I tested the $79 CMF Clip Pro, and my favorite feature is back

Open-earbuds have recently exploded in popularity, especially the clip-on variety, for their style and comfort. CMF is the latest brand, alongside heavy hitters like Sony and Sennheiser, to release its first clip-on earbuds this year, hoping to win over buyers with comparable performance at a lower price and a more fun design. For the most part, they succeed.

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

Like many clip-on earbuds, the CMF Clip Pro has a 3-point design: a little listening ball that sits in your ear canal, a counterweight that rests behind the ears with physical controls, and a flexible titanium wire connecting the two ends that wraps around the ears. I found them comfortable to wear for a few hours, and they stayed in place relatively well. It is a little hard to tell left from right when taking them in and out of the case, given the small markings, and making them interchangeable like the Huawei FreeClip 2 would have been easier. Although that would also mean the backside controls wouldn’t always be top-side.

I really like how the physical buttons for those controls have a textured matte surface; it makes them easy to find and press relative to the rest of the earbuds’ glossy surface. However, that glossy surface also meant that when I wore them at the gym or for a run outside, they got a little slippery with sweat and started to slide down the backside of my ears. This was a bit annoying because without ear tips, open earbuds don’t have a stable seal, and any shift in position will significantly alter the sound quality.

Speaking of sweat, the Clip Pro are IP54 rated, but that only goes for the earbuds, not the case, which you’ll want to keep dry. For me, the charging case is the most exciting part of these earbuds because it brings back CMF’s Smart Dial, which we haven’t seen since its debut on the CMF Buds Pro 2. However, it is nearly twice the size this time. The dial essentially lets the case serve as a remote control for your earbuds. Turn the racheted metal disc to adjust volume, click it to pause, double-click to skip tracks, and so on. It’s all very tactile and intuitive to use, and a little addictive to play with.

All the Smart Dial controls are disabled by default, and you have to assign them in the app, which is a little odd since motions like rotation only have a single functionality. Personally, I think enabling them by default would better facilitate user discovery for those who won’t bother with the mobile app. The Smart Dial is one of the most fun designs I’ve seen in personal audio, and I’m baffled CMF doesn’t slap it on every single pair of earbuds they ship, and when they do, disable it out of the box.

You will want to use the Nothing X app to get the most out of the Clip Pro. Aside from assigning controls, there’s a simple 3-band equalizer to adjust the earbuds’ tuning, along with a handful of presets. I found the electronic and rock presets worked well for their respective genres. Another useful feature I recommend, at least for Android users, is enabling the LDAC codec for Hi-Res wireless audio in the device settings.

I didn’t find the open-ear-specific features particularly useful. There are two levels of bass enhancement you can toggle to add more low-end emphasis. Bass is something open-earbuds inherently lack, and many brands try to compensate for that with features like this, but instead of restoring bass impact, all they really do to my ears is introduce more audible distortion. The other feature I would largely ignore is the anti-leakage mode. In a similar vein of trying to overcome design limitations, this setting aims to make your music more private, but at the cost of impacting sound quality. Everything I listened to with this on sounded very muffled.

The Clip Pro supports Bluetooth 5.4 and can connect to two devices at once; I didn’t run into any connection issues switching between phone and laptop in my testing. I did experience the occasional dropouts in transit, nothing more than a 1-second-or-so delay in playback or in controls registering. I also found that the low-latency mode slightly reduced lag while watching videos, but didn’t make a massive perceptible difference.

As for battery life, the CMF Clip Pro lasted 9 hours in our testing with LDAC on, which is close to the brand’s claimed 10 hours. With the case, you should get around 32.5 hours of playback, and up to 36 hours if you enable long-battery mode in the device settings. The trade-off is that you won’t be able to use bass enhancement, spatial audio, or EQ. A 10-minute quick charge in the case gives you 4 hours of playback in a pinch. The case only charges over USB-C — there’s no wireless charging, which is to be expected for budget earbuds.

How do the CMF Clip Pro sound?

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.

The CMF Clip Pro sounds bright, spacious, and light on bass, which is typical of most open earbuds.

Can you use the CMF Clip Pro for phone calls?

The CMF Clip Pro carries two microphones on each earbud plus a dedicated chip that separates your voice from everything else before sending it down the line. It’s the same class of approach as the better call systems I’ve tested, and in ideal conditions, the mic sounds really good.

Listen for yourself in our sample recordings below:

CMF Clip Pro microphone demo (Ideal conditions):

Should you buy the CMF Clip Pro?

If you want a pair of open earbuds you’ll enjoy using as much as you enjoy listening to them, the CMF Clip Pro isn’t a bad buy. The physical controls are easy to use, and the Smart Dial is a quick way to avoid pulling out your phone and navigating an app. For just $79, I can’t complain too much; they are a great value option for those who want to add a pair of clip-on earbuds to their personal audio toolkit. Just don’t expect them to do everything and serve every use case.

If you are looking for a more traditional earbud experience with better sound quality and noise cancelation, and with a transparency mode to let the world in when you want to, there are better options available, including from CMF itself, such as the CMF Buds 2 Plus for $59 at Amazon.

If you are dead set on clip-on earbuds, the EarFun Clip 2 is a strong budget alternative for $79.99 at EarFun. It offers longer battery life, an improved IP55 rating, and even wireless charging. If you can spend more, the Sony LinkBuds Clip ($229.99 at Amazon) offers better sound quality and is more comfortable and secure.