Performs a lot better than it looks – Firstpost

Pro:
– Lightweight and comfortable around the wrist
– Sharp, high-res AMOLED display
– Reliable health and fitness tracking
– Built-in GPS, Bluetooth calling
– Good battery backup with less calling
– Simple, pleasant and lag-free UI
– Clean and uncomplicated companion app

Cons:
– GPS takes a while to get a lock
– Polarizing watch design
– Not swim proof

Price: Rs4,999
Rating: 4/5

Nothing’s more affordable sub-brand, CMF, has released its second fitness watch in India, the Watch Pro 2. For its modest asking price, it seems to be packed with a lot of goodness ranging from a high-quality OLED display to a metal body to built-in GPS. But does it have the accuracy to match its impressive feature list? Let us answer that and tell you everything you need to know about it in the next few minutes.

Polarizing but striking design, sturdy build and comfortable to wear
The CMF Watch Pro 2 doesn’t look anything like its predecessor. For starters, this has a circular dial as compared to a rectangular one on the Watch Pro. While the design is bound to grab attention, it totally polarized opinions about its aesthetics. While some thought it was too cool, others felt it looked like a toy and can’t be taken seriously. I thought it was overly sporty – something one can wear during workouts or casual meetings, but not the most suited in a formal setting.

The bigger irony was, the body looked plasticky when it’s actually made of metal. This was true of the light gray variant that we got for review, but may not be the case with its dark gray variant. I won’t be critical of the orange vegan leather straps as they are user-replaceable with any third-party straps of the same width, in case you don’t like them. In fact, even the dial can be replaced with something more flutter with sharper edges if you don’t like the rounded one here; a spare dial isn’t bundled along though.

Irrespective of which side of the design debate you fall on, there is no denying that the build quality and finish are quite good. There’s subtle branding on the bezels and you get a circular crown (physical button) at the top right.

The crown allows you to access different functions of this watch in conjunction with the touchscreen display. It can also be rotated and used as a scroll wheel to browse through menus or watch faces. The watch weighs under 45 grams and is comfortable to wear for long, and the bundled straps seem durable and don’t cause sweating or skin irritation.

Sharp and responsive AMOLED display with unique watch faces
The CMF Watch Pro 2 has a 1.32-inch circular AMOLED display with a resolution of 466 x 466 pixels, making the screen sharp enough to read content clearly on it. Though not among the largest around, it doesn’t feel small and looks just right even on leaner wrists. It can get up to 620 nits bright, which makes it perfectly legal under bright sunlight. You get five levels of brightness, of which, level 3 is good enough when indoors and may need to be pushed up a bit under the sun. Or simply set it to auto and let the watch handle the brightness for you.

I did not see a mention of any scratch-resistant glass or oleophobic coating in the spec sheet, but the screen has remained scratch-free even after a month of use. Also, I didn’t have to wipe it frequently as it didn’t attract too many fingerprints or smudge marks. You can flick your wrist to turn the screen on or press the physical button; both work well. Covering the screen with your palm turns it off. You can turn off the flick gesture during your sleep hours or when in a dark room like a theater.

The watch comes bundled with some neat watch faces and you get access to more through the CMF Watch companion app available on iOS and Android both. No, you cannot use it with the Nothing X app. You get a handful of slots on the watch to store watch faces of your choosing and change them as per your mood or need. Some faces let you choose the information to be displayed like steps count, calories burned, battery status and more. A lot of watch faces are nicely designed and exhibit shades of Nothing’s design language.

Snappy and clean user interface and an uncomplicated companion app
Firstly, you need to download the CMF Watch app and sync the Watch Pro 2 with it over Bluetooth. The setup takes a few minutes but is generally smooth.

While the app gives you access to watch faces and further details of the health metrics and workout data, you can access a lot of it on the watch itself. For instance, you can view the details of your workouts or breakup of sleep data on the watch screen without having to open the app, which is great.

The UI is simple, fluid, lag-free and minimalist. It rarely uses more than three color shades on a given screen but looks quite elegant. It is easy to use even for a novice. You can swipe down on the home screen for quick settings, swipe up for notifications and swipe left or right for access to commonly used functions and widgets like daily goals progress, heart rate, blood oxygen levels, sleep data and more. The crown acts as a shortcut for all the watch functions and also doubles up as a home button from any screen.

The CMF Watch app is equally easy to grasp thanks to its clean and nicely laid out interface. Again, it just about uses four color shades but looks polished and uncluttered. All the fitness cards are neatly arranged in boxes of different shapes and sizes that complement each other well. They display your heart rate, stress and blood oxygen levels, sleep data, daily activity progress, workout details and more. You get more details if you go deeper by tapping a card. There is no overload of information to overwhelm someone new to fitness watches.

