I decided to do a do my own take on the Watch 3 Pro review after reading some reviews here on the community website.
To give You my perspective I was a Pebble kickstarter (back in the days when kickstarting was fun) the things that drew me to Pebble was pretty same as the Glyph interface (with the Glyphify app), getting quiet easily noticeable notifications with minor distractions. Plus the ability to reply with pre-canned replies. Back in the days it was fire.
Later the Android Wear and WearOS came along and stepped up the ante with the possibility to reply with a voice command or keyboard (I frequently used my nose as an input device when my hands were messed in oil and grease) plus the ability to set notification mirroring so You can easily mark less important notifications as read and don’t have to deal with them later on your phone.
The downside of every WearOS device is however speed or battery life the device is either slow and unresponsive or it kills the battery in less than a day which makes the sleep monitoring feature obsolete (You either use the watch on the next day and charge it through the night or monitor your sleep).
I went through Pebble -> Huawei Watch -> Ticwatch 3 -> Galaxy Watch 7 -> CMF Watch 3 Pro
I went for the CMF Watch 3 Pro to give it a try an get back to the less frequent recharges.
As for the phone I’m on the NP(1) - still does what it should, looks best of them all and feels great in hand.
Pros: (for a wearable enthusiast not a sports geek)
- The display is nice;
- Battery life is great so I use it non-stop with all the bells and whistles (that gives me around 4 full days of juice of heavy use) ;
- It’s very responsive;
- GPS tracking is better than my last Galaxy (and it lasts multiple hours of precise tracking);
- Has a standard watchband mounting (I love to change straps);
- AOD works great (Normally I use it in AOD mode and wake it up with a button that moves me right to the activity I was in);
Cons:
- No notification mirroring, that is a real downer for me;
- The built in/Nothing X reminders system is rubbish, there is no easy way to add reminders there; (It’s good that Google Calendar and Tasks notifications work OK);
- The built in asisstant extension, works with Gemini only when the phones screen is on;
- No possibility to change the notification sound (the beep is killing me);
- No even analog standard watch-faces you could modify like the digital ones;
- The automatic tracking of workouts works poorly (walks, cycling, mountain biking: thats my 95% of activities), I frequently forget to start the activities manually and this worked way better on any Android Wear or WearOS watch I used so far;
Minor things that Annoy (me)
- In the music control widget you have to click on the speaker icon to enable volume control via the knob, it should be the other way around;
- I think that the display in the AOD mode does not shift it’s position (if it does than this is a Pros) and I’m afraid I might get some decent burn-ins through it’s life;
- Somehow the contact names are not shared with the Watch if they are not on the Nothing X app frequent list;
Overall: I love it, and hate some of it: for the price you get a watch You trash like a G-Shock (I already have some decent dents on the bezel) it was covered in transmission fluid, grease and oil multiple times. It’s fast and responsive and the calling works great, but it annoys me that I have to go through the same notifications on the phone later. I love it and at the same time miss some of the WearOS features.
I hope it gets better with the NothingX app updates,
