Hey, people!
Here’s my review of the CMF Watch Pro. Sorry for posting it a bit late, but had to say final goodbye to some relatives and the times were hard. :)
The CMF company, by Nothing, is well recognized for its budget-friendly options like earbuds and watches, and today we’re taking a deeper look at the CMF Watch Pro.
The design of the watch is a bit like all the other square-ish ones that we see on the market. It’s made of plastic and aluminum alloy (for the frame only), and this helps it maintain a nice low weight at just 47 g with the strap included. When talking about the strap, it’s a standard 22 mm one that you can change with almost anything else you like, so this is a good thing.
The watch itself stays very nice on the wrist and I cannot even tell that It’s there.
The screen
The AMOLED screen of the CMF Watch Pro is with a 1.96” diagonal and 410×502 pixels resolution. This makes it look very good and detailed, with nice colors. Also, the typical brightness goes up to 600+ nits and you can see everything on the screen even in direct sunlight, so we have another good point for the CMF Watch Pro.
My experience with the screen was flawless and I like how responsive it is. No glitches, no lags, no problems at all.
The fact that you can choose between many different watch faces is very well appreciated, and you can also choose between 8 always-on watch faces or customize it with your own photo of choice.
Sports modes
As the CMF Watch Pro is a bit bigger fitness/smart band, you can expect to have many different sports modes in the software, so you can track your activity, around 110 to be exact.
You can find almost every single sport that you think of – you can find it on the watch, or on the phone app, where you can customize the list on the watch, so Zumba, Dances, Horse riding, Archery – you name it, you have it. Whenever I use it, it’s usually for hiking and outdoor walking and the cool this is that it has GPS, so it can track your position at any time. The bad thing here is that the GPS took quite a while to establish a connection, even on a bright sunny day, with no clouds and I had to wait around 6-7 minutes so it can connect, which is a drawback from my expectations. However, when the watch tracks GPS, it does it very well and with high accuracy, with minimal detours from your path of walking/ running.
Another issue that I faced was regarding the heart rate tracking when I tracked the “Outside walk” activity, the first half of my walk showed very, very unstable HR measurements, with my pulse going up to 180 bpm, which is wrong. Just about halfway of my walk, the HR stabilized and showed much more reliable information, so you must keep in mind the fact that at this point of time, you cannot completely rely on the accuracy of the HR monitoring, but the Spo2 readings were spot-on, and I cannot say anything negative about it. And let’s not forget, the Watch Pro is IP68 certified, so you can not only sweat with it, but also go swimming.
**Sleep modes
**
Just like almost all the other smart bands, the CMF Watch Pro can track your sleep cycle, so you can have a better idea of how’s your sleep going. From the measurements I got, I can say that it’s pretty accurate and I like the fact that the data is divided into Night sleep, Deep sleep, Core sleep, and REM, so you can see data that’s measured in hours and %. It’s represented in a very adequate way, and I doubt that someone will have problems with reading it.
Phone application
The CMF Watch Pro works well with both Android and iPhones, so no matter the platform, you will be able to use it with its full functionality. I am currently using it with the iPhone 13 Pro Max, and I find the application to be very intuitive, very easy to use, and overall, very user-friendly. This is a good thing because this watch is made for the mass market and people will expect an easy and pleasing experience – so they have it here. On the home screen of the app, you can find all the data that the watch measures, like steps, kcal, and km of walking. Also, there you will find the exercise panel, stress data, blood oxygen, heart rate, and sleep, so basically – everything is in one place, easy to use, easy to navigate. I will give a point for this approach.
However, if you want to adjust the watch like the dial gallery, notifications, and so on, you can do it from one of the other panels and the user interface is the same user-friendly one.
What I love
The fact that the CMF Watch Pro comes in minimalistic packaging, that it’s very lightweight and budget friendly makes it a very solid choice for people who are not that pretentious, or data driven when working out. Also, the option to take phone calls whenever the watch is connected to the phone is a nice add-on, especially when the microphone and spear are so good and loud enough. The bright and fluid screen brings the experience to a better level and overall, the hardware is nice.
The Camera control feature and the “drink water” reminder are very useful options that any of people are going to use, especially the ones that usually forget that they must hydrate to work properly 😊
Finally, is the battery which last more than 10 days and, in this case, you won’t be bothering yourself with charging it every single or other day.
What I don’t like
Unfortunately, the list here contains only important things…
First, the GPS experience was not good. By not good I mean that it takes a lot of time to establish a connection, and usually, people don’t want to wait 7-8-9 minutes, just to be able to start their morning run.
The second thing is that the HR measurements are not good, or at least with my unit. During an outdoor walk where, my HR is usually around 100-105 bpm, the watch measures 180, which is not acceptable at all.
The biggest issues of them all were disconnecting from the phone, no matter that the application was given full access to background activity and sync, that the Bluetooth was not being turned off or anything. This was a bit disappointing, because the weather app could not sync properly, nor did the notifications I received.
I can give 6.5/10 points mainly because of the bugs that I found, and I hope to see them fixed with an upcoming update. The watch is solid, feels nice, screen’s nice, but a few of the drawbacks are regarding important options, so an update is a must!
