CMF Buds Neo Review: CMF has taken the familiar budget-earbud formula and added just enough Nothing-style weirdness to make it interesting. There was a time when buying wireless earbuds under Rs 2,000 meant choosing between sounds decent and doesn't fall apart. ANC was a luxury, multipoint connectivity was something you read about in premium reviews, and a 50-hour battery claim would have sounded like science fiction. Now? You can get all of that for Rs 1,999.
The CMF Buds Neo are the brand's most accessible earbuds yet, and the spec sheet is almost comically ambitious for the price. You get a 12.4mm dynamic driver, up to 35dB adaptive ANC, spatial audio, custom EQs, dual-device connectivity, Bluetooth 6.0 and up to 52 hours of playback.
ABP Live's excitable AI review bot, GennieGPT, has already declared these the AirPods Pro's spiritual successor. Let's see how many points she gets right this time.
What Works:
What Doesn't:
✨ GennieGPT: Square case! Giant circular dial! Two-tone colours! This is not an earbud case. This is a FASHION STATEMENT!
Shayak: Calm down, Gennie. Nobody is calling the fashion police. But yes, the design is one of the Buds Neo's strongest arguments. CMF has gone with a square-ish case, contrasting colours and that circular dial-like element that immediately makes it look different from the endless parade of AirPods clones.
The case also gets a lanyard hole, because apparently Nothing has decided we should be carrying our earbuds around like a tiny designer handbag.
The good news is that the design isn't just different for the sake of being different. It feels deliberate, compact and recognisably CMF. At Rs 1,999, that's a nice trick.
✨ GennieGPT: Three colours! Black, White and Dark Blue! So many choices! Everyone can express their personality!
Shayak: Yes, the colour combinations work. The white version with its orange accent in particular has more personality than most budget earbuds manage in their entire existence. And that matters because the biggest problem with cheap tech isn't always the technology. Sometimes it simply looks cheap.
The Buds Neo don't.
✨ GennieGPT: 12.4mm dynamic driver! Titanium-coated PET dome! PEEK plus PU surround! This must sound like a concert hall inside your ears!
Shayak: The last sentence is nonsense, but the first three are technically correct. The Buds Neo use a 12.4mm dynamic driver, with CMF claiming deeper bass and enough air movement for a fuller sound. The titanium-coated PET dome is designed to keep vocals and detail clear, while the flexible surround allows the driver more movement.
In actual use, the important bit is much simpler: these are fun-sounding earbuds. The low end has enough punch to make pop, Bollywood, hip-hop, and electronic tracks enjoyable without turning everything into a bass soup.
And if you're the kind of person who believes that bass is a personality trait, CMF has you covered.
The Nothing X app gives you Bass Enhancement with three levels: Off, Level 1, and Level 2. There are also six EQ presets, including Pop, Rock, Electronic, Classical and Enhance Vocals, alongside a custom EQ option. That's a surprisingly serious amount of control for something costing Rs 1,999.
✨ GennieGPT: Six EQ presets! Custom EQ! Bass Enhancement! Audiophile heaven!
Shayak: Let's not start throwing the word “audiophile” around. Somewhere, a person with a Rs 3 lakh headphone amplifier just felt a disturbance in the Force.
The sound is good for the price. That's the important bit. You don't buy these expecting the separation, refinement or detail retrieval of premium earbuds. You buy them because they make everyday listening enjoyable without making your bank account cry. And that's exactly what they do.
✨ GennieGPT: Up to 35dB Active Noise Cancellation! Adaptive ANC! Three levels! Silence has arrived!
Shayak: Silence has not arrived. But the noise has definitely been told to keep it down. The Buds Neo offer up to 35dB of ANC, with three levels plus an Adaptive mode that adjusts according to your surroundings. And this is probably the feature that looks most ridiculous on paper.
A Rs 1,999 pair of earbuds offering ANC that was once reserved for considerably more expensive models? That's progress. But remember: 35dB is a maximum claimed noise-cancellation figure, not a guarantee that every sound around you disappears.
Low-frequency background noise, air conditioners, fans, and general city rumble, is where ANC tends to make the biggest difference. Voices, sudden sounds and chaotic environments are harder to erase. I always test earbuds or headphones by taking a ride on a Delhi autorickshaw. Only super-impressive ANC capabilities pass the test. The Buds Neo, surprisingly, reduced some noise, but failed to clean my voice enough during calls. I didn't expect it to, either. However, if you are using the Buds Neo to listen to tunes in an auto, you are pretty well sorted.
So no, the Buds Neo won't transport you into a soundproof bunker. They'll simply make your commute considerably less annoying. That's good enough.
✨ GennieGPT: Static spatial audio! Sound from the front, back and sides! It's like having a cinema inside your head!
Shayak: CMF says its static spatial audio creates a broader sound field, particularly for movies and concert recordings. And yes, it can make certain content feel wider and more immersive.
