CMF today launched its third smartwatch—the CMF Watch Pro 3. The smartwatch is a major upgrade to the Watch Pro 2 that was launched in 2024, bringing a brighter screen, improved heart rate, sleep tracking, new recording transcription, and dual-band GPS support while retaining the built-in microphone and speaker for voice-calling capabilities.
I have been using the latest smartwatch for a few days. Is this the best smartwatch for the price? Let’s dive into the review to find out.
Box Contents
- CMF Watch Pro 3 in Dark Grey colour with matching straps
- Charging cable
- Safety information and warranty information, User Guide
Design and Build
The CMF Watch Pro 3 has a circular design, similar to the predecessor. It measures 258 x 47 x 14.4 mm and weighs 51.9 grams with the silicone strap for the dark gray color that we have. The light grey color is slightly thicker at 15.2 mm but lighter at 51 g, and the orange is 14.5 mm and weighs 52.4 g.
Unlike the Watch Pro 2, this doesn’t have interchangeable bezels. Coming to the strap, the bundled silicone strap in the matching gray color is flexible and is made of skin-friendly material, and the quality is good.
The smartwatch has IP68 water resistance. There is a 6-axis accelerometer, gyroscope, ambient light sensor, 24h heart rate monitor, SpO2 sensor, and blood oxygen saturation sensor. It uses Bluetooth 5.3 to connect to Android 6.0 and above and iOS 13 and devices and above.
There is a single functional crown on the right side with a metal finish that lets you wake up the watch, go back, open the menu, and pause workouts, and you can rotate it to cycle through the app menu. You can also see the speaker on the back along with the microphone. The watch still has a precision-milled aluminium alloy case that looks and feels premium.
On the back, you can see the heart rate and SpO2 sensors that have glowing green and red LED lights when you are using it to measure heart rate and blood oxygen.
Display and features
Coming to the display, the CMF Watch Pro 3 has a 1.43-inch (466 x 466 Pixels) 326 PPI AMOLED touch screen. The screen is bigger than the Watch Pro 2 and has a 10% increase in screen-to-body ratio compared to its predecessor. You can set it to turn on when you lift your hand, and the screen turns off in a few seconds to save power. You can also use always-on display options, and there are 8 always-on options, but this will drain the battery.
Outdoor visibility is good since it has 670 nits of brightness and 650 nits of peak brightness, up from 620 nits in the older model. You can adjust the brightness with the quick settings toggle by swiping from the top or from Settings→Display & Brightness. You can adjust it from level 1 to 5 and increase the screen timeout to 20 seconds, and there is also auto-brightness adjustment since it has an ambient light sensor.
When you swipe from the top, you can see quick settings. This has DND mode, power saver, raise to wake toggle, brightness adjustment, flashlight, and settings. Overall, the screen is good for the price.
Pressing the function button shows exercise, custom running coach, exercise records, heart rate, blood oxygen, active score, activity, sleep, stress, essential news, recording transcription, world clock, reminder, phone call, music, remote camera, weather, breathing, voice assistant, stopwatch, timer, alarm, calculator, calendar, flashlight, find my phone, and settings. You can use the crown to cycle through the settings and scroll through the menu easily.
The gesture control feature lets you answer calls, skip songs, and check weather with quick wrist movements like a flip or a double shake, but the company says that this will drain the battery.
Just swipe right from the main watch face to access four customisable widget screens. You can mix and match these features from the app. Swiping from the bottom on the home screen shows an easy notification shade. You can read them, dismiss, and send a quick reply.
Bluetooth Calling
The watch has a built-in calling feature, since it has a microphone and a speaker. It shows the call log, and there is even a dial pad, in addition to the contacts option, which you can add from the app. You can manage up to 30 contacts on your watch, so you can manage calls directly from your wrist.
The call experience is good indoors, and the microphone is able to pick up the voice well. It uses AI-based call noise cancellation that has been trained on over 100,000 voice samples, according to the company. For calls outdoors, it cuts down most background noise, especially in noisy traffic, which was already good in the older models. The speaker output is loud enough for indoors, but not the best outdoors, if you are in a noisy environment.
Software
The CMF Watch Pro 3 uses the Nothing X app on Android and iPhone since the CMF Watch app has been discontinued. It shows all the important details on the health tab.
In the health tab in the home screen, it shows steps, minutes, calories, and stand time and also has tabs for custom running coach, exercise, recent exercise, stress, blood oxygen, heart rate, sleep, active score, and training load. The exercise tab lets you launch workouts from the app itself, and the ‘my devices’ tab shows the battery life, watch faces, recording transcription and more.
The dial gallery shows different types of watch faces, and the company says that there are 120 watch faces. There are a lot of watch faces to choose from, and they are unique and go in with Nothing’s design language, and you can further customize some of the watch faces with different colours and changing the functions.
You can add up to 30 contacts to the watch for quick dial, and there is also a search option to add the contacts. You can also manage sports lists, toggle 24 x 7 heart rate or blood oxygen monitoring, and enable auto stress monitoring. Furthermore, you can enable notifications for any app and for incoming calls. There are also options for standup reminders, water reminders, alarms, DND options, editing quick replies, DND, workout detection toggles, and lots more.
The new recording transcription is available in English. You can record quick messages on the watch, send them to the app with one click, and transcribe them in a few seconds. ChatGPT integration on Nothing OS devices lets you ask questions, get facts, or set reminders, all using natural-language voice prompts. Essential News tool delivers daily digests based on your interests.
