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- Good AMOLED screen
- Distinctive design
- Clean, uncluttered UI
- Terrible mono speaker
- No camera OIS
- Back cover no longer replaceable
After making a big impression with its first affordable phone, the CMF Phone 1, British smartphone maker Nothing has returned with the CMF Phone 2 Pro.
Don’t let the ‘Pro’ branding fool you – this is still very much a budget phone and a direct follow-up to the CMF Phone 1. It’s the CMF Phone 2, for all intents and purposes, and I’m not entirely convinced that Nothing’s new sub-£250 phone earns its ‘Pro’ moniker.
That is one of very few misgivings, however, as this proves to be a brilliant budget option that manages to stand out from the crowd with its quirky personality.
CMF Phone 2 Pro review: What you need to know
While it would be a stretch to call the CMF Phone 2 Pro’s design ‘modular’, it certainly facilitates a couple of neat bolt-on accessories. From a magnetised cover and optional clip-on camera lenses to a lanyard and a magnetised wallet-cum-stand, it’s possible to personalise the phone through hardware.
Another fresh design inclusion is the Essential Key, which carries over from the recently launched Nothing Phone (3a) range. Pressing this captures and organises whatever’s on screen using AI.
There’s a big, bright and responsive 6.77in AMOLED display around front with a 120Hz refresh rate. That’s powered along by an efficient Mediatek Dimensity 7300 Pro processor and a nicely sized 5000mAh battery. You also get 33W wired charging support, though you’ll need to supply a power brick yourself.
Nothing has managed to squeeze in a full triple camera set-up, with a 50-megapixel main sensor backed up by an 8-megapixel ultra-wide and a dedicated 50-megapixel 2x telephoto. The latter is relatively unheard of at this price.
CMF Phone 2 Pro review: Price and competition
Nothing has technically increased the price of the CMF Phone 2 Pro, but only by £10. That’s not at all unreasonable given the ‘Pro’ additions, not to mention the fact that everything seems to be getting more expensive. The model with 128GB of storage starts you off from £219, while doubling up to 256GB will cost you £249.
That pitches it against the Poco X7 and the Honor 400 Lite, which both start from £249. It undercuts the Samsung Galaxy A26 and Redmi Note 14 Pro 5G, both of which come with a £299 RRP, as well as the £270 Moto G75 5G.
Design and key features
Nothing has only slightly evolved the design language of the CMF Phone 1, which isn’t a criticism. Last year’s phone looked like no other budget phone, and the CMF Phone 2 Pro follows suit.
Other than a remodelled camera module with separate lens mounts, the back of the phone has the same ‘fun industrial’ look (my phrase, not Nothing’s), with highly visible screws dotted around the plastic back cover.
You can now bolt on an optional cover containing camera lens mounts and a magnetic accessory attachment system. Further, that large circular motif in the bottom right-hand corner is more than just a visual flourish, serving as a screw for attaching a lanyard, which is also available separately. Sadly, I wasn’t sent any of these additional accessories for review.
It’s a shame we were sent the black model too, as it’s undoubtedly the least interesting of the four finishes. From the press materials, I’m particularly taken by the two-tone orange variant, but you can also specify it in light green and two-tone white.
Perhaps the best thing Nothing has done with the design is to ensure that the bezels around the display are more or less uniform in size. Nothing screams ‘cheap phone’ like a fat chin or noticeably skinnier side bezels.
There are a couple of additional features here that lift the CMF Phone 2 Pro above its predecessor. The first is IP54 certification, which makes it more resistant to water than the IP52-rated original. The next is the welcome inclusion of NFC, making mobile payments possible where they were absent from the CMF Phone 1.
The final addition is the Essential Key, a new hardware button situated underneath the power button. Just like the Nothing Phone (3a), this lets you take screen grabs which are then sent to the AI-enhanced Essential Space app for categorisation.
Hold the Essential Key and you can record a voice note to accompany the screenshot, which will then be transcribed. If you’re a habitual note-taker, screenshotter, or voice note recorder, this could be the memory aid tool to rule them all.
It’s all part of Nothing’s incredibly slick and appealing Nothing OS 3.2, which sits on Android 15. You can choose the company’s distinctive monochrome widgets and icons at set-up, though the default (and my choice) was a look that falls closer to stock Android. It’s a responsive and blissfully bloat-free UI whichever you choose.
Three years of OS upgrade and six of security updates is nothing spectacular, but is perfectly decent within the budget weight class.
Display
From the specs alone, the CMF Phone 2 Pro seems to have the same 6.77in FHD+ 120Hz AMOLED display as the Nothing Phone (3a) and the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro – £329 and £449 phones respectively.
