A quick note before we begin: we received the CMF Watch 3 Pro a long time ago and have had it on our wrist for a few weeks now. Personal emergencies meant the review got delayed, but if there's a silver lining, it's this - extended time with a device strips away the honeymoon effect. What you're reading is not a first-impressions take dressed up as a review. This is a no-holds-barred assessment of a watch that has been through gym sessions, outdoor runs, long workdays, and late nights. We have the Light Green variant, and after all this time, we have a lot to say.
CMF, the sub-brand under Nothing, introduced the CMF Watch 3 Pro at a price point of Rs. 7,999 in India. This price tag puts it squarely in one of the most cutthroat segments in the country. Brands like boAt, Noise, Fire-Boltt, and Amazfit have been trading punches here for years, and the consumers have never had it better. So when a relatively new name like CMF shows up with a watch that costs more than most of the competition, it had better bring something worth paying for.
Does it? Let's find out.
CMF Watch 3 Pro Review: Design and Display
Pull the CMF Watch 3 Pro out of its box, which, for the record, includes the watch itself, a magnetic charging cable, and an instruction manual, and the first thing that strikes you is how considered the design feels. In a category flooded with watches that all seem to be cut from the same template, CMF has managed to craft something, well, different.
We have the Light Green variant, and it is a differently looking piece of hardware. The colour is muted rather than garish and it sits well on the wrist. The aluminium alloy case is precision-milled, but the lightweightedness is a bit off-putting. Personally, I associated heavy watches with a premium feel. The watch looks great on casual outfits, gym runs, or treks, but I'd rather keep it at home when I am out attending meetings or headed to a boardroom. With a 47mm dial, it's on the larger side, and if you're coming from a 40mm or 44mm watch, there will be an adjustment period. Even more so, if you have a slim wrist.
One design decision that might split opinions is the removal of the interchangeable bezel system that was present on the CMF Watch Pro 2. It gave that watch a modular, hackable quality that enthusiasts loved. The Watch 3 Pro trades that in for a cleaner, more unified look. Whether that's progress or regression depends on what you valued about the previous design.
The right-side crown is one of the watch's best physical features. It's functional and satisfying to use. You can rotate it to scroll through menus, press it to wake the display or go back, and pause workouts mid-session. It gives the watch a proper tool-like feel that cheaper alternatives, with their flat side buttons, simply cannot replicate.
Coming to the display, the 1.43-inch AMOLED screen at 466x466 pixels is punchy, vibrant, and sharp, with colours that pop in a way that makes the interface a pleasure to look at. At 670 nits peak brightness, it holds up reasonably well under direct sunlight, though on dark-background watch faces, and there are over 120 to choose from, you may find yourself nudging the brightness up when outdoors. Auto-brightness, driven by the onboard ambient light sensor, works well and reacts quickly to changing environments, which reduces how often you need to fiddle with it manually. The 60Hz refresh rate is standard for the segment, but occasionally the scrolling feels slightly uneven under fast swipes.
The silicone strap is the another area where the hardware lets itself down. It's flexible and feels soft initially, but during extended wear, especially during workouts, it traps sweat and leaves your wrist feeling uncomfortable and itchy. The good news is that the Watch 3 Pro uses a standard 22mm quick-release band system, so you can swap in something more breathable.
CMF Watch 3 Pro Review: Features
The CMF Watch 3 Pro is a feature-rich device, and CMF has clearly not held back in this department. The headline additions over its predecessor include dual-band GPS (L1+L5), an improved optical heart rate sensor, sleep tracking with REM and nap detection, a new recording transcription tool, and ChatGPT integration, the last of which, frustratingly, is exclusive to Nothing OS devices.
The companion app is the Nothing X app, which replaced the older CMF Watch app. It's available on both Android and iOS, and it is genuinely one of the better-designed companion apps in this segment. The typography is clean, health metrics are laid out in easy-to-digest card-style widgets, and navigating to any specific setting takes no more than a few taps. There's a mandatory login, which is an annoyance, but once past that, the app experience is smooth.
Bluetooth calling, via the built-in microphone and speaker, works well indoors. AI noise cancellation, reportedly trained on over 100,000 voice samples, does a decent job of cutting out ambient noise during calls, though it's not quite magic in truly chaotic environments like busy roads. The speaker is respectably loud for indoor use.
The Essential News feature, which reads out curated news summaries, is a fun idea in theory, but its execution leans heavily towards an American news sensibility. For Indian users, this can feel like an odd fit. The ability to localise the news feed or skip individual stories is absent, which blunts the feature's usefulness significantly.
The Recording Transcription feature, which lets you record voice notes on the watch and transcribe them via the app, is similarly hit or miss. When it works, it's a genuinely useful tool for quick notes when your phone isn't at hand. When it doesn't, and it doesn't with some regularity, it produces transcriptions that are either wrong enough to be confusing or wrong enough to be comic. Saying 'Remind me to call the doctor' and getting back something entirely different is not a workflow you can rely on. It's a feature with potential that needs more work.
Gesture control, allowing you to answer calls or skip tracks with wrist movements, is present but comes with a caveat from CMF itself - it drains the battery. It's optional, and most users would be wise to leave it off.
The watch supports 131 sports modes, syncs with Strava, Google Health, and Apple Health, and offers weather updates, alarms, a stopwatch, remote camera control, and music playback controls. For a watch at this price, the breadth of features is genuinely impressive.
CMF Watch 3 Pro Review: Workout Modes
The CMF Watch 3 Pro is not trying to be a Garmin or an Apple Watch Ultra, and that's perfectly fine. What it is trying to be is a reliable fitness companion for everyday users and casual athletes, and in that role, it largely succeeds.
