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For a value smartwatch, the CMF Watch 3 Pro is incredibly hard to beat with a premium feel to the design, smooth software experience, lengthy battery life and extra features like personalised video watch faces. If you can get by without some more advanced functions and want an all-rounder over a fitness companion, it's a great choice.
The Good
- Quality build
- Loads of battery
- Simple but effective usr interface
The Not So Good
- Limited to basic health and environment functions
- Low screen brightness
Need-to-knows
- Striking, stylish design, but a bit too large
- Smooth and logical operating software
- Limited functionality compared to more expensive watches
- Still good value for the price
There’s a certain wow factor when you open the box to unveil the CMF Watch 3 Pro. It looks highly premium, unique and stylish. This is especially surprising when you consider that it costs just $99/£99. But looks can be deceiving, and for this price, some corners must have been cut.
Then you remember this is a device made by CMF, the offshoot of Nothing, and realise that pretty much everything they’ve made has somehow managed to squeeze high quality out of very low costs. For a brand so young, there is already a lot of trust that if you purchase one of CMF’s devices, you’ll be getting something worthwhile.
And this mainly rings true once again for the Watch 3 Pro, but there are some caveats, and a lingering question about who should actually buy this thing.
Shop the CMF Watch 3 Pro below!
How I reviewed the CMF Watch 3 Pro
I’ll let you into a secret. I don’t usually wear a smartwatch all the time. In fact, I quite enjoy not wearing one. But I have reviewed and worn many in my time as a tech reviewer and treat every smartwatch I get sent in the same way.
That means it gets worn all day, every day for at least a week, throughout which I regularly take health metric readings, track fitness activities and monitor my sleep. I try to use it like an average person to get a good gauge of battery life and a rounded assessment.
At a glance
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Design | Metal body, liquid silicon strap, removable |
| Size / Weight | 25.8 × 4.7 × 1.45 cm, 52 g |
| Colours | Dark Grey, Light Green, Light Grey, Orange |
| Display | 1.43″ AMOLED, glass, 466 × 466 (326 PPI), 60 FPS, 650–670 nits, 120+ watch faces |
| Sports | 131 modes, 7 auto-recognition |
| Health | 24h HR, SpO₂, sleep, stress, women’s health, steps, calories, distance |
| Battery | 350 mAh, 99 min charge |
| Battery Life | 13 d (typ) / 10 d (heavy) / 4.5 d (AOD) / 60 d (PS) / 17.9 h (calls) / 17.2 h (GPS) |
| Sensors | Accel, Gyro, Ambient light, HR + SpO₂, linear motor |
| GPS | Dual-band (L1+L5), GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, Beidou |
| Features | Calls, transcription, news, watch faces, notifications, music, alarm, timer, weather, find phone, flashlight, camera remote, voice asst., calendar, calculator, world clock, breath training |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth 5.3 |
| Compatibility | Android 6+, iOS 13+ |
| App | Nothing X |
| Resistance | IP68 |
| In the Box | Watch, charging line, guide, warranty |
Design
As I said in my CMF Headphone Pro review, I’ll give a disclaimer here: I generally like Nothing and CMF’s approach to design. It’s interesting, unique and a breath of fresh air compared to the repetitive, copycat designs we see from basically every other brand.
Related: Redmi Watch 5 review
I have to say, I love how the CMF Watch 3 Pro looks. And I think most other people would too. That’s because CMF hasn’t just made something totally outlandish or weird for the sake of it; instead, they’ve incorporated their style quite tastefully in a way that makes the watch wearable all the time but different enough from the rest to stand out.
The CMF Watch 3 Pro is large (almost too large for my tastes), round and unafraid to show off its chunky metal frame. It feels like a statement piece, especially in the Light Green and Orange colour options. Some people, well, realistically most people, may not like that. The Apple Watch, for example, flies very much under the radar; it’s compact and low-key in terms of colour and profile.
Our list of the best smartwatches is here!
I think the way this watch has been designed makes it feel like a fashion accessory, it goes with lots of different outfits and, for that reason, feels fresh. So if you buy the Watch 3 Pro, be prepared for it to look and feel like you are wearing a watch. That sounds like a stupid sentence, but as I said, lots of people prefer the opposite.
The only other thing to note from a design perspective is that there is a scroll wheel on the side of the frame. I like that more smartwatches have these nowadays as it adds a bit of tactility and another way to navigate things like long menus.
Overall, I like this watch design from a looks perspective. But it feels just a bit too large and flashy to double as a fitness companion which is ultimately what I want, something I feel comfortable using as an all-rounder.
