CMF Watch Pro by Nothing review: A great value smartwatch, but not perfect

CMF Watch Pro: One minute review

The CMF Watch Pro is astonishingly cheap, retailing for just $69 / £69 / AU$142, but despite that it looks and feels premium throughout. Moving into this watch from my (comparatively expensive) Amazfit Balance, I was worried that the experience would be laden with frustrations and limitations, but on the contrary, I’ve really enjoyed testing it.

The design, while clearly taking inspiration from Apple, is lovely. It looks great on the wrist, the materials and finish are top-notch, and Nothing’s signature design language is present across a large library of aesthetically pleasing and functional watch faces. It’s a chunky watch, but extremely lightweight, and that makes it a pleasure to wear.

Of course, at such a low price, there are plenty of features missing that have become commonplace on more expensive smartwatches. There’s no onboard Wi-Fi, no payment system and the vast majority of features will require your smartphone to be connected in order to function, but I think the Watch Pro covers the basics well enough to satisfy most users.

The frustrations arise when you realise how much effort it takes to keep the watch connected to your phone. It just seems to disconnect itself all the time, and that means you won’t be getting notifications and many functions will be unavailable until you open the smartphone app and reconnect your phone.

Hopefully, this is something that will be improved as the software matures, and in fairness, there have been multiple updates pushed over the few weeks I’ve been wearing it. As it stands, it’s still a great-looking smartwatch at a bargain price, but there are definitely some refinements to be made.

CMF Watch Pro: Specifications

CMF Watch Pro: Price and availability

• £69 in the UK
• $69 in the US
• AU$131 in Australia

The biggest draw of the CMF Watch Pro is its low asking price. While it may look a lot like an Apple Watch, its pricing puts it in closer competition with devices like the Xiaomi Smart Band 8, Fitbit Inspire 3 and the Amazfit Bip 5. All great watches in their own right, but none have quite the same premium allure as the CMF option.

It launched in September 2023 as a debut product for the CMF by Nothing brand, alongside some earbuds and a wall charger.

It’s available to purchase now from Nothing directly and via various authorised resellers in the UK. In the US, it can be found on Amazon and in Australia it’s available via AliExpress.

• Value score: 5/5

CMF Watch Pro: Design and screen

• 1.96-inch AMOLED display
• Dark Grey and Metallic Grey options
• Replaceable 22mm silicon wrist strap

The CMF Watch Pro is quite a sizable watch, and while I think it looks great on my wrist, it’s worth noting that I am male and over 6 feet tall – it’s likely to look more out of place on petite wrists. 

This watch is only a few millimeters smaller than the Apple Watch Ultra, so it’s quite chunky, but it wears it well. It’s also extremely lightweight, coming in under 50 grams including the silicon wrist strap, so you’ll barely feel it on your wrist – but you’ll see it.

I was sent the Dark Grey variant for testing and I think it’s the better-looking of the two finishes. The Metallic Grey option has a polished, almost mirror finish on its frame, a bit like the Google Pixel Watch 2, and while it does look nice I know I would be concerned about scratches and blemishes. The Dark Grey option is anodized with a more rugged-looking matte finish, and comes paired with either an ash gray or dark gray sports strap, the flashier orange strap is only supplied with the metallic version.

On the right-hand side, there’s a push button and a speaker, while all the other sides are blank and minimalistic. On the base, you’ll find an array of four optical sensors for fitness tracking and two pogo-pin pads that attach to the magnetic charging puck.

The screen is large, sharp and bright and it’s extremely responsive to touch input. There are large bezels on all sides, but for the most part, you’d never know. The UI has a black background throughout, and the majority of watch faces are dark, too. This means you rarely see these chunky bezels unless you’re really looking for them.

My biggest gripe with the screen isn’t the fault of the screen itself, it’s just that the watch doesn’t have an ambient light sensor. This means that on many occasions, the display is inappropriately bright or dim. Thankfully, it only takes a couple of taps to adjust the brightness, but it’s a hassle that you won’t experience with the more expensive watches on the market.

• Design score: 4.5/5

CMF Watch Pro: Features

• 110 sport tracking modes
• CMF Watch companion app for Android and iOS
• Bluetooth calling with AI noise reduction

As you might expect with a watch at this price point, the functionality is quite limited compared to a Wear OS device or an Apple Watch. There’s no app store, everything that you can use comes preinstalled and ready to go out of the box. That said, the most commonly used smartwatch features are present here, and there’s more than enough for most people's needs.

There’s also no Wi-Fi onboard, so for any feature that requires internet access, like weather info, you’ll need to be paired to your smartphone via Bluetooth. The CMF Watch app is available on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store and it makes it as simple as can be to get up and running.

