It is designed for everyday users and casual fitness explorers, CMF claims their CMF Watch 3 Pro is their most intelligent smartwatch to date.
The CMF Watch 3 Pro is available in Dark Grey, Light Grey and Orange. I naturally opt for the Orange colourway, it is totally on point with the DRN theme colour. The theming goes beyond just the interchangeable straps, but I will cover that later.
tl;dr
The CMF Watch 3 Pro offers impressive hardware and a stylish design at an entry-level price point, but its potential is currently limited by significant bugs and inconsistencies in the accompanying Nothing X app.
First Impressions & Design: Unboxing the CMF Watch 3 Pro
I have been rocking a hybrid smartwatch on and off for about two years now. More off than on this year due to recurring pain in my wrists that I haven’t been able to shake.
I have been extra sensitive to additional weight on my wrist, so at 51g, the CMF Watch 3 Pro is a good 37% lighter than what I have been using. Every little bit helps! The CMF Watch 3 Pro casing is made from metal, but the bezel is plastic.
Out of the box, the Watch 3 Pro is deconstructed. No, I don’t mean in the Ikea way with an instruction manual and an Allen (hex) key. The watch and wrist straps are packed separately in the packaging. It takes seconds to assemble.
Over the watch face is a sticker with a QR code. Scan it to get to the app store to download the Nothing X app.
The setup process is pretty straightforward, although you will have to navigate through allowing a whole bunch of permissions, in particular importance, the allow to run in background setting for the Nothing X app.
It will take a few minutes to get through, and you should take your time reading through and following the instructions to minimise issues. There are a lot of permissions to set, depending on what functions and features you want active on the Watch 3 Pro.
Updated features and specifications
The Watch 3 Pro has retained the IP68 rating for water and dust resistance.
It has gained 2 days of battery life from the previous iteration, the CMF Watch Pro 2, taking it to 13 days of battery life under typical use.
CMF claims 11 days of battery life with heavier tracking, and up to 4.5 days with Always-On Display enabled.
The improved motion monitoring and tracking is underpinned by a 6-axis accelerometer sensor, which is a 50% increase from the CMF Watch Pro 2.
In-Use: Daily Performance & Notifications
The CMF Watch 3 Pro comes pre-installed with a number of watch faces. Within the app itself are more choices if none of the defaults take your fancy.
One of the core reasons I wear a smart watch is less about tracking my health (although I really should not be so laissez-faire about that), it is more about not missing important notifications.
With my phone in my pocket, I often don’t hear or feel the notification come through. The world does not end, but it can get annoying though. As a result, the first thing I do is set up the key things notifications I have on my smart watch. After a few years of experience, I know exactly what to whitelist.
The Nothing X app is where I can shape the CMF Watch 3 Pro experience to what I want.
Front and center in the Nothing X app is the dial gallery. The CMF Watch 3 Pro is preloaded with six dial faces, which is the maximum that can be stored on the watch. If you want one of the other ones available, then something has to give.
Similarly it is preloaded with six widgets. Just like the dial faces, you will have to drop something to swap another in.
Fitness & Health Tracking: A Deep Dive into Features
Under the hood is a new dual-band five-system GPS setup that claims to be faster and more accurate for route tracking in any environment. It also has a new four-channel heart rate sensor offers improved accuracy across all skin tones and workout intensities.
It also offers all the health monitoring functions you would expect from a smart watch in 2025, namely:
- 24/7 heart rate
- 24/7 blood oxygen
- auto-stress
- enhanced sleep tracking
- water reminder
- stand up reminder
CMF states that the Watch 3 Pro supports 131 sports modes, along with a personalised running coach that builds and adjusts plans based on your fitness.
It is no state secret that I absolutely suck at running. Put me in the water and I will swim forever, but running has never been my forte. Aside from bolting for a train or bus that is.
I did play with the running coach, setting myself some easy laughably easy goals. It asked me when I wanted to start, what are my initial goals, then the coach asked me to go on a trial run of at least 12 minutes duration. Well I never got there and it didn’t remind me either.
So I guess I should have used the built-in reminder function to tell me to get off my couch and do a run.
The CMF Watch3 Pro has a sleep tracking feature that also breaks down your sleep pattern.
My ability to fall asleep at will is the stuff of legends. My partner recently comment on that the interval between me putting the phone on charge and being fast asleep is virtually non existent.