Software
Nothing’s smartphone software is pretty widely liked. It’s simple, minimalist and stylish and a totally different take on Android. Their Wear OS is much the same, at least from a superficial perspective.
More: CMF Phone 2 Pro review
On the CMF Watch 3 Pro, it looks great. You get the dot-based black and white design as expected, with limited colour that makes using the interface very simple. This means you can glance at the watch and get what you need instantly which is perfect. I like tech that isn’t trying to distract you every five minutes.
There are some lovely personalisation touches too. The Watch Face Studio in the app allows you to use AI to create unique watch faces. And this doesn’t feel totally like AI slop, the designs can be quite attractive if you have a play. I particularly love the video watch faces which can be taken from your own five-second videos, although these do display at quite a low resolution.
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Widgets are also customisable and can be made full-screen to match what you use most. You can also decide what you get shown by your watch to reduce getting information you don’t care about.
It’s thoughtfully designed software that I have loved using, and it fits the overall aesthetic perfectly. And of course, you get all of the fitness tracking you’d want plus heart rate monitoring with improved accuracy, sleep monitoring, activity scores and 24/7 tracking of blood oxygen, stress levels and heart rate zones.
Display and battery
Much like the rest of the design, the Watch 3 Pro’s display is sizeable at 1.43 inches. It’s AMOLED with a 326ppi density and a 60fps refresh rate.
I’ve had absolutely no issues with the display when using it, both indoors and outdoors. It wasn’t until I checked the specs that the peak brightness is only 670 nits. This is incredibly low, even for a watch at this very cheap price. For comparison, the Redmi Watch 5, which costs the same amount, tops out at 1,500 nits on a larger display.
As I said, this wasn’t really a problem, it was just a surprise. There were moments where I wished it was a bit brighter, but I would never have thought the brightness was that low. Whether the numbers matter is entirely up to you.
The numbers get much more impressive with the battery. CMF states that you get up to 13 days of battery life under typical use, 10 days under heavy use and 4.5 days with always-on display activated with heavy use. All out of a 350mAh battery. This is truly top-tier in the world of smartwatches and I’ve found it replicated in real life.
I’ve used it for a week straight with lots of health and fitness tracking and I’m not yet below 50%. It’s brilliant and matches some much more expensive smartwatches in this regard like the Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro. Yes, it’s performing less intensive tasks, but it’s still impressive and far better than any Apple Watch.
Extra features
First off, the CMF Watch 3 Pro is IP68 rated for water resistance. That alone is very cool for how cheap it is.
Thanks to the Voice Assistant feature, the CMF Watch 3 Pro is surprisingly easy to use with other smartphone brands. Once connected via Bluetooth, Siri on my iPhone worked fine with the watch, announcing results from the device itself, albeit at quite a low-res quality
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I like the Essential News widget too which, as you might have guessed, serves you up snippets of the news and the transcription recording feature is pretty useful too. You can take a quick note and it is kept on-device until you send it to your phone.
I would like a bit more when it comes to alarms though. You get one sound and it is a very jarring beep. I’m not sure why you can’t change this, but it’s annoying. And on that AI watch face design. It needs more to it. Right now it just uses vague inspiration from existing wallpapers. I want it to be able to use photos I give it to make something new, and maybe even totally redesign where all the widgets go.
Other than this, there isn’t much more to the CMF Watch 3 Pro. It is fairly bog-standard, which you’d expect from this price point.
Final thoughts
With any piece of tech that’s this cheap, it is very hard to say ‘no, don’t buy this!’. It would really have to be catastrophically terrible to warn you off. But it is equally difficult for the company to make something worth actively recommending for this price too.
But I think CMF has just about pulled off the latter. The CMF Watch 3 Pro is incredibly cheap at $99/£99 and it has just enough going for it to cross the ‘you should buy this’ threshold. But there is a caveat. I think the category of people who might want to buy it is quite small.
If you want a feature-packed fitness tracker with high accuracy and a super comfortable fit, then you’ll probably be willing to spend more and therefore get something like a Garmin Vivoactive. And if want ultimate ecosystem compatibility, then you’ll probably opt for a watch from whatever brand your smartphone is made by.
So then who would I recommend this watch to? I’d say someone who wants a solid, but pretty basic, smartwatch with a splash of uniqueness that could double as a fashion accessory. Or even to be used as a secondary smartwatch that you don’t mind getting a bit beaten up in day-to-day use.
Either way, it’s an impressive bit of kit from CMF when weighed against its price tag.
