CMF Watch Pro Review: Big, Beautiful, Budget-friendly… and feature and update-rich!

Ever since it came out with its first product, the Ear (1), in 2021, Nothing has been one of the few tech brands that has fought consistently on design. It might have repeated its own design formats, but by and large, it has steered clear of market convention, whether it is by having products with transparent elements, chargers and TWS that are bright orange, or phones with LED-covered backs.

And while it may have stepped into a more budget-friendly segment with a new sub-brand, CMF, the brand has not changed its approach. The CMF Watch Pro is the first wearable to come from the Nothing stable, and like its TWS and charger siblings, it tries to deliver great design and good performance at an affordable price. And it succeeds. To an extent.

CMF Watch Pro: Watch out for good design

Watches with big displays generally tend to be bulky and chunky. The CMF Watch Pro, however, bucks this trend. It comes with a big display but does not look like something that has never been inside a gadget gym! It is big but has a design that is clean and minimalist, giving it a quietly elegant look. It is square-shaped and comes with a metallic frame and a silicon strap. The star of the show is a large, bright, 1.96-inch AMOLED display, one of the biggest in the segment. At 600 nits of maximum brightness, it is easily visible in bright sunlight. Nothing has thrown in some very quirky, minimalistic watch faces – both for the main watch face and for the always-on-display (AOD) – to give it a very unique look and blend in with the minimalistic design of the watch. It has been a while since we have seen a smartwatch that can be distinguished by its watch face!

The frame of the Watch Pro comes with a single circular button on one of the slightly longer sides. Next to this is a speaker grille, while the back of the watch has a set of four light sensors and two charging pins. This is a watch with a very clean, uncrowded watch in terms of design, although, at 12.9 mm, it is thicker.

We got the Metallic Grey variant of the watch with a 22 mm grey soft silicon strap, which comes in two pieces, one to be attached via a spring pin to each side of the watch and a metal buckle. It is one of those straps where one part has to be tucked under the other after buckling it instead of being placed over it. This can be a little inconvenient as one strap rubs the skin when being placed under the other, but if you do not take your watch off and put it on frequently, it should not be too much of an issue.

At close to about 50 grams in weight with the strap, the CMF Watch Pro does not feel heavy, which is surprising given its size. It comes with IP68 dust and water resistance, which means that it can even be used while swimming. All in all, we think this is one of the most classily designed ‘large’ watches we have seen, not just in the sub-Rs 5,000 segment, but also at twice the price, and it proves that watches can have big displays without looking bulky or being heavy.

CMF Watch Pro: Impressive specs, easy to set up and use

Inside that thick-ish but well-designed frame comes some very good hardware. You get GPS connectivity as well as heart rate and blood oxygen sensors. That 1.96-inch AMOLED display has a 410 x 502 sensor with a pixel density of 332 ppi. And also on board are a microphone and a speaker, enabling you to receive and make calls from your wrist. This is a pretty well-stacked watch for even twice its price.

Setting up and using it is simple. You will need to download the CMF Watch app, which is available for both iOS and Android and follow a very simple pairing process. You will have to get a Nothing account to be able to use the watch – pretty much standard for most wearables these days. The app is very cleanly designed. It has none of the crazy graphics or color overload that some apps have and sticks to Nothing’s clean, minimalistic ethos. Both the app and watch come with the minimalistic, whimsical, and slightly retro looks that mark the Nothing Phone (2). We love how Nothing is trying to maintain its design and UI aesthetic across devices.

Using the watch is easy. You swipe down from the top to get the quick settings and swipe up to get notifications. Swiping left or right cycles through different widgets – activity, heart rate, weather, sleep, and phone calls. Pressing the circular button shows you the different apps on the watch, and long pressing on the homescreen lets you change the watchface. It all works very smoothly, although we could not find any way to customize the quick menu or the widgets.

CMF Watch Pro performance: A feature-rich, occasionally buggy, and often updated pro performer

When it comes to features, the CMF Watch Pro is pretty much loaded. It tracks heart rate, blood oxygen, stress levels, sleep, steps, workouts, and sports and sends out alerts for high and low heart rates and low blood oxygen. It also gives standing and water drinking alerts and can walk you through breathing exercises. We were very surprised by the absence of women’s cycle tracking, though.

Just remember to spend some time switching on the features you need, as many are turned off by default. While you cannot uninstall any apps on the watch, you get a number of ‘smart’ features on it, such as getting notifications from your device on the watch, controlling music on the phone from the watch, controlling the phone camera from the watch and of course, the CMF Watch Pro comes with support for making and receiving calls. This is a feature set that is very impressive for a watch at this price point.

For the most part, the CMF Watch Pro turns in a very good performance. The big display is great for viewing information and is very visible even in bright daylight. The battery comfortably lasts 7-10 days even if you have turned on constant blood oxygen, heart rate, stress, and sleep monitoring.

In terms of measuring heart rate, blood oxygen, and sleep and tracking steps and workouts, the CMF Watch Pro is impressively accurate. We liked the clean presentation of information on the watch as well as on the companion app. Some of the conclusions were sometimes a little odd, though, such as indicating that less than four hours of overnight sleep was ‘OK.’ But once again, the performance in terms of health and fitness tracking is very impressive. The UI is smooth, and the minimalist UI looks wonderful on it.

It is in the smartness department that the Watch Pro starts tripping up. An early bug meant that we could get notifications only from WhatsApp and our text messages but not from other apps. Nothing fixed this after a few weeks through a software update. Another issue was that the standing-up and water-drinking notifications seemed a little irregular. Some phone calls also did not come through to the watch. A closer look at the issue revealed that the Watch Pro had a tendency to disconnect from the phone it was connected to.

Things once again improved with a software update. It is also a bit of a pity that one can only see the subjects of emails and only see notifications, given the sheer size of the display. Messaging works fine, although you cannot respond to messages from the watch. When the Bluetooth connection is working fine (it generally is, after the updates), the Watch Pro is very good for phone calls, too, although we would recommend using it in conditions that are relatively quiet.

All in all, the CMF Watch Pro is extremely impressive when everything is working fine. Its biggest challenge are the bugs that trip it up. To its credit, Nothing has been fixing these bugs through updates time and again, and it has not denied their existence.

CMF Watch Pro Review Verdict: Should you buy it?

For a first wearable, the CMF Watch Pro is an excellent effort. It packs in a lot of features at a surprisingly affordable price tag. At its starting price of Rs 4499 (a steel edition is available at Rs 4999), the CMF Watch Pro is a very good proposition for anyone looking for a feature-rich watch with a large display, inbuilt GPS, decent fitness tracking, and a clean UI. It has its rough edges and can be rather buggy at the outset, but credit where it is due – Nothing has actually been improving the device’s performance with updates.

We are not sure we would have recommended it a few weeks after its launch, but a couple of months down the line, it seems a very good product indeed and a super option for those wanting a smartwatch at a relatively affordable price. Given Nothing’s very good track record of software updates, there is reason to hope that it will get even better with time, just as the Nothing phones and TWS have.

It does face a very stiff challenge from the likes of the OnePlus Nord Watch and the Amazfit Pop 3S, which bring comparable specs and features at similar (or even lower) prices. Still, we think that almost two months and several updates after its launch, the CMF Watch Pro is easily one of the best smartwatches below Rs 5,000! Just remember to keep checking for updates.

Buy CMF Watch Pro