I am a bit iffy on how accurate the tracking is, given that more than once it failed to track the time I was awake overnight. On at least one occasion I was up for a pit stop, had a five minutes conversation with my partner before going back to sleep, but the Watch 3 Pro did not register that.
A Unique Feature: Recording Transcription
Something different offered by the CMF Watch 3 Pro is a Recording Transcription function.
You could record a sound bite or a conversation, directly with the CMF Watch 3 Pro, then have it transcribed to text in the Nothing X app.
It does come with some caveats, such as English is the preferred language, and the ability to transcribe accurately understandably depends highly on the source material.
I tried it out just counting numbers outdoors, and played a snippet of a podcast. Both in a relatively ideal environment with low background noise. The transcription was quite accurate.
I played a snippet of a video with Cantonese speakers, and the best it could do was to tell me [Speaking in Chinese]. I mean, not wrong … but no content. It didn’t like French though, telling me that system supports English only.
Interesting enough though is that it could identify Chinese but not the dialect, but just failed on French.
Software Issues: The Frustrations of the Nothing X App
Using the CMF Watch 3 Pro was not without frustrations. This section ended up being longer than I usually have when it comes to gripes, but I feel that I need to be detailed. That said, I believe (and hope) that much of the issues are software related, in particular when Nothing is transitioning to the Nothing X app for all their connected devices.
I rely heavily on my curated notifications on the smart watch to keep my day under control. In between work, family and DRN, there is an intricate choreography to making sure things happen when they need to happen.
Unfortunately this is where the CMF Watch 3 Pro has been less than sterling for me.
I have multiple calendars, separate ones for the kids, the family. I have a work calendars on top of that. In the Nothing X app, calendar sync is a all or nothing toggle. Not a big deal as it is something I need.
But the issue is when I get phantom reminders. I get notifications for entries that does not exist. The first day this happened, I was already in a meeting and the CMF Watch 3 Pro buzzed me to say I am expected in another meeting, with a difficult customer.
There was a rising sense panic as I tried to concentrate on the meeting I am already in, and trying to figure out what the other meeting was about. The meeting didn’t exist, at least not in the time and space the watch was telling me. It was actually from the project which was months ago.
This and other phantom calendar reminders has plagued me a from a few times a day to a few times a week and there is nothing I can do to track down the gremlins. They are not entries created out of nothing, they were all genuine but historical entries.
To add insult to injury, the reminder will keep buzzing away until you dismiss it on the watch. I can assure you that I was not impressed to have to do that in the middle of the night, for an appointment that did not exist.
Another feature I am having issues with is the important contacts. The Nothing X app allows me to add 30 numbers of important contacts. I generally have family, my boss and colleague on the list.
The issue I found is that the app pulls the data in what appears to be a random way.
I have multiple contact numbers for people in my address book. I didn’t think that is unusual but hey, I could be just different. The app pulls in the names, but it has randomly associated one of the contact numbers associated with the name.
There does not seem to be a way to force an association, and it does not pull in multiple entries for the same name so I can’t just look for it. It was just frustrating because it seems the workaround is to create a separate address book entry with a different name.
Another major pain point I encountered with the wake on lift. I am used to being able to lift my hand and quickly see the time or notification. The wake on lift feature on the CMF Watch 3 Pro is slow and inconsistent.
Often I find that the watch screen will wake up, after I had already glanced at a blank screen and put my arm back down. On the occasions I remember to pause after lifting, it does not always wake the screen up until I press the button on the crown.
Final Verdict: A Promising Device with Growing Pains
The CMF Watch 3 Pro is available in dark grey, light grey and orange. My review unit of orange is eye catching, but overall the colourway is the big wow factor.
Andrew Freshwater, Head of Smart Products Marketing at Nothing says, “We designed Watch 3 Pro to be the perfect starting point for anyone beginning their health and fitness journey.”
This puts me in a bit of a conundrum as I feel despite the Pro designator, the CMF Watch 3 Pro is an entry level device with a higher RRP than other entry level competitors. The foundations for a great device seems to be largely there in the hardware, but Nothing needs to step it up with the software.
I do want to point out, that the Nothing X app is the new software that all their devices will transition to for management. Hopefully what I have experience is just growing pains. The question is, will CMF fix it in Watch 3 Pro, or will it come in the next iteration?
The CMF Watch 3 Pro has a RRP of A$179 and is available from Optus and JB Hi-Fi. There are deals to be have on Amazon which sees the black unit down to A$167, and the other two colourways to A$136.46.
DRN would like to thank Nothing for providing the review unit.
