Nothing’s subsidiary brand made its debut last year with audio and smart wearable products. This year, CMF launched its first smartphone along with the second-generation TWS and smartwatch. The CMF Watch Pro 2 is not a minor upgrade by any means. The smartwatch has a new form factor and sports features that were previously missing. All these changes do not stray away from the design aesthetic laid down by CMF. The Watch Pro 2 still has the ‘Comfort, Material, Finish’ vibe to it. Interested to see how this wearable fares against the best in its category, we used for a week. Here is our review of the CMF Watch Pro 2.
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In This Article
CMF Watch Pro 2 by Nothing Review: Design and Display
Here’s what you get inside CMF Watch Pro 2’s retail box:
- Smartwatch
- Magnetic clip charger
- Safety information booklet
CMF Watch Pro 2’s design is a complete 180 from its predecessor. Instead of a square dial, the smartwatch now rocks a more traditional circular form factor. The sandblasted metal case has an interchangeable bezel. The rotating crown is positioned on the right side of the frame. Flipping the dial over, you will find the sensor array, magnetic charging slot, speaker grille, and microphone. Overall, the minimal design of the smartwatch is quite appealing – everything serves a purpose and there are no unnecessary bells and whistles.
There are some interesting customisation options for the CMF Watch Pro 2 that are worth checking out. First up, there are four bezels that can be attached to the watch. These bezels come in two shapes (flat and curved) and two colours (Dark Grey and Ash Grey). The watch strap is available in two materials – Liquid Silicon and Vegan Leather. The former is available in Dark Grey and Ash Grey colours while the latter can be had in Blue and Orange variants.
The vegan leather strap is more suited for casual use. It starts to itch when things get a little sweaty. If you’re getting this smartwatch to track your exercise and workout routines primarily, we highly recommend going for the liquid silicone strap.
Moving on, the 1.32-inch AMOLED display has a 60Hz refresh rate and can reach a peak brightness of 620 nits. The display is perfectly legible in outdoor conditions. There is adaptive brightness onboard, but we found ourselves manually switching to a brighter level in indoor settings. The touch response offered by the display is good. It registers subtle touch gestures with ease and provides a snappy browsing experience.
The CMF Watch Pro 2 is rated IP68 for dust and water resistance. This makes it waterproof but it is not equipped to handle immersion in 1.5m deep water for more than 30 minutes. There is no ‘Swimming’ mode on the watch either. However, you can use it for activities like Sailing, Surfing, and Jet Skiing. The smartwatch is unfazed by sweat or water splashes. We wore it during high-intensity workouts and long runs and its performance remained undeterred.
CMF Watch Pro 2 by Nothing Review: Performance
Pairing the CMF Watch Pro 2 to a smartphone is a smooth and seamless process. As soon as you turn on the watch, it displays a QR code which redirects your phone to the CMF Watch app as soon as it is scanned. Once the watch is paired to your phone via Bluetooth 5.3, it can automatically sync the data to the companion app. The smartwatch is compatible with smartphones running Android 8.0 and above or iOS 13 and above.
The Watch Pro 2 is equipped with an accelerometer, an ambient light sensor (for adaptive brightness), and the usual heart rate & blood oxygen sensors. Also on board is a built-in multi-GPS system, which is rare at this price point.
The blood oxygen and heart rate readings recorded by the Watch Pro 2 are reliable and consistent with medical-grade equipment. You can set the watch to measure your heart rate and blood oxygen at all times, but it will come at the cost of sacrificing battery life (more on that later). On top of that, the Watch Pro 2 sends you high/low heart rate and low blood oxygen alerts.
The addition of automatic workout detection is a welcome change on the Watch Pro 2 but we would like to see it fleshed out some more. Turning on workout detection merely reminds you to record your workout instead of automatically logging it. Another limiting aspect of this feature is that it only works for running, walking, and cycling. The smartwatch records your steps without being prompted but its numbers have a 3-5% room for error.
The built-in GPS on the Watch Pro 2 is something we like a lot. You don’t need to take your phone with you while going on an outdoor run or hike. The smartwatch accurately tracks your path on the map and syncs it with your smartphone.
The Watch Pro 2 supports up to 120 sports, workouts, exercises, and workout routines. These include outdoor/indoor running, outdoor/indoor cycling, cross-training, yoga, boxing, soccer, treadmill, HIIT, kickboxing, karate, belly dancing, roller skating, and more. The comprehensive data sets and progress charts can be viewed from the CMF Watch app.
On the OS front, the CMF Watch Pro 2 retains the ‘Nothing’ aesthetics. Its greyed-out menu is reminiscent of Nothing OS. On the flip side, the splash of orange on the widgets is uniquely CMF. The Watch Pro 2’s OS is well-optimised and delivers a snappy and fun experience. The crown button does not have a physical response like a mouse’s scroll wheel, but the software makes up for it by offering nice haptic feedback every time the crown is rotated. Pressing the crown takes you to the menu, where it can be used to go through the options. However, pressing it again takes you back to the home screen. We would have preferred it to double up as a selection button.
A right swipe on the home screen takes you to the calling widgets. You can view your call history and contacts on this screen. There’s also a dialpad for manually calling a number. The calling function on the smartwatch only works as long as you’re connected to your phone via Bluetooth. The same goes for receiving text notifications. The weather, health, SpO2, heart rate, and other widgets can be accessed by swiping left on the home screen. You don’t need to open a widget to view the data. They are designed to reflect the current metrics.
The CMF Watch app serves as a great companion application to the Watch Pro 2. We did not encounter any jitters or lags while using the app during the review period. It has a simple yet pleasing layout that does a great job of displaying the essential data at a glance. The sleep analysis offered by the app based on the watch’s data is impeccable. It breaks down your sleep cycle into four phases – Deep, Core, REM, and Awake. You can view monthly, weekly, and yearly charts for your sleep data on the app. The same goes for exercise, heart rate, stress, and blood oxygen data.
On the functional side, the CMF Watch app offers a good range of options for watch faces and widgets. The downside is that you can only store a maximum of 6 faces on the watch at any given time. There is no option to customise the watch faces either.
During the review period, we used the CMF Watch Pro 2 with all cylinders blasting. We turned the background monitoring for SpO2 and heart rate, used the Always On Display, kept the display at maximum brightness, received calls on the device via Bluetooth, charted our hikes via GPS, and more. It took us 7 days to reach a 10% charge level on the watch, which is pretty impressive. With more conservative usage, you can push the battery life to 11 days. On standby mode, the Watch Pro 2 can easily last over a month on a full charge. The magnetic clip charger that comes with the watch can fully charge it in less than 2 hours.
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Verdict
The CMF Watch Pro 2 strikes a nice balance between aesthetics and performance. Its round dial lends it a more traditional look but under the hood, it can keep up with any demanding workout session. The brand has put a lot of thought into determining which aspects should be open for user customisation and which ones should come under its aesthetic control. We think this strategy has paid off quite well on the Watch Pro 2. Of course, we’d like to see more versatility in automatic workout detection and adaptive brightness functions. But for a smartwatch priced at Rs 5,500, the CMF Watch Pro 2 puts up a fine display.
CMF Watch Pro 2: Pros
- Bright AMOLED display
- Good customisation options
- Clean OS
- Efficient health and fitness tracker
CMF Watch Pro 2: Cons
- Adaptive display needs to work better in an indoor setting
- Lacks a full-fledged automatic workout detection mode
