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- So yeah, this smartwatch is $69.
But, but, before you type it, is it though?
Is it really that nice?
Is it that good?
I feel like we should define good first,
because going into this, I was thinking,
"Just the fact that you can get
"a fully functioning smartwatch for $69 in 2023,"
just that by itself, on its face, was kind of amazing.
'Cause we live in a world
where you can easily spend hundreds
and hundreds of dollars on a smartwatch.
But clearly, there's a wide spectrum
of what these things can be capable of.
So this one, just the simple stuff, right?
Just the basics, the time, notifications, step counter,
heart rate, calorie counter, sleep tracking,
just on its face, that's good enough
for 95% of people, right?
Well, let's just start with the basics here.
This is a square smartwatch.
It's got this orange silicon band that comes in the box
and it feels surprisingly similar
to any other smartwatch band.
And then it's got a 1.96-inch diagonal display.
The color is metallic gray,
but the material here is definitely not nearly as metallic.
It does say aluminum alloy on their site,
but if you didn't tell me that, just holding it,
I would swear this is 100% made of plastic on the outside.
But, you know, at least it's coated
in sort of a matte finish on the back part
that's touching your wrist around the heart rate sensors.
And then there's some engravings with a bunch of text
in the Nothing font, like the model number
and the headquarters location,
which happens to be Cheapside, London,
which is very appropriate.
Honestly, it doesn't look or feel terrible,
but it just, it clearly has all the obvious shortcuts
of a cheap product the more you look closely at it.
You know, the bezels are thick
and also weirdly uneven all the way around.
There is no rotating dial, just the single shallow,
cheap feeling button right above the small tinny speaker
to the side and no fancy puck to charge, just USBA
to dual pin cable that comes in the box.
It magnetizes to the back, which in hindsight,
I guess is just as convenient as a fancy puck,
but, you know, a little less elegant looking.
But I guess, the key here is all of it works and it's solid.
Like, the brightness outside, it gets up to 600 nits.
There's no auto brightness though,
so you gotta change brightness manually, like this.
But hey, at its max, it's very good indoors, at least.
And the whole thing is IP68 water and dust resistant,
which is, first of all, great if you want to go out
and sweat in it or go out in the rain.
But also wasn't there a long period of time
where OnePlus and Nothing products didn't get IP certified
'cause it cost too much extra?
But now, the CMF watch has it,
but then it all works with the CMF Watch app on your phone,
which is where all the data gets sent via Bluetooth.
So honestly, there's not too many different clever ways
to design a watch UI,
so, you know, if you get a smart watch,
if you've used one before,
you'll basically already know how to use this one.
So your watch face is your starting point.
And then you can swipe through fitness data,
which looks surprisingly like Apple Watch rings.
It's got your heart rate history for the past 24 hours.
The weather is there in that simple dot matrix way,
plus sleep time if you use it to track sleep,
then a single press on that plastic feeling button
will take you to your app list,
which you can view as a grid or as a list.
And then there's a good amount of apps in here
that just come on the watch.
So an exercise app that has a ton of different exercises,
the blood oxygen app,
which gives you your measurements whenever you want.
You've also got a phone call app
and yes, you can receive phone calls on the watch
and that tinny little speaker will crank out audio
as loud as it can to facilitate a real conversation.
There's also a music app,
which gives you just music controls
for whenever something is playing on your phone.
There's even a camera remote app,
which it doesn't actually open the camera app on my phone
or show a viewfinder preview,
but when I do have the camera app open,
the shutter button does actually work, so there's that.
There's even a voice assistant app,
which if you open it, basically just opens Google Assistant
on your phone and then uses the mics
and speakers on the watch for you to interact with it.
The Find My Phone app is hilarious though.
It only works when the CMF app is open
or running on the phone.
So if you've just closed the app,
it will just ask you to open the app on your phone,
but you don't have your phone.
But when you do actually open it,
so it plays this max volume ringing sound,
which will allow you to find the phone,
which is pretty cool as long as you've got that app open
or have opened it recently.
And I will say the UI on the watch itself,
it feels like it's moving around pretty quickly
and not too much waiting time to actually open
or switch between these apps,
mostly because they're very lightweight.
Like, this thing is basically just a Bluetooth accessory,
pinging little controls on your phone
and then it's got watch faces
and the watch faces have a nice little variety.