But this isn't some magical replacement for a surround-sound system. Static spatial audio is exactly that... static. There's no fancy head tracking here. Still, at this price, it's a nice extra rather than a gimmick I'd completely ignore.
✨ GennieGPT: 52 HOURS! Fifty-two! You could listen to music from Monday morning until Wednesday morning!
Shayak: Technically, yes. Assuming you don't sleep, work, speak to anyone or experience the concept of silence. The Buds Neo claim up to 52 hours of total playback with ANC turned off. The earbuds themselves are rated for up to 11 hours, dropping to 8 hours with ANC enabled. Total playback with ANC on is rated at 30 hours.
That's excellent endurance for this segment. Even better, a 10-minute charge can apparently give you up to 5.5 hours of playback with ANC off. That's the kind of fast charging that actually matters.
Forgot to charge your earbuds before leaving for work? Ten minutes while you're showering, making breakfast or contemplating your questionable life choices can get you through a substantial chunk of the day. Full charging takes around 70 minutes over USB-C.
There is, however, one classic budget-tech compromise. There is no charging cable in the box. But then again, I'm pretty sure we have enough Type-C cables in our homes to more than make up for the absence.
✨ GennieGPT: Nothing X app! Gaming mode! Dual-device connection! Custom controls! This is basically a smartphone for your ears!
Shayak: The Nothing X app is one of the better parts of the Buds Neo experience. You can customise controls, switch ANC modes, adjust EQ, enable low-latency gaming mode and use dual-device connectivity. The controls themselves are fairly flexible too.
Double tap can be assigned to functions such as skipping tracks or rejecting calls, triple tap handles previous track, while holding can be assigned to noise cancellation or transparency. Volume controls can also be configured. That's significantly more useful than an app that exists solely to show you a battery percentage.
And yes, dual-device connectivity is here. If you bounce between your laptop and phone throughout the day, this is one of those features you don't appreciate until you have it. Then you wonder how you ever lived without it.
✨ GennieGPT: 120ms low latency! Gaming mode! Perfect for gaming! Time to become an esports champion!
Shayak: The CMF Buds Neo have a 120ms low-latency mode that needs to be manually activated through Nothing X. That's perfectly usable for casual gaming.
But competitive gamers should manage their expectations. 120ms is nowhere near what you'd want if you're playing competitively and need every possible millisecond of advantage. For BGMI, casual Call of Duty sessions or whatever game you're currently pretending you'll play “for just 20 minutes”, they're fine.
For esports? Buy something built for that. Listen, you cannot expect to achieve Ronaldo-level pace if you don't wear Nike Mercurials, or at least something with a similar ethos. You cannot pull off a siuuuuu quite that well if all you are wearing are Puma Softrides.
✨ GennieGPT: Four microphones! Clear Voice Technology! Bluetooth 6.0! Google Fast Pair! Microsoft Swift Pair! The future!
Shayak: There are four microphones in total (two per earbud) with CMF's Clear Voice Technology designed to keep voices clear during calls, including outdoors and while moving. Bluetooth 6.0 is also supported, along with Google Fast Pair, Microsoft Swift Pair and dual-device connectivity.
The important thing here isn't the number “6.0” slapped onto the Bluetooth spec. It's that connectivity is modern, pairing is straightforward and switching between devices is actually useful. The Buds Neo support AAC and SBC codecs, which is perfectly normal at this price.
No fancy audiophile codec parade here. And frankly, I'm not losing sleep over it.
✨ GennieGPT: IP54 protection! Rain! Dust! Adventure! These earbuds are basically indestructible!
Shayak: And there it is. The moment where I have to confiscate your marketing brochure. The earbuds have an IP54 rating, while the charging case is only IPX2. That's good enough for sweat, dust and getting caught in a bit of rain.
It is not an invitation to take them into a swimming pool.
The CMF Buds Neo get the most important things right: they sound enjoyable, offer genuinely useful ANC, last long enough to make battery anxiety almost irrelevant, and retain the distinctive CMF design language.
They are not audiophile-grade, their 120ms latency will disappoint serious gamers, and the 35dB ANC claim needs to be viewed in the context of their price rather than compared with premium flagships.
But that is precisely why these earbuds work.
At Rs 1,999, the Buds Neo don't pretend to replace a Rs 10,000 pair of TWS earbuds; they simply make spending more feel increasingly difficult to justify. For anyone looking for an affordable everyday pair with a strong feature set and very few meaningful compromises, the Buds Neo are an easy recommendation.
A lot of friends are now looking to switch to budget earbuds. They simply don't want to spend a bomb on something that they might lose during a particurlarly busy commute or mess up after a rather sweaty running session. All they want is great sound and comfort. CMF Buds Neo is offering all that, with added bonuses such as ANC and exceptionally great app support. For me, these earbuds are quite simply the king of budget earbuds as of now.
Should You Buy CMF Buds Neo?
