CMF launched its three new products recently – a phone, a watch and a pair of earphones. I tried its new watch Pro 2, which is available for Rs 5,499, for a couple of weeks, and here’s how it went:
The Watch Pro 2 is made of aluminium alloy, but it doesn’t entirely feel so. The 22mm straps are silicon and the watch itself is quite comfortable to wear. It doesn’t weigh too much and sits well on the wrist without any points of discomfort. The top rounded bezel around the 1.32-inch rounded display can be replaced with another one, but I am not sure how many would like to do that considering it is priced at $19.0 (Rs 1,591) along with a pair of straps and isn’t officially available here.
The strap has sufficient pinholes and a single loop to go with it. Other than the CMF branding, the bezels also carry the crown button that’s rotatable for scrolling purposes while the bezels don’t do anything. Colour options include orange, dark grey (the one I tried), light grey and blue. It’s an IP68-rated dust and water-resistant smartwatch (but not for swimming).
The Watch Pro 2’s 1.32-inch AMOLED display is quite bright and usable under direct sunlight outdoors. It can be set to always-on, or you choose to set it to wake up when you lift your wrist. It shows up when you lift your wrist about 9 out of 10 times, so it isn’t unreliable that way.
Running on a custom OS (version 1.0.0.46) that’s not based on Android or anything, but you can pair it with both Android and iOS. Using the CMF Watch app, you can set watch faces (around 100, on the watch only 5 can be stored at once), change settings or sync data. You can sync data with Google Fit but it doesn’t always work flawlessly, breaking the sync in between at times.
Swiping right takes you to phone widgets like contacts, keyboard and music player while swiping left on the home screen brings you to your fitness activities. Swiping down takes you to settings widgets, and swiping up gives you pending notifications.
There’s a heart rate monitor, stress monitor as well as SpO2 sensors for blood oxygen along with an accelerometer. Heart rate monitoring seemed a bit off to me compared to a dedicated device while sleep monitoring as well as step count was within + - 5% reach of a high-end smartwatch, which is nice to see. You can make calls over Bluetooth and the speaker is not tiny while the mic does an okay job, too. Notifications from your phone work reliably but replying to them can be a little iffy with the preview going away.
Powered by a 305 mAh battery unit, the watch lasted me 5 days with always-on, heart monitoring enabled, but 8-9 days with both things switched off, but of course, a lot less if you use GPS for activities a lot of times. You can charge it from 1% to full in under two hours using the bundled charging cable.
In brief, the Watch Pro 2 does have its pros and cons – battery life and a variety of colours being a good point that people can pick from. While its software is smoother than the predecessor, things like heart rate monitoring and syncing with your phone as a true device to reply with is a bit of a hit-and-miss.