The dual-band GPS (L1+L5), backed by five GNSS systems including GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, and BeiDou, locks on quickly and holds on through most conditions. Compared to GPS watches we've tested in the same price range, the tracking here is more consistent, and distance data aligns closely with reference devices. There are occasional small deviations, but nothing that would concern anyone outside of serious marathon training.
The improved optical sensor brings measurable gains in heart rate accuracy during workouts /CMF claims up to 7 percent better accuracy during high-intensity sessions compared to the previous generation, and from our testing, the numbers hold up well against a reference device. Post-workout heart rate recovery readings were closely matched with a premium smartwatch used simultaneously.
The new Custom Running Coach is one of the more ambitious features on the Watch 3 Pro, offering an 8 to 16-week training plan built around your fitness level, VO2 max estimates, and recovery data. Currently, it only supports training up to a 10K goal, which is a limitation worth flagging for anyone with half marathon or marathon ambitions. The concept is sound, and the plans are structured intelligently with tempo runs, intervals, and steady-state sessions, but it feels like version one of something that will improve significantly over time.
Auto-detection for five workout types is present but inconsistent. For walks, cycle rides, or informal workouts, it frequently misses the mark or activates too late to capture the full session. Anyone who moves regularly but tends to forget to manually start tracking will find this frustrating. Manually starting workouts from the watch or app is the more reliable path.
The IP68 rating handles sweaty sessions and the occasional splash without complaint, but there is a notable gap - no swim tracking. For users who spend time in the pool, this is a hard limitation that no software update can address.
Step counting is accurate in normal use, though ghost steps, phantom counts when you're not moving, do occur occasionally. They're infrequent enough that daily totals remain meaningful, but it's worth knowing.
Sleep tracking, which includes core, deep, REM, and nap detection, performed consistently across our testing period, returning data that aligned with how we actually felt after each night.
CMF Watch 3 Pro Review: Battery Life
Battery life is one area where the CMF Watch 3 Pro does not disappoint. The 350mAh battery, an upgrade from the 305mAh in its predecessor, delivers real-world endurance that matches what CMF claims for typical use.
In our testing, with 24-hour heart rate monitoring enabled, a few GPS workouts per week, Bluetooth calls, and notifications active, the watch comfortably ran for six to eight days on a single charge. That is genuinely impressive for a smartwatch at any price, and it is one of the most compelling practical arguments for choosing this watch over more spec-heavy alternatives.
Enabling always-on display mode, continuous SpO2 monitoring, and GPS-heavy workouts will bring that number down significantly. The company estimates around 17 hours of continuous GPS use. GPS sessions of an hour or so within otherwise typical usage will shave a day or two off the total. Even under what most users would consider heavy use, getting through a week before needing to charge is a realistic expectation.
Charging is done via a magnetic dock that can draw power from any USB source, including a laptop port or power bank, which adds convenience. A full charge from flat takes just under two hours. Given the week-long battery life between charges, this is a perfectly acceptable trade-off. You're charging this watch roughly as often as you do a pair of wireless earbuds.
One thing to note - enabling all sensors simultaneously, continuous heart rate, SpO2, stress monitoring, and always-on display, is a fast path to battery anxiety. Selectively enabling features based on what you actually use yields far better results.
CMF Watch 3 Pro Review: Verdict
After weeks of daily use, the CMF Watch 3 Pro earns a recommendation at its price point, but it's one that comes with a clear-eyed view of its limitations.
This smartwatch from CMF is a confident one. The design is distinctive without being loud, the AMOLED display is among the better panels you'll find at this price, and the dual-band GPS tracking is more dependable than most rivals in the segment. Battery life, in particular, is a genuine strong suit, six to eight days of real-world endurance is the kind of number that changes how you interact with a wearable. You stop worrying about charging and start just using it. The Nothing X companion app deserves a special mention too — it's cleaner and more intuitive than what most competing brands ship, and that everyday friction reduction matters more than it might seem on paper.
That said, the Watch 3 Pro has a few rough edges that are hard to look past after extended use. The Recording Transcription feature is a good idea that simply isn't ready for prime time, inconsistent output means you can't build a habit around it. The Essential News tool leans heavily Western in its curation, making it a largely irrelevant feature for most Indian users as it stands. Auto-workout detection, meanwhile, misses too many sessions to be trusted, which is a frustrating gap in a watch that's clearly pitching itself to the fitness-conscious. And while the silicone strap is passable out of the box, anyone who wears this through serious workouts will likely want to replace it fairly quickly.
At Rs. 7,999, the CMF Watch 3 Pro sits at the higher end of the budget smartwatch bracket, and it mostly justifies the ask. It won't replace a Garmin for serious athletes, and it won't blend in at a formal dinner the way a more understated watch might. But for the everyday user who wants dependable fitness tracking, solid battery life, practical Bluetooth calling, and a watch that actually looks like it has a point of view, the CMF Watch 3 Pro is one of the better options available in India right now.
Pros
- Bright, punchy AMOLED display with good outdoor visibility
- Reliable dual-band GPS that holds up in real-world use
- Outstanding battery life. Six to eight days on a single charge
- Bluetooth calling works well for everyday use
- Nothing X app is clean, intuitive, and genuinely well-designed
Cons
- Recording Transcription is too inconsistent to rely on
- Essential News lacks any meaningful localisation for Indian users
- Auto-workout detection misses sessions too frequently
- Silicone strap traps sweat during extended or intense wear
- No swim tracking despite IP68 water resistance
Rating: 3.8 / 5
