CMF Watch Pro Review | Trusted Reviews

Verdict

The CMF Watch Pro is a debut smartwatch that impresses both on the UI and design front and shows that Nothing has something with the Watch Pro. That said, it needs to deal with some bugs that do hold it back a little.

Introduction

The CMF Watch Pro is the first smartwatch from Nothing’s sub-brand that aims to show you that a budget smartwatch doesn’t have to feel budget.

That’s why the CMF Watch Pro gives you an AMOLED display and features like heart rate and blood oxygen tracking, built-in GPS and the ability to take calls over Bluetooth, all from something that costs well under £100/$100.

It’s not playing with the Apple Watches and Samsung Galaxy Watches of this world, but that’s not to say the Watch Pro will give those more established names something to think about.

Design and screen

• Three strap and case colour options
• 1.96-inch AMOLED touchscreen
• IP68 water resistant rating

The CMF Watch Pro is a lovely-looking smartwatch. Forget how much this thing costs because this square smartwatch has more character than pricier watches I’ve tested.

You’ve got a very big, almost 47mm sized case, that might not be universally loved by those with slimmer wrists, but I think the big case is carried off well here. 

It’s an aluminium alloy-built frame, which comes in dark grey, metallic grey or dark grey and definitely reminds of the now long discontinued Pebble Time. At just shy of 13mm thick, it’s not a slender watch either, but again, I feel like it handles that larger size well.

The removable, 22mm strap is high quality too, if not my favourite clasp setup. There’s a traditional watch buckle and a watch strap that tucks inside of itself to keep it secure. I found that on my skinner wrist that strap can tend to poke out, but thankfully you can remove it easily if you want to change it for something new.

That very minimalist design is broken up only by a single physical button that sits closely to the right side of the watch case and is used simply to wake the display up if you don’t have the screen set to always-on.

That screen is another design highlight here. It’s a really high quality, 1.96-inch, 410 x 502 resolution panel that has a maximum brightness of 600+ nits. It’s a lovely screen that has the kind of deep blacks, sharpness and accurate colours you’d want to find on an AMOLED panel. It’s also nicely responsive and there’s been no lag or stuttering to speak of when swiping and tapping on it. 

You can keep the screen set to always-on, which does invariably mean a drop in battery life. One of the first bugs I’ve spotted is that the raise to wake gesture support doesn’t work at all, which means having to turn the display on with the button instead.

One disappointing area is the level of waterproofing you get here. It’s got an IP68 water resistant rating, which means it can handle some splashes of water and handle some sweat, but it isn’t fit for showering or taking it for a swim.

Performance and software

• Works with Android and iOS
• Supports Bluetooth calling
• Access smartphone voice assistant

The CMF Watch Pro uses a proprietary operating system that is compatible with both Android phones and iPhones. I’ve been using it mainly with the latter and the experience on the software front has been great overall.

On the watch, the software is slick, it looks great and I honestly think the likes of Google and Samsung should be taking notes from a looks point view. Nothing has crafted a really beautiful user interface that’s a joy to navigate around and it just looks the part.

From the watch faces, to the way Nothing treats the notification support on the face of it, it looks great. The reality is that there’s still some work to be done. Elements of the notification support works well, but sometimes you can only see snippets of some notifications and more of other ones.

Outside of notifications and the nice array of watch faces, you’re getting the ability to make calls over Bluetooth, there’s nicely designed music playback controls, the ability to view weather forecasts and use the watch as a camera remote.

You can also use the onboard microphone and speaker to tap into your phone’s smart assistant to ask queries, which I found to be nicely responsive.

If you compare it to what other smartwatches around this price offer you in smartwatch features and an operating system the CMF Watch Pro certainly has a more appealing user interface, but I don’t think you have to deal with some of the quirks that clearly litter what lies beneath that polished interface.

Tracking and features

• Activity and sleep tracking
• Heart rate and blood oxygen tracking
• Built-in GPS

The CMF Watch Pro certainly doesn’t scrimp on fitness and sports tracking features. Unsurprisingly, you’re not going to find big health features like ECG or blood pressure monitoring, or even the on-trend dual band GPS support, but there’s plenty here to make it a useful fitness tracker and sports watch.

As a sports watch, there’s over 110 sports modes, and you’ll need to add your favourites from the CMF Watch app if they’re not already preloaded onto the watch. There’s some pretty basic modes attached to those profiles that let you optionally set a time, calorie goal, but it’s most surprising to see built-in GPS here. There’s support for the five main satellite systems, though I found picking up a GPS signal took painfully long on occasions. It was worse on my first few tests and did get better over time, but there were still times where it took a good while. 

GPS tracking in general seemed fine from an accuracy point of view. It was always a little out from a dedicated, albeit pricier running watch: a 10km run was clocked at 10.10km. Digging into the in-app GPS tracks after and they don’t really add up to what was tracked during the activity and seems to be another bug that Nothing needs to look at here.

There’s an optical heart rate sensor and blood oxygen saturation sensor included here too. You can capture heart rate and blood oxygen data continuously. I found that resting heart rate and real-time continuous heart rate data more useful than the exercise heart rate it captured, where it generally reported higher maximum heart rate readings compared to a dedicated chest strap monitor – even for pretty easy going workouts.

Real-time heart rate was typically within 3bpm of Garmin’s real-time readings and it was a similar story for daily resting heart rate data.

As a fitness tracker, you’ve got accelerometer-based step tracking, but no altimeter to measure floors climbed. You get an easy to read rings-style widget to keep track of progress. Daily step counts were within 200 steps of Garmin’s step tracking, which felt like a pretty good showing. What isn’t a good showing is that you can’t seem to look back at previous day’s step totals. 

When you take it to bed, you’ll be capturing a breakdown of your sleep stages including REM, seeing what time you fell asleep and woke up the next day and that’s your lot. You can see trends of the week, month and year to see how you’re faring with that sleep time over time. I’ve been using it with the Oura Ring Gen 3 and the Polar Vantage V3, and I found it had a tendency to track an hour extra of sleep and record later sleep times in comparison.

If you prefer a smartwatch with more mindful features, this is a watch that will track and score your stress to help you identify when you’re at your most stressful, with a series of breathing exercises using the haptic motor to nudge you when to inhale and exhale to get you back to a calmer state.

Battery life

• Up to 13 days battery life
• 11 days in heavy use 
• 27 hours continuous GPS use  

The CMF Watch Pro promises weeks as opposed to days of battery life, especially if you choose to forgo setting the screen to always-on and activating continuous heart rate, blood oxygen and stress tracking along with regular use of GPS.

Nothing claims you can enjoy up to 13 days in typical usage or 11 days in heavy usage. It can also go for 45 days in a power saving mode that pares back the features at your disposal. Nothing also quotes an impressive 27 hours GPS battery life and 18 hours of continuous Bluetooth call.

I’d say some of those numbers ring true. With the screen not set to always-on, I found the daily battery drop-off was on average 10%. That was with regular use of the GPS, continuous heart rate monitoring and notifications enabled. That works out to about 10 days. You switch that screen to always-on and the battery lasts about 4-5 days. I’m not convinced the GPS battery numbers add up as just over an hour of running saw the battery drop by 10%. That would work out to 10 hours of GPS battery life, some way short of that promised 27 hours.

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