Abstract: Carbon nanotubes(CNTs), due to their extremely high mechanical performance, excellent electrical and thermal properties, have been regarded as ideally reinforcement phase of composites. CNTs reinforced metal matrix composites have become a very important research area. However, due to the issues of the compatibility between CNTs and metal matrix, the difficulty to control dispersion of reinforcement in spatial and the high ampacity but relatively low conductivity of CNTs, the electrical properties of CNTs reinforced metal matrix composites do not show significantly enhancement and the electrical and mechanical properties are difficult to be balanced, the overall research is still in infancy. We discuss the research status of CNTs reinforced metal matrix composites from the aspects of pretreatment, processing method and mechanism of electrical conduction, as well as the outlook for the future development trend in this area.