Our Verdict
Nothing’s CMF Watch Pro is an affordable alternative to Apple and Samsung’s wearables, offering a premium design and no-nonsense apps for everyday life, which the crisp AMOLED display only enhances.
- Affordable price point
- The form factor is gorgeous
- Great AMOLED display
- Streamlined functionality
- Scratch resistance needs improving
- Sleep tracking isn’t entirely accurate
- More colorways would be appreciated
Nothing’s approach to affordable yet premium feeling tech might not be on your radar, especially with large rivals like Apple, Samsung, and Huawei dominating the market. In my quest to find my ideal smartwatch, I haven’t been too bothered about flashy features – or the $300+ price tag attached to many of the CMF Watch Pro’s contemporaries. Nothing’s first iteration of its low-key, subtle smartwatch doesn’t break the bank, but it does offer plenty of bang for your buck.
I’ve been wearing the CMF Watch Pro since late 2024 after snagging it for just $55/£55 on Amazon. The rest of the time, it typically retails for $59/£69. Over the last couple of months, I’ve put it through its paces. Whether it is enduring the spilled drinks and 3:00 am takeaway of a night out or bearing through the cold Prague streets on a work trip, the CMF Watch Pro has recorded my movements every step of the way. What sold me initially on it was the pristine AMOLED display. At 1.96″ in size, the CMF Watch Pro’s square display design echoes some of the best Apple Watch faces aesthetically, notably the Apple Watch 7.
Coming in at a modest 410×502 resolution, the screen is more than ample enough to display messages, miscellaneous notifications, or the watch’s built-in apps. It’s also brought to life by a very welcome framerate of 58 fps and a max brightness of 600 nits, keeping things smooth and crisp. The CMF Watch Pro’s watch face is always on, too, with several styles available within this feature. You can disable always on in the watch’s settings menu or set it to the ‘smart enable’ mode, which detects when the watch is on the user’s wrist. While it has minimal bearing on the watch’s battery life, I chose to keep it off until recently.
Where the display let me down is the matter of scratch resistance, especially if you compare it with some of the other picks from our guide to the best smartwatches. At a glance, you might struggle to see the minor scuffs and scratches on my own CMF Watch Pro, but it’s exceptionally easy to rack up wear-and-tear imperfections.
At this price point, it’s par for the course, but to circumvent this, you can get hold of a third-party protector. Water and other spills aren’t a problem, though, at least in moderate amounts, due to the watch’s IP68 water resistance. Nevertheless, it’s a disappointing note for an otherwise excellent display. As for what you’ll be doing on it, the first port of call is the CMF Watch app. Available for iOS and Android users, this is your hub for seeing fitness data, syncing GPS data, updating the watch, and general tinkering.
Outside of making custom watch faces with the limited options available, I’ve rarely used this app, choosing to stick with using the watch itself. For those of you tracking your exercise routines, the app packs plenty of options for exercise types, as well as tracking your route on walks, runs, or hikes. Similar to Apple’s health features, the CMF Watch Pro collates your fitness data into a handy ring-style chart, accompanied by breakdowns of your heart rate, bloody oxygen, and stress level. It isn’t quite as robust as Apple’s features, but it has proved to be reliable for tracking my activity throughout the day. Sleep tracking lets this aspect of the watch down, though.
If, like me, you like to flop onto the couch after work and just exist for an hour or so, the watch will likely think you’re asleep. I’m partial to a couch nap, don’t get me wrong, but more often than not, the watch thinks I’m catching up on those precious Zs when I’m not. Nothing could address this software misunderstanding in a future firmware update, but updates for this iteration of the CMF Watch seem to occur every three months to address smaller issues you likely won’t have noticed. When you’re not sleeping or getting your cardio in, pressing the watch’s side button presents you with a selection of 19 streamlined apps to use.
The usual suspects like an alarm, timer, stopwatch, calculator, and weather are all there. The addition of a music player to control your Spotify or Apple Music app is especially helpful, removing the need to take my phone out of my pocket. I’ve not had much opportunity to deploy the camera remote app, but I can imagine it’s nifty for group selfies or capturing the perfect Instagram photo. Nothing’s phone call features are genuinely impressive, though. Equipped with a decent microphone and AI noise cancellation, I’ve been holding the wrist up to my face like a budget James Bond on several occasions. Of course, you don’t need to do that, as it picks up your voice fairly well while you rest your wrist naturally on a surface.
Form factor-wise, you can choose between Dark Grey – as seen here – or a lighter Ash Grey. I wish more colorways were available, but it’s not exactly a dealbreaker in my books. Eventually, you’ll need to charge the watch, but I’ve found the battery life to be staggeringly good. I usually juice it up with a full charge every two to three days out of habit, but I’ve left it for at least a week to find it still has the power to function for a few hours. Nothing notes that the CMF Watch Pro can remain active for 13 days with “typical use” and 11 days under “heavy use.” Should you need to hunker down and save any semblance of battery, the power-saving mode reportedly lasts up to 45 days, according to Nothing’s website.
Everything about the CMF Watch Pro is focused on approachable, no-thrills engagement. It ties into the Nothing design ethos we’ve touched on in our Nothing Phone (2) and Nothing Phone (2a) review, as each aspect of the watch serves a clear purpose and does what it says on the tin. Without wearing a traditional watch, the CMF Watch Pro merges painless tech features with perhaps the most important feature: it can simply tell the time. Even some of the slickest smartwatches fail to recognize this, whether that’s through divisive form factors or bloated software. It’s all killer, no filler.
There you have it, our CMF Watch Pro review. For more great buying advice while you’re here, check out our picks for the best gaming phones and the best gaming tablets, with options to suit all needs and budgets. Or, if you’re feeling a little nostalgic, turn back the clock with our list of the best retro handhelds.