Generally reliable health and fitness tracking, but sluggish GPS connectivity
The CMF Watch Pro 2 can monitor various health parameters like heart rate, blood oxygen, stress levels, menstrual cycle for women and sleep, and some of them round the clock if you wish to. The speed and accuracy of SpO2 measurements is pretty good. If you wear the watch right and keep your hand steady, you get a near-accurate result in about 15-20 seconds with just a one point deviation at most from a clinical oximeter.

All day oxygen and stress measurements are also available but they drain the battery faster. Sleep tracking generally works well on this watch. The overall sleep duration mostly seemed correct, except on a couple of occasions where it indicated I fell asleep a lot later than I actually did. There was also an instance where I took off the watch immediately after getting up and the watch thought I was asleep for another hour. Barring these, the tracking was generally fine. It tracks the quantum of core (light) sleep, deep sleep, REM periods and awake time.

This CMF watch claims to track 120 different workouts that include your usual indoor and outdoor walking, running, cycling, free training, yoga along with some popular sports. One notable omission here is swimming for obvious reasons. This watch has an IP68 rating for ingress protection that can save it from immersion in shallow water (1.5 meters) for up to 30 minutes but does not make it swim-proof. A watch needs to have at least a 3ATM rating to make it safe for swimming in a pool.

The CMF Watch Pro 2 has a built-in GPS module with five-satellite positioning systems to track your outdoor activities accurately. While the tracking is quite accurate, it takes a long time to get a GPS lock even when outdoors. It takes about five minutes to get a lock, and post that the link stays strong as long as you stay outdoors. If you stop the workout midway and try to resume soon after, it still takes a minute or two to reconnect. It’s a rare bug that I haven’t come across in other watches, and can probably be fixed with a firmware update.

The pedometer on this watch that keeps track of the steps count is largely on the money. The reading is either accurate or slightly lower but never adds false steps, which is great. Another thing I liked about this watch is the warm-up mode before weight training or some other workouts. Not only does it give you a few minutes to warm up but also suggests a few stretching exercises with lifelike animations on the watch screen, which are incredibly cool and helpful.

Its utility goes beyond fitness
Like most fitness watches these days, this CMF watch also supports a Bluetooth calling function, wherein you can receive or reject calls from the watch itself as long as it is synced with a smartphone with an active connection. It works well.

You can also receive notifications and messages from various apps installed on the synced phone on the watch screen. You can read the messages but cannot reply back from the watch. In addition, there are a bunch of utilities preloaded on the watch like a calculator, stopwatch, weather updates, music and camera control and some more.

Good battery life if used largely for health and fitness tracking, and less for calling
The CMF Watch Pro 2 has a rated battery backup of up to 11 days under test conditions. It actually manages to get close if you turn off the Always-on Display (AOD) and calling feature. It drops to less than half even with an average amount of calling. The battery life can vary significantly depending on your usage pattern and the features you turn on. Since I had access to the watch for over a month, I tried different usage scenarios.

With continuous heart rate monitoring turned on, 2 hours of total GPS usage, live tracking of three hour-long indoor workouts, four SpO2 and manual stress readings each daily, sleep tracking for four nights and notifications limited to email and SMS, the watch’s battery lasted for 10 days, which is not bad at all, but without calling. With Bluetooth calling enabled, it dropped to 5 days.

With notifications and calling both turned off, it went on for two full weeks. Probably not the way people will use this watch, but just in case you wish to use it only as a fitness tracker, you will be blessed with a solid battery life. The watch takes less than two hours to charge fully with a standard USB charger and the bundled magnetic pin charging cable.

Price and verdict
The CMF Watch Pro 2 is priced at Rs 4,999 in India with a one-year warranty and can often be spotted for Rs 500 less on certain e-commerce platforms. That is a highly competitive price for a feature-rich watch like this with a sharp and vibrant AMOLED display, built-in GPS, reliable health tracking, useful companion app, Bluetooth calling, some handy utilities and decent battery backup. But you will have to make do with its chunky and casual design. If you like it, you just can’t go wrong with this watch.

As for competition, there’s hardly anything with a round dial and GPS that comes to mind under Rs 5,000. But if you prefer a rectangular dial and a more conventional design that is suitable for all occasions, the Honor Choice Watch is a great option. It pretty much offers all the key features of the CMF Watch Pro 2, is also swim-proof and is currently selling for a similar price too. Choose one depending on the design that appeals to you more.