CMF Headphone Pro review: A solid B-side

CMF has built its reputation on budget earbuds that punch above their weight class, but the Headphone Pro marks the brand’s first venture into over-ear territory. At $99, these headphones pack specs that seem almost too good to be true: LDAC support, adaptive ANC up to 40dB, a claimed 100-hour battery life (with ANC off), and CMF’s signature modular design with swappable ear cushions. After spending some time with the Headphone Pro, I can tell you whether CMF’s value-focused approach translates to full-sized headphones—or if the brand is stretching itself too thin.

What’s it like to use the CMF Headphone Pro?

The CMF Headphone Pro looks very Bubblegum pop. Aesthetically, they lean heavily into CMF’s playful, colorful design language with its swappable ear cushions and bold colorways. While the modular approach is clever in theory—letting you swap cushions for different colors (and potentially different materials in the future)—the overall look and feel skews more toy-like than premium. It’s also possible to accidentally screw the right ear pad onto the left side, and vice versa, if you aren’t careful, or screw them on upside down. Of course, if you do so, you won’t get a good seal, and a keyed attachment system could have avoided that. The earcups themselves are large and create a good seal around my ears, but the stiff headband lacks adequate padding, at least for my head, leading to discomfort after just a couple of hours of wear.

The build quality didn’t inspire much confidence when I first picked them up. The all-plastic construction is lightweight but feels cheap and hollow, with enough flex and creak to make me wonder how long they’ll last. Though, to be fair, they’ll probably survive being tossed in a bag. The headphones rotate flat for storage and come with a basic cloth travel pouch, but they don’t fold up, making them bulkier to pack than competitors at this price point. The included analog cable and instructions round out a minimal accessories package.

The controls are where things got frustrating. Despite the headphones’ bulky size, all the buttons and sliders are surprisingly small and clustered together on the knobs of each earcup. The multi-function roller—which you can scroll to adjust volume or press in to control ANC modes—is easy to locate by touch. However, the power and smart assistant buttons, as well as the Energy Slider, all felt too small for my fingers to find. The Energy Slider itself is a smooth, clickless switch that adjusts bass emphasis by default but can be switched to adjust treble within the app. People who enjoy a lot of bass might like to crank it up, but I found it to be a bit of a gimmick that didn’t improve the sound quality (more on that later).

The smart assistant button can be reassigned to different functions in the Nothing X app, which adds some flexibility, but the cramped control layout makes accidental presses common and intentional ones harder than they should be.

With an IPX2 rating, the Headphone Pro offers only minimal protection against dripping water, such as sweat—enough for light indoor use, but not something you’d want to rely on for workouts or rainy commutes. Based on the build quality, comfort limitations, and design choices, these headphones appear to be aimed at individuals who prioritize style and standing out with their colorful, eye-catching design over long-term comfort and durability. Fashion over function, essentially.

What are the best features of the CMF Headphone Pro?

The Nothing X app offers the basics—battery status, firmware updates, and ANC mode controls—but it’s missing the parametric EQ that made the Nothing X app that accompanied the Headphone (1) actually worth opening. Instead, you get a basic 3-band equalizer that feels like a step backward for the brand. There would have been significantly more value here with the full 10-band custom equalizer.

The personal sound profiling, powered by Audiodo technology, is a welcome asset to tune the headphones to your ears, as everyone’s hearing is unique. I found it worked well for me, as my right ear has a harder time hearing certain frequencies than the left. It only takes 3 minutes to set up and is worth doing, given that the custom EQ is limited.. The app walks you through a series of tones played in each ear, and you report what you can hear to create a custom sound profile tailored to your hearing. The profile is stored directly on the headphones, so you don’t need to keep the app open.

The Energy Slider can be remapped in the app to adjust either bass or treble emphasis, which adds some flexibility if you’re someone who likes to tweak sound on the fly. In practice, though, it feels more like a gimmick than a genuinely useful feature—cranking the bass doesn’t improve the sound quality, it just makes it bassier (more on that in the sound quality section).

The app also features spatial audio modes, including Concert mode for music and Cinema mode for movies. I found the concert mode did increase the sense of spatial width, but not depth. It also added more airiness and vocal presence, making the listening experience feel more immersive; however, some of the increased treble strength became fatiguing quickly. For cinema mode, I found it narrowed the width and extended the spatial depth, particularly for vocals, and added a lot of reverberance. Some sound sources were harder to distinguish and didn’t prefer the overall boomy character to the default sound profile for watching films.

How does the CMF Headphone Pro connect?

The CMF Headphone Pro uses Bluetooth 5.4 and supports AAC, SBC, and LDAC, enabling Hi-Res audio wirelessly at up to 24-bit/96kHz. Not everyone will hear the improvement over AAC, but for those who do, and have a compatible device, it’s a meaningful feature at this price point.

Pairing was quick and painless on my Android phone, thanks to Google Fast Pair, and there is also Microsoft Swift Pair support. The headphones support Bluetooth Multipoint, allowing you to connect to two devices simultaneously, and switching between devices works smoothly without feeling clunky.