There’s even the same impressive stated 3000 nits peak brightness in HDR playback, or 1300 nits in sunny conditions. With autobrightness off, I measured a brightness of 745.2cd/m2, which is broadly in line with Nothing’s claims.
It isn’t quite as colour-accurate as Nothing’s mid-range pair, however, with an average Delta E colour variance of 2.01 using the more natural Standard colour mode. That’s less than optimal, with 1 being the ideal figure, which both of those Nothing phones manage to dip below. It’s far from terrible, however, especially for a cheaper phone.
I also recorded an sRGB gamut coverage of 96.7% with the exact same volume.
Audio playback is a notable weakness here. Nothing has supplied a single bottom-firing speaker, and it’s a horribly tinny one at that. True, some concessions were needed for the lower price tag, but Xiaomi managed to fit the Poco X7 with a serviceable set of stereo speakers for this kind of money.
Performance and battery life
Nothing has fitted the CMF Phone 2 Pro out with a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro SoC, which isn’t a huge advance on the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 of the CMF Phone 1.
You could argue that this justifies the phone being called a ‘Pro’. On a pure performance footing, however, it brings a mere 10% boost to CPU and 5% to the GPU.
It seems to be a similar variant to the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Ultra used in the Poco X7, and it produces very similar Geekbench 6 benchmark results. Just like that rival phone, I was unable to put the CMF Phone 2 Pro’s GPU through its paces prior to launch.
Not that I have any worries in that respect. It’s capable of running Genshin: Impact at playable frame rates, provided you run the graphics at Low to Medium settings. That’s about all you can ask of a sub-£250 phone.
In day to day use, it’s a perfectly fluid runner, aided by a solid 8GB of RAM and Nothing’s fluid UI.
Battery life is excellent, too. Nothing has laid on a fairly standard 5000mAh battery, which in my experience is sufficient to last a full day of light-to-moderate usage (around 3 hours screen on time) with around 60% left over.
In our usual looping video test, the CMF Phone 2 Pro lasted an impressive 27hrs 12mins. That’s about 2hrs 30mins longer than the Poco X7, and up there with the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro. It’s an excellent result for such a cheap phone and should easily see you through a couple days of average use.
Charging speeds aren’t anything to write home about. Nothing supports 33W out of the box, though you’ll need to supply your own charging brick. Using a 65W Samsung charger, I was able to get the phone from empty to 56% in 30 minutes, while a full charge took 67 minutes.
Despite the optional magnetic back cover, there is no wireless charging here.
CMF Phone 2 Pro review: Cameras
Presumably, Nothing added the ‘Pro’ to the name of its second budget phone for this reason: it has a dedicated telephoto camera. This isn’t something we’re accustomed to seeing in a £229 handset.
Even so, this isn’t a Pro camera system as I’ve come to understand the term – that being a top-of-the-range flagship phone with a top-grade camera set-up.
The main 50-megapixel sensor lacks OIS, for one thing, which is a fundamental spec for securing decent low light shots. With that being taken into account, I was quietly impressed that the CMF Phone 2 Pro was able to get any kind of result with the Night mode. They’re perfectly passable, likely thanks to a relatively large 1/1.57in sensor size that scoops up 64% more light than the CMF Phone 1.
The same can be said for shots in regular daylight. They can exhibit some signs of overexposure, and there’s a slightly unnatural, heavily processed look to them, but they’re reasonably sharp and bright, with punchy colours and decent HDR. Close-up shots, meanwhile, render a crisp subject and natural background bokeh.
That new 50-megapixel telephoto sensor can’t hope to match the main sensor, of course, but it captures solid 2x shots. It’s possible to zoom beyond that up to 20x, but these hybrid zoom shots rapidly exhibit high levels of grain and noise.
As is usually the case, the ultra-wide is the weak point here. At 8-megapixels and with the smallest sensor size of the three, shots lack detail, blow out highlights, and pump up colours with an even more artificial look. Even so, they broadly emulate the punched-up tone of the other cameras, which isn’t always the case in cheaper phones.
The 16-megapixel selfie camera struggles to expose evenly in challenging lighting conditions, but renders reasonably natural skin tones.
Video capture extends to 4K/30fps, which looks quite clean – provided you remain stationary and hold the phone still to compensate for the lack of OIS.
CMF Phone 2 Pro review: Verdict
Ignore the misleading name – the CMF Phone 2 Pro is no pro-level phone. It’s arguably something far more exciting.
This is a very affordable handset with a smart and distinctive design, a good display, excellent stamina, solid performance, and some of the cleanest and slickest software you can find for less than £250.
You also get a solid camera set-up that even includes a dedicated telephoto camera. It’s one of several rarities at this end of the market, which all add up to make this arguably the best budget phone on the market right now.
