There’s a graveyard in the smartwatch market sitting somewhere between ₹3,000 and ₹15,000. One side is littered with plasticky fitness bands that fall apart after six months and track your steps with the enthusiasm of a broken pedometer. The other side is guarded by Apple, Samsung, and Garmin, charging north of ₹20,000 for the privilege of actually enjoying what’s strapped to your wrist. For years, the middle ground was just… sad. Generic. Forgettable.
Nothing’s sub-brand, CMF, just dropped a watch directly into that sad space, priced at ₹7,999 (available at an introductory ₹6,999), and somehow it doesn’t belong there. It looks like it escaped from a much more expensive shelf. After two weeks of daily use; runs, meetings, sweaty commutes, late nights, and everything in between, here’s the full picture.
The Thing That Hits You First:
The box opens and your brain immediately does a double-take. This is a metal watch. A precision-milled aluminum frame with flat, squared-off edges that catch light in a way no budget gadget has any right to. The crown on the right side has a satisfying clicky resistance when you scroll through menus, not the mushy, vague rotation you’d expect, and the whole package sits at just 51 grams.
That’s light enough that you genuinely forget it’s on your wrist during a long call or a dinner out. CMF made a deliberate choice this generation: gone are the interchangeable, snap-on bezels from the Watch Pro 2. Some fans will miss that modularity, and honestly, it’s fair to mourn it. But what replaced it is a watch that feels more ‘resolved’, more like a finished product. The design doesn’t need a gimmick. It just looks right.
The 47mm case is a proper statement on the wrist. If you have a larger build, it fills the wrist perfectly. On a smaller wrist, say, under 16cm, it reads a touch large. Not unwearably so, but it leans into sporty rather than refined.
The Green colorway I’ve been testing is particularly wild: a matte pista Green with matching accents on the strap buckle and subtle etching around the display. I’ve worn watches costing four times as much that looked considerably more boring.
The silicone strap is comfortable for everyday wear, but let’s be real about sweat: during a 40-minute afternoon run with the sun doing its worst, the band gets clammy. It dries quickly and doesn’t cause any irritation, but anyone expecting a premium fluoroelastomer feel at this price point should recalibrate. It does the job. Rinse it, dry it, move on.
Living With It Day-to-Day:
The 1.43-inch circular AMOLED screen is genuinely stunning. Walking out into direct afternoon sunlight, the kind that washes out your phone screen and makes you squint like you’re staring into the sun, the display remains fully readable. Crisp, punchy colors, deep blacks, and enough brightness to not make you do an awkward wrist-twist just to check the time. The watch face library is an unexpected highlight: 120+ options, all free, skewing toward clean analog and minimalist digital faces that look closer to something you’d expect on a Fossil or a lower-tier Garmin.
The Nothing X app is where the software story gets interesting. It’s clean. Genuinely clean, none of that bloated dashboard energy where you’re drowning in widgets and color-coded rings. The app scrolls smoothly, the health data is laid out in a way that feels curated rather than dumped, and setup takes about four minutes from unboxing to first notification.
Bluetooth calling works, but with an asterisk. On a quiet street or in your flat, the audio is intelligible, not great, but functional, like a speakerphone on a budget phone from 2019. Walking past traffic, near a construction site, or in any environment with ambient noise? The call quality degrades noticeably. The dual microphone setup helps with pickup on the watch’s end, but the speaker output is the bottleneck.
Use it for quick callbacks and “I’m five minutes away” calls. Don’t rely on it for important conversations.
The voice memo recorder with transcription is, oddly, one of the most quietly useful features on this watch. You lift the wrist, hit the shortcut, speak your thought, and by the time you pull your phone out of your pocket, the transcribed note is already sitting in the Nothing X app.
For capturing random ideas on a walk or a shower thought that hits you mid-commute, it genuinely earns its place. The ChatGPT shortcut is a nice trick too, ask a quick factual question or fire off a reminder, and it processes surprisingly fast for something running on a budget wearable. It’s not a replacement for picking up your phone, but for a 10-second query on the go, it holds up.