Most of the CMF Watch Pro’s features are accessed by tapping the button on the right-hand side. In the resulting menu, you’ll find everything from timers and alarms to music controls, phone calls and fitness tracking. When you open the Exercise app, you’ll find a comprehensive list of 110 different activities to choose between. I was pleasantly surprised to see that some of my more unusual hobbies, like inline skating and snowboarding, were represented here – so there’s a good chance that your sport of choice will be on the list.

Most of the tracking works similarly, measuring your heart rate, workout duration and location data (where applicable). It’s enough information for the casual user, but it might be a little lacking for true fitness buffs. You can’t use the watch to track your reps while strength training, for example. 

The CMF Watch Pro can also check your stress level and blood oxygen levels, and it can monitor them 24/7 if you want it to, though that will cost you some battery life. Personally, I chose to keep the 24/7 heart rate monitoring active, which is the default, and activated the other sensors manually.

You can make and answer phone calls directly from the watch, so long as you are connected to your phone, and the function works quite well. My friends told me that my voice came through clean and clear, and the surprisingly loud built-in speaker meant that I could hear them well, too. The only frustration is that you have to manually add contacts to the watch, they won’t appear by default, so you’ll need to do a bit of set-up before you can call people on a whim.

One feature that I found quite appealing was the camera remote, which allows you to trigger a photo or start a timer using your watch. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work with my Vivo X100 Pro, and the literature says it won't work with an iPhone, either. Still, I've seen it demonstrated with other Android devices, and if yours happens to work, it could be handy.

• Features score: 3/5 

CMF Watch Pro: Performance

• Up to 13 days of battery life
• Heart rate, sleep, stress and SpO2 monitoring
• Built-in multi-system GPS

The CMF Watch Pro is advertised as having up to 13 days of battery life on a charge, but of course, that all depends on how you use it. Personally, I used it with the always-on display active, 24/7 heart rate monitoring and notifications enabled for all of my most-used applications. With this configuration, you can expect to be charging it every five days or so.

When it's time to charge, you do so with the proprietary magnetic charging puck that comes included in the box. It's a bit of a flimsy connector and I think it could benefit from some stronger magnets or a ridge to lock into as it's very easy to accidentally disconnect it. That said, it gets the job done well enough, and it'll juice you back up to full battery in under 2 hours.

Nothing hasn't provided any information about the processor powering this watch, nor is there much information about its operating system, but what I can tell you is that it feels snappy and responsive in use and I haven't experienced any freeze-ups or stutters in my usage. In terms of fitness tracking, it’s hard to gauge exactly how accurate the measurements are, but my step count always came close to the figures I’m used to seeing on my other devices, and my average and maximum heart rates were very similar to the readings I got with my Amazfit Balance, too. The only oddity was that sometimes it would think I was asleep when I was relaxing and watching TV, so the sleep data might not be the most reliable out there.

Otherwise, the only real performance issue I experienced was the connection between the CMF Watch Pro and my phone. Unless I had recently used the CMF Watch app, the Bluetooth connection would just randomly drop, and that means no more notifications until you reopen the app, which seems to bump start the connection.

This happened every day without fail, and no matter how many permissions I gave the CMF Watch app, it didn’t seem to change. I tried pairing the watch with a couple of different phones, and the results were always the same, so it’s not an isolated problem, either. On the plus side, there has been at least one firmware update a week since I have been testing, so Nothing is actively working to make the experience better. Fingers crossed one of these updates brings with it better Bluetooth connection stability.

• Performance score: 3/5 

CMF Watch Pro: Scorecard

CMF Watch Pro: Should I buy?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

CMF Watch Pro: Also consider

Amazfit Bip 5

Another similarly priced smartwatch, with a similar set of specifications. It might not quite match the quality of the CMF Watch Pro’s display and build but it’ll go toe-to-toe on fitness tracking and offers more applications and functionality.

Fitbit Inspire 3

This fitness tracker needs no introduction, it might not have as many smart features as the CMF option but if you’re most interested in tracking workouts, it offers better water resistance and a more mature ecosystem for fitness metrics.

CMF Watch Pro: How I tested

Our reviewer wore the CMF Watch Pro as his primary smartwatch for over two weeks, and it accompanied him in travelling, commuting and during regular workouts. It was paired to a Vivo X100 Pro for the majority of the testing period, but was also tried with an Honor smartphone and a Google Pixel to compare.

The tracking results were compared to historical results from the Amazfit Balance and TicWatch Pro 5, as well as the built-in step counter on the smartphone and the Strava app for GPS accuracy.