-replaceable (sold separately). We got a spare orange pair for testing.

The combination of a light green headphone with orange earpads was too much for me, but you may try different combos.

The CMF Headphone Pro is quite comfortable to wear with sufficient padding on the earcups as well as on the headband. The clamping force is just right and the height adjustment is smooth. The 283 grams weight is evenly distributed and the headphones don’t feel heavy.

The left and right side are clearly marked inside the earcups. The earcups can be turned and flattened but not folded. So they take up more space than some foldable headphones when being carried, unless you slip them in your bag vertically. You don’t get a hard carry case in the bundle but a basic fabric pouch is included that can protect it from dust and some friction. Ingress protection is fairly basic with an IPX2 rating that just about makes it sweat proof but not splash or dust proof.

So technically, you can wear them to the gym or for a walk/jog when it’s not raining but it’s best to avoid it, and I will tell you why. While this headphone feels very comfortable on your ears even if you wear it for an hour or two, things tend to get sweaty rather quickly and without you knowing it. When I took the headphone off after a casual 30-minute stroll in rather pleasant weather, my ears and the area behind the earlobes were sweaty. However, wearing it for an hour indoors did not lead to that level of perspiration in the area.

The earcups provide a good seal and admirable passive noise isolation. The controls on the headphones are smart and unique. You get physical buttons, a bass/treble slider and a multi-functional scroll wheel for accessing most of the functions of the product. I will talk more about them in the next section. Touch controls aren’t available here but they weren’t missed. The buttons are fairly easy to access and offer a soft keypress. In addition, you also get a USB-C charging port and a 3.5 mm stereo jack to use this headphone in wired mode if it runs out of battery. An Aux cable is bundled along.

CMF Headphone Pro - Key features: 8.5/10

These Bluetooth 5.4 headphones support LDAC codecs in addition to SBC and AAC. Multi-point support is available and the CMF Headphone Pro can be paired with two devices simultaneously; that works well even with LDAC codec enabled on both. Wear detection sensors are missing, so the audio doesn’t pause when you take off the headphones. You get hybrid active noise cancellation (ANC) here along with a transparency mode to let ambient sounds through. Each earcup hosts a 40 mm dynamic driver and there are five microphones in total for calling and blocking up to 40dB of noise.

One needs to download the Nothing X app and sync the headphone with it to get the most out of it. It lets you tweak the sound output, configure controls, switch between different ANC modes, update the firmware and more. The app has a clean layout and is easy to use. The bass/treble slider on the headphone can either be assigned bass or treble adjustment and one can slide it to increase or decrease the respective attribute on the fly. It is a great addition. The multi-functional wheel can be used to alter the volume by scrolling, play/pause and skip tracks by clicking it single or multiple times or toggle through ANC modes using a long press.

CMF Headphone Pro - Performance: 8.5/10

The wireless range is perfectly fine with the headphone retaining a strong connection at 10 metres with a clear line of sight. Before we discuss the sound quality, let’s talk about the ANC performance. This headphone claims to reduce ambient noise by up to 40dB but it largely suppresses the low end frequencies. It is useful indoors to cut out the fan noise or the hum of an AC. When outdoors, while it can dampen the sound of car engines, all other higher frequency sounds are let through making the experience a bit unnatural.

The passive noise isolation here is actually pretty good and I often preferred it over using ANC in places like public transport where ANC couldn’t filter out the human chatter anyway. The Transparency mode performs so well that it feels natural in most cases, and I could even have a quick chat with people around while wearing the headphones. It is also handy when you want to be aware of your surroundings and not miss important announcements at airports or train stations.

Moving on to the sound quality, the default sound signature of the CMF Headphone Pro is rather energetic. Though the low end frequencies are clearly boosted, it is tuned quite well out of the box. The Nothing X app offers more sound tweaks in the form of five audio presets and a 3-band equaliser to create your own. If you don’t like playing with equalisers, the Pop and Classical presets offer the best results for two completely different tastes in sound. The former makes the sound a lot warmer, while the latter reduces the bass and makes it sharper.

If you happen to fall somewhere in between those two types, this headphone has just the thing you need. Remember the slider we spoke about earlier? If you choose to use the Pop preset, set the slider to adjust the treble from the app, and if you choose Classical, use it for bass. That way it lets you achieve a much better balance between the warmth and the sparkle. Even better, you can change it for every track if you wish to right from the headphones without the need to access the app. This is an incredibly useful feature that I hope to see on more headphones going ahead.

Post the adjustments, this headphone produces punchy but tight bass and crisp highs. The mids are produced reasonably well too with clear vocals and decent instrument separation. The highs are sharp enough without sounding sibilant. As a result, this CMF headphone is enjoyable across various genres of music. The detail in sound and soundstage is average but acceptable for the segment. If you wish to broaden the soundstage, you can try turning on Concert or Cinema mode under Spatial Audio from the app. You can even assign it to one of the buttons to stay away from the app.

If you wish to personalise the sound further, you get a Personal Sound option in the app that lets you create a custom sound profile based on your listening capability using a small test. It is similar to the Golden Sound or Audio ID feature in OnePlus and Oppo earphones. It is certainly worth a try. This headphone is fairly loud and perfectly audible around the 50 per cent mark when indoors and I didn’t have to go beyond 70 per cent even in noisy public transport. There was no noticeable lag in audio and video when watching videos on popular OTT platforms.

CMF Headphone Pro - Call quality: 8/10

The call quality on these headphones is pretty good, especially indoors. Your voice is transmitted clearly to the person on the line, and the other person is perfectly audible too. In noisy areas, the noise suppression algorithm and the microphones array does reduce ambient noise significantly but the ENC algorithm also impacts the voice clarity a bit. It’s still clear enough to continue the conversation without straining your ear or switching to your phone’s earpiece.

CMF Headphone Pro - Battery life: (9/10)

The CMF Headphone Pro is mighty impressive in this department. The company claims a battery backup of a whopping 100 hours with ANC off and half of that with ANC switched on all the time when using AAC codec. The stated figures drop to 70 per cent if you use LDAC codec.

I carried out the entire testing using LDAC, and with sporadic use of ANC and Transparency, I managed to get over 50 hours out of the cans, which is still excellent. With about 3 hours of daily listening, you may only need to charge it twice a month at most; with AAC codec and very little ANC, maybe just once a month.

Mind you, if you use it extensively for calling, the numbers will be a lot lower. It takes about two hours to charge this headphone’s 720mAh battery fully with a standard USB-C charger. When it is almost out of juice and you are in a rush, a quick 5 minutes charge can give you close to 8 hours of audio playback without ANC with AAC codec and half of that with ANC. That should easily take you through any domestic flight in India before you find a charging point again. Long story short, the battery game is quite strong on the CMF Headphone Pro..

CMF Headphone Pro - Price and verdict

The CMF Headphone Pro is priced at Rs 6,999 in India with a one year warranty. The company states that it is the launch price and can go up by a thousand later. I think, staying under 7K gives the device an edge over the others, as it offers a wonderful balance of price and performance and also features. If they bump up the price, it may run into a higher level of competition like the Sony WH-CH720N, which is another excellent product but with superior ANC.

Not that it cannot take on the Sony pair in other departments, but at its current price point, there is hardly any competition and it can comfortably rule the segment. If you are cool with its youthful design, lack of wear detection and average ANC, the CMF Headphone Pro offers plenty of goodness for laidback listening. Courtesy of its lively and enjoyable sound output with a handful of sound tweaks, well thought out controls (especially the bass/treble slider) and excellent battery backup, this headphone easily earns our recommendations.