The USB-C port on the headphones is for charging only—it doesn’t support USB audio. That’s okay, however, as there is a 3.5mm audio jack for wired listening, allowing you to listen to audio with zero latency and no battery drain.

How long do the CMF Headphone Pro’s battery last?

In our standardized testing, the CMF Headphone Pro lasted 43 hours and 9 minutes with ANC on—falling slightly short of CMF’s claimed 50 hours, but still impressive for budget headphones at this price. To put that in perspective, that’s enough for nearly two full work weeks of daily two-hour commutes, or multiple cross-country flights before needing to reach for a cable.

Quick charging works as advertised—a 5-minute charge delivers enough juice for several hours of listening, which is handy when you’re in a rush. A full charge takes around two hours via USB-C.

How well do the CMF Headphone Pro cancel noise?

The CMF Headphone Pro’s active noise cancelation performs surprisingly well for budget headphones, attenuating an average of about 81% of outside noise with ANC enabled.

Looking at our measurements, the ANC makes the biggest difference in the lower frequencies—reaching around 30dB of attenuation in the sub-bass and bass range, where you’d encounter rumbling plane engines or bus noise. In the higher frequencies, the headphones meet (and sometimes exceed) CMF’s claimed 40dB of noise reduction, effectively handling the hiss of air conditioning or distant traffic.

The headphones offer three ANC modes, but I found it best to set ANC to high in the Nothing X app and leave it there. The adaptive switching between modes doesn’t work particularly well in practice, and manual control gives you more consistent results.

How do the CMF Headphone Pro sound?

The CMF Headphone Pro sound pretty good for $99 headphones, especially if you like bass, though they could use more clarity in the highs.

Multi-Dimensional Audio Quality Scores (MDAQS)

The chart below shows how the Multi-Dimensional Audio Quality Score (MDAQS) algorithm from HEAD acoustics assesses the sound of the CMF Headphone Pro. The sound quality is rated on a scale from 1.0 (very bad) to 5.0 (very good).

Reviewer’s notes

Editor’s note: this review uses a hover-enabled glossary to describe sound quality based on a consensus vocabulary. You can read about it here.

Objective Measurements

The chart above compares the measured frequency response of the CMF Headphone Pro with the bass slider set to maximum and set to minimum. As you can see, when set to maximum, there is about 8 dB more emphasis added to the low-end. That is far too much bass for my liking, and for what our house curve suggests most people will enjoy, as it can result in tracks sounding boomy with prominent reverberance.

Aside from that, there are some minor deviations, but nothing too dramatic until the roll-off after 8kHz. However, this is fairly common in budget headphones, where the driver quality and tuning often struggle to maintain extension into the highest frequencies.

Can you use the CMF Headphone Pro for phone calls?

Yes, the microphone on the CMF Headphone Pro is suitable for casual phone calls in environments with minimal background noise. Noise rejection is fairly good, despite some pops and crackles, and while voices don’t sound natural, they remain intelligible and clear. Listen to our sample recordings below and let us know what you think in our poll.

CMF Headphone Pro microphone demo (Ideal conditions):

Should you buy the CMF Headphone Pro?

The CMF Headphone Pro delivers some valuable features for the price: 43+ hours of battery life with ANC on, solid noise cancelation, and LDAC support for Hi-Res audio. The sound quality is also decent, avoiding the excessive bass emphasis common in budget headphones and offering good detail separation and spatial width. However, I can’t help but miss the full parametric EQ in the Nothing X app and think of the potential benefits that could have brought to the sound quality here. The unique bass slider is more of a gimmick than a useful EQ tool and really just adds boominess and distortion.

Some people will appreciate the standout, colorful look of these headphones, as well as the ability to mix and match earpads. Although I do think $25 per pair is steep, and I hope to see more varied materials in the future, as the cheap, creaky plastic build and uncomfortable headband can make extended listening difficult. In the end, I think the “Pro” branding is misleading—these feel like they should have been the standard CMF Headphone for ~$20 less, not a Pro offering at $99. I don’t want to imagine what a standard, further stripped-down version of these headphones would be. Regardless, the CMF Headphone Pro is a good value proposition for casual listeners.

What should you get instead of the CMF Headphone Pro?

The obvious alternative in the same family is the Nothing Headphone (1), which honestly should have been called the “Headphone Pro,” given how much more premium it is in execution. For $200 more, you get substantially better build quality with metal parts that feel solid, superior comfort for extended listening sessions, and an IP52 water resistance rating that actually makes them viable for workouts. Most importantly, the Nothing Headphone (1) includes the full 8-band parametric EQ, which is essential for getting the sound dialed in exactly as you like. The battery life is comparable (43 hours with ANC), the ANC performance is equally strong, and you get the same LDAC support. If you can stretch your budget to $299, the Nothing Headphone (1) delivers a more premium experience that justifies the price difference. The CMF Headphone Pro feels like it should have been the standard “CMF Headphone” at $70, not a $99 offering positioned against Nothing’s far superior first attempt at over-ears.

CMF Headphone Pro review: FAQs