On a Run, in the Real World:
Getting GPS lock on the Watch 3 Pro is no longer the patience test it was on its predecessor. Step outside, start a workout, and within a few seconds, sometimes under five, the watch has pinned your location and you’re off. The improved dual-band GPS doesn’t just lock faster; it stays accurate through narrow streets, under tree canopies, and in urban corridors where cheaper watches start drawing squiggly fictional routes. Mid-run, glancing down at distance and pace felt reliable rather than aspirational.
Heart rate tracking is accurate when the band is snug. Wear it loose for comfort during non-exercise hours (as most of us do), and readings can drift. Tighten it slightly before a workout and the data aligns well with what a chest strap would give you in most scenarios.
The sleep tracking is where the Watch 3 Pro quietly impressed me. Restless nights included tossing, turning, a midnight bathroom trip, and the watch still mapped sleep stages with reasonable accuracy. Wake-up time detection is particularly good, logging the actual moment you stir rather than when you finally drag yourself out of bed.
Now, the thing that will genuinely frustrate some buyers: no swimming tracking. The watch has an IP68 rating, so a splash or a rain shower won’t kill it, but CMF explicitly advises against pool use. For the price, this isn’t shocking — but it is a gap. If lap swimming is part of your fitness routine, look elsewhere.
Battery Anxiety? Save It for Another Watch:
Leave the Always-On Display running all day and night, which looks great, by the way, showing a dimmed version of your watch face around the clock, and expect roughly four to five days per charge. That number tracks with real-world use. Turn AOD off and use the watch normally, checking notifications, doing a daily workout, glancing at health stats, and you’re looking at nine to eleven days easily. I hit day nine on my first charge with AOD off and still had around 25% battery left. That is a genuinely impressive number for a watch this feature-packed.
The magnetic charger attaches securely, charges the watch from near-dead to full in just under two hours, and uses a standard USB-A connector. Not USB-C, which is mildly annoying in a world full of USB-C cables, but a minor gripe in the context of everything else this watch does right.
The Parts That Actually Annoyed Me:
No product is perfect, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
Things I Liked:
- The metal build feels shockingly premium for the price point
- AMOLED display handles sunlight better than any watch in this range
- GPS locks fast and stays honest through a full run
- Battery life is class-leading for what you’re getting
- The Nothing X app is the cleanest companion app in this price bracket
- Voice memo transcription actually works well in daily use
- ChatGPT integration adds genuine occasional utility
- Watch faces are genuinely beautiful, not an afterthought
- Sleep tracking is accurate even on restless nights
Things That Annoyed Me:
- Bluetooth call audio quality drops hard in noisy environments
- No swimming tracking despite the IP68 rating is a real miss
- The 47mm size may be too large for smaller wrists with no alternate size option
- Occasional half-second widget loading lag when jumping between apps quickly, not chronic, but noticeable when you’re impatient
- USB-A charging cable in 2026 feels like a deliberate annoyance
- The strap doesn’t use quick-release pins, so swapping to a third-party band requires a tool
Who Should Buy This?, and Who Should Skip It?
Buy the CMF Watch 3 Pro if you’ve been stuck in no-man’s-land between a cheap fitness band and an overpriced flagship watch and you want something that actually looks and feels like a real daily driver without a painful price tag. Buy it if you want long battery life, accurate GPS, a gorgeous screen, and just enough smart features to feel genuinely useful without becoming overwhelming.
Skip it if you swim regularly (the no-swimming-tracking thing is a dealbreaker for lap swimmers), if you need a smaller case size, or if Bluetooth calling is a primary reason for wanting a smartwatch. Also skip it if you’re hoping for an upgrade from the Watch Pro 2, this is a meaningful but evolutionary step, not a reinvention.
At ₹7,999, and especially at the introductory ₹6,999, the CMF Watch 3 Pro doesn’t just punch above its weight class. It quietly embarrasses watches that cost twice as much. Nothing built something that looks the part, lives the part, and for most people’s wrists, earns its place there every single day.
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