Fitness tracking
The CMF Watch Pro 3 has 131 sports modes with auto-recognition of 5 sports. There are warm-up exercises, such as stretches. The new custom running coach is a good addition, offering an 8- to 16-week schedule based
on your goals, fitness level, and recovery needs. It’s designed to improve VO₂ max and fat burn, with structured sessions like tempo runs, intervals, and steady-state efforts, said the company and adds that training adapts in real time to how your body responds, helping you make the most of every run.
This is a good start. Currently you can only train for 10K. Hope we can expect half marathon and full marathon training from the coach in the future like the Zepp Coach.
For outdoor activities, you get all the details such as exercise duration (hours, minutes, seconds), calories, real-time heart rate, pace, steps, distance, exercise performance, recovery time, active score, and training load.
It has built-in dual-band GPS support, so you need not carry the phone with you for outdoor activities. Since it uses 5 GNSS systems such as dual-band GPS (L1 + L5) / GLONASS / GALILEO / QZSS / BEIDOU, it can lock in a few seconds, and it did not get cut off during my run. You can press the side button to pause a workout in the middle.
Compared to tracking apps like Strava running on mobile and the Amazfit Active 2 Square that also has GPS, it is almost accurate in GPS tracking. There are Google Health and Strava syncs, and for iPhone, it syncs to Apple Health. Even though you can sync the data to third-party apps and share from there, it still doesn’t let you share workout data as an image, and you have to rely on screenshots.
The active score feature quantifies your physical activity based on heart rate data from the previous 7 days. The score updates every day and after each session. This is similar to the PAI score in Amazfit watches that was first introduced with the CMF Watch Pro 2. It still doesn’t have group tracking features like tracking friends’ scores in the future.
Sleep Tracking
Sleep tracking shows core sleep, deep sleep, and awake time, as well as REM sleep. Tracking is good without any issues compared to the Active 2 Square smartwatch that I was wearing in the other hand. CMF says that it offers better sleep tracking with enhanced motion sensors and high-frequency heart rate sampling. It can also detect naps.
Heart rate, SpO2 and stress monitoring
The smartwatch uses LED lights and photodiodes to illuminate the blood vessel for a while and monitors the heart rate via the change of green light absorbed, and it uses red light for SpO2 or blood oxygen monitoring. You can’t say this is 100% accurate.
A new optical sensor captures more detailed light signals and finer variations in blood flow from beneath your skin. That means more accurate heart rate tracking, especially during high-intensity workouts and with only minimal skin contact across an array of skin tones. With better signal clarity, readings are up to 7% more accurate during exercise and up to 3.6% more accurate at rest compared to the previous generation, says the company.
Heart rate recordings—both resting and active—and SpO2 readings are good compared to the oximeter. It also shows stress data, but you need to enable this manually. You also need to enable the 24 x 7 SpO2 monitor from the settings; however, this drains the battery quickly.
Battery life
The smartwatch has a 350 mAh battery, bigger than the 305 mAh battery in the older model. The company promises up to 13 days of battery life with typical use, up to 10 days with heavy use, and up to 4.5 days with AOD Mode + Heavy Use.
During my use, I charged the watch for the first time yesterday after 6 days of heavy use, with 24h heart rate, SpO2 and stress tracking, GPS use of about 5 and a half hours during my runs and workouts, notifications turned off and a few calls over Bluetooth during my use.
The company promises 17.2 hours under continuous GPS use on a single charge and up to 17.9 hours of continuous Bluetooth calls on a single charge. Battery life is decent, but I felt with improved sensors for tracking, it is less than the Watch Pro 2 even with a bigger battery.
It has a magnetic charging dock; you can even plug it into a USB port of a PC or a laptop or use a power bank in low-power mode. It takes over 1 and half hours to charge the watch fully from 0%. Charging time doesn’t matter since it lasts for a week or more depending on your use.
Conclusion
The CMF Watch Pro 3 proves to be a substantial upgrade over its predecessor, successfully blending a premium design with a robust set of features at an aggressive price point. Its crisp 1.43-inch AMOLED display, highly accurate dual-band GPS, and the genuinely useful recording transcription tool make it a standout in the budget segment. While there is room for improvement—specifically regarding the slight battery life dip compared to the Watch Pro 2 and a custom running coach that still feels a bit limited—the overall package is incredibly compelling.
So, is it the best smartwatch for the price? If you value precise outdoor tracking, Nothing’s clean aesthetic, and solid Bluetooth calling capabilities, it absolutely is one of the top contenders. Ultimately, for everyday users and casual fitness enthusiasts, the CMF Watch Pro 3 hits the sweet spot between style, smarts, and affordability.
Pricing and availability
The CMF Watch 3 Pro is priced at Rs. 7,999. However, it will be available at a limited-time introductory launch price of Rs. 6,999. It will be available for purchase on Flipkart and participating offline retail stores across India, with early bird sales starting from tomorrow, May 7th, at 12PM and the general sales beginning May 8th.
Alternative
The Amazfit BIP 6, at the same price, offers a bigger and brighter screen, 5 ATM water resistance, and advanced Zepp Coach but lacks dual-band GPS.
Pros
- 1.43″ AMOLED display is crisp
- Solid build quality
- Dual-band GPS support for accurate outdoor activity tracking
- Recording transcription is useful
- Bluetooth calling is good
- Decent battery life
Cons
- Running Coach needs improvement
- No option to share workout data as an image