I think this one's probably my favorite
with the orange theme
and a second hand moving slowly in a full circle down here.
I feel like I'm pretty impressed.
It's also very lightweight,
not that people always value lightweight in watches,
but in this price range,
they're pretty much all gonna be made of plastic.
So you might as well lean into it.
And this thing is super light, so if you're doing sports
or just running around, yeah, it's kind of out of the way.
And then because it's a Bluetooth accessory
and a pretty generic one, you can use this actually
with basically any Android phone.
So you just grab the Play Store app, which has 3.1 stars
and it does have some connection issues occasionally for me.
But even that sort of availability, at least,
on any Android phone is better than Apple can say
about their own smartwatch.
And it gives me all the basic info I'm looking for
from heart rate history to workout summaries.
Honestly, it's not so bad when it's working.
So I'm also able to do sleep tracking,
since that only really requires the heart rate sensors.
But I also continue to get that info from the sensors
that are actually built into the mattress cover I use.
At this point, I'm sure you've heard of Eight Sleep
and the Pod Mattress Cover that, you know, warms up
and cools down each side of the bed independently,
automatically.
So that thing not only helps you sleep better
by automatically changing the temperatures,
but then it also monitors how you sleep.
It's got the sensors inside
and then delivers a report for you.
So you just open the app every morning,
you get this personalized report
that shows you things like your heart rate variance,
respiratory rate, you know,
how your sleep stages panned out overnight.
So I think I'm officially done wearing any wearables
to sleep for any sleep tracking data,
just 'cause this handles it all.
Now, I've actually talked about them before
and I saw a lot of your comments about Eight Sleep.
And so I chatted with Eight Sleep about them
and was able to get them to offer
a little bit more functionality to people who are new,
like, first time signing up.
So they'll actually now,
no matter what your membership level,
they will give you a free Sleep Report every six months,
so it's not behind any sort of paywall.
So thanks to Eight Sleep for sponsoring this video.
I'm happy to report that they're also offering
you guys the largest discount that they ever have.
So if you wanna check it out,
feel free to check out the link in the description
and use code MKBHD.
So now that I'm not wearing it to sleep,
I am able to charge the CMF Watch every night.
Like I said, it's got this little magnetic pin charger,
technically not as pretty
as those fancy wireless charging pucks,
but honestly, pretty close.
And the battery life, I've realized, is really, really good
because of how simple it is.
Again, just a Bluetooth accessory,
not a whole ton of processing power needed.
On their site, they're claiming, like,
13 days of regular use.
I don't know if I'm gonna get that,
but I was able to get three straight days easy, no problem.
And I'm sure you could probably use Power Saver mode
and get even more if you wanted to.
So it's got better battery life than an Apple Watch.
But really, the main thing that I learned,
when testing this watch, is it turns out,
this is actually a pretty expensive watch in its segment.
$69 is on the premium end for a very basic smartwatch.
It's actually pretty common for the cheapest,
most basic smartwatches to be in the 20 to $50 range.
And, you know, at that point,
they're all, more or less, the same product.
They're all a simple, plastic-y Bluetooth accessory
with some slightly different designs.
So this, the CMF Watch Pro is a slightly better packaged,
slightly better design, slightly better looking version
for a slightly upcharge, kind of the same way Nothing
is probably charging a little bit more
than you would expect for a phone with the same specs,
just 'cause of the design
and the nice stuff they do with it.
That's what this is too.
And I bring up Nothing because CMF
is Nothing's ultra-budget sub-brand
and they actually do some other stuff, like earphones,
chargers, same deal, extremely cheap products,
but just marked up a little bit
for nice packaging and nice design.
So here, I'll leave you with this.
CMF, in the industries, typically stands for color,
material, finish.
It's the name of the company,
but it's also what those letters stand for.
And the CMF of this smartwatch
is it's very much still silver-ish, fingerprint-y,
technically metal, but feels kind of plastic-y.
But if you squint enough,
this square kind of looks like an Apple Watch Ultra.
And if that's your comparison point,
then this thing is a total bargain.
So I think that was what their real goal was.
Yeah, if you wanna get one of these things, you can.
It is maybe a little more challenging to get it in the U.S.
Maybe if you import it, spend a couple extra dollars,
then you're competing with some other smartwatches,
but it's an option.
But now you know it exists.
The more you know.
Thanks for watching, catch you guys in the next one, peace.
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