Apple Watch A Review of the Iconic Smartwatch Brand

Fitbit Ionic review

Long rumored, the Fitbit Ionic was the company's first true smartwatch. Fitbit has become synonymous with fitness trackers, but with the Ionic the company decided to expand into a whole new market.

The Ionic combines its fitness know-how with the smarts of a variety of companies its bought such as Pebble, which Fitbit acquired in 2016 and brought it all together to add an impressive new wearable to its range.

Offering similar features to expensive alternatives such as the Apple Watch range and Wear OS watches, the Fitbit Ionic is a serious contender to be the smartwatch you choose to wear when youre out running or hitting the gym.

However, there's now the additional competition of the Apple Watch 5, which adds LTE and its best fitness tracking yet, not to mention the incursion of Garmin into the fitness smartwatch space with products like Forerunner 645.

Since the launch of Ionic, we've also seen Fitbit introduce three new smaller and more affordable smartwatches called the Fitbit Versa, Fitbit Versa Lite and Fitbit Versa 2. If you're planning to buy a smartwatch from Fitbit check these out as they're all cheaper, offer a slimmer design and many of the same features as the Ionic.

Plus Fitbit CEO James Park has also confirmed the company has plans to produce a Fitbit Ionic 2 in the future, but there's no clear sign yet on when we'll see that introduced.

Below we're going to focus on the Fitbit Ionic though, so read on below for our full review of the company's very first smartwatch.

Fitbit Ionic price and release date

• The Fitbit Ionic launched at 299.95 / $299.95 / AU$449.95
• It's an expensive option for a fitness watch, but it's now cheaper
• Out now around the world, but so is the Fitbit Versa 2

The Fitbit Ionic launched as the most expensive wearable yet from Fitbit. At 299.95 / $299.95 / AU$449.95 it cost more than the Fitbit Surge running watch did at launch, but a bit less than products like the Apple Watch 5 or Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2.

Since the launch of the cheaper Fitbit Versa and Fitbit Versa 2, we've seen the price drop some way to around $180 / 200 / AU$350 at certain times of year. The cheaper price makes it a much easier purchase as your next running watch, but it's still not as cheap as some other capable Fitbit products.

Design and display

• Aluminium build and lighter than most smartwatches
• Either plastic or leather bands that are easy to swap out

The Fitbit Ionic is a comfortable fit on your wrist, and compared to a lot of modern smartwatches is particularly light so much so that you'll instantly notice how lightweight this feels on your wrist, which makes it a more pleasant to wear while working out than, say, the LG Watch Sport.

Its a good fit for everyday use too, being comfortable to wear at a keyboard, which should encourage you to wear it all day to ensure the most accurate readings possible.

Its waterproof, so you can take this in the shower or even go swimming with it more on that in the fitness section.

The body of the watch is made of aluminum and features very small antenna bands on the sides, but its attractive and is easily the best-looking Fitbit product so far. That said, we found the design to be rather divisive, with friends and family either loving the look or hating it.

You may well love the look of the Fitbit Ionic, but if youre bothered about what others think just bear in mind that its not likely to have the universal appeal of, say, the Apple Watch.

Theres one hardware button on the left-hand side with another two on the right that sit in similar positions to those on the Fitbit Blaze and enable you to move around the watchs UI.

Each is slightly raised too Fitbit presumably thinks this will help you find them more easily when youre fumbling around for the buttons while sweating and gasping for breath when pushing yourself.

We found the buttons worked for making the UI simple, plus its a touchscreen, so you can cycle through the apps by swiping.

There are leather and plastic strap options available with secure fasteners on each so the Ionic won't fall off when you're out for a jog.

We used both, and the plastic option is comfortable for when youre sweating in the gym, while the leather strap is a much more attractive look so you might want to get both if you want to wear this watch both for working out and dining out.

The display on the Fibit Ionic is a full-color screen thats rectangular, unlike the more square Apple Watch or most Android Wear watches, but it is reminiscent of the Blazes screen. This one is quite a bit bigger though, and thats down to the bezels being thinner.

That said, the bezels are relatively thick on the Fitbit Ionic. Its one of our major criticisms of the design, and we think theres a lot of wasted space below and above the screen. Fitbit could have included a much larger and more useful display instead.

Also, the Fitbit logo is annoyingly placed just below the screen, taking up quite a bit of room on the wearable.

The resolution of the LCD screen is 384 x 250, and we particularly like how bright it is it reaches 1000 nits, which is the same as the Apple Watch 2 and means you can view it even in bright sunlight when out on a run.

We found the touchscreen to be a little slow to respond sometimes, and we often had to move our wrist fairly violently for the raise-to-wake feature to work. Thats particularly annoying when youre working out and you need a clear look at your stats fast.

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CMF Watch Pro by Nothing review: A great value smartwatch, but not perfect

CMF Watch Pro: One minute review

The CMF Watch Pro is astonishingly cheap, retailing for just $69 / 69 / AU$142, but despite that it looks and feels premium throughout. Moving into this watch from my (comparatively expensive) Amazfit Balance, I was worried that the experience would be laden with frustrations and limitations, but on the contrary, Ive really enjoyed testing it.

The design, while clearly taking inspiration from Apple, is lovely. It looks great on the wrist, the materials and finish are top-notch, and Nothings signature design language is present across a large library of aesthetically pleasing and functional watch faces. Its a chunky watch, but extremely lightweight, and that makes it a pleasure to wear.

Of course, at such a low price, there are plenty of features missing that have become commonplace on more expensive smartwatches. Theres no onboard Wi-Fi, no payment system and the vast majority of features will require your smartphone to be connected in order to function, but I think the Watch Pro covers the basics well enough to satisfy most users.

The frustrations arise when you realise how much effort it takes to keep the watch connected to your phone. It just seems to disconnect itself all the time, and that means you wont be getting notifications and many functions will be unavailable until you open the smartphone app and reconnect your phone.

Hopefully, this is something that will be improved as the software matures, and in fairness, there have been multiple updates pushed over the few weeks Ive been wearing it. As it stands, its still a great-looking smartwatch at a bargain price, but there are definitely some refinements to be made.

CMF Watch Pro: Specifications

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CMF Watch Pro: Price and availability

• 69 in the UK
• $69 in the US
• AU$131 in Australia

The biggest draw of the CMF Watch Pro is its low asking price. While it may look a lot like an Apple Watch, its pricing puts it in closer competition with devices like the Xiaomi Smart Band 8, Fitbit Inspire 3 and the Amazfit Bip 5. All great watches in their own right, but none have quite the same premium allure as the CMF option.

It launched in September 2023 as a debut product for the CMF by Nothing brand, alongside some earbuds and a wall charger.

Its available to purchase now from Nothing directly and via various authorised resellers in the UK. In the US, it can be found on Amazon and in Australia its available via AliExpress.

CMF Watch Pro: Design and screen

• 1.96-inch AMOLED display
• Dark Grey and Metallic Grey options
• Replaceable 22mm silicon wrist strap

The CMF Watch Pro is quite a sizable watch, and while I think it looks great on my wrist, its worth noting that I am male and over 6 feet tall its likely to look more out of place on petite wrists.

This watch is only a few millimeters smaller than the Apple Watch Ultra, so its quite chunky, but it wears it well. Its also extremely lightweight, coming in under 50 grams including the silicon wrist strap, so youll barely feel it on your wrist but youll see it.

I was sent the Dark Grey variant for testing and I think its the better-looking of the two finishes. The Metallic Grey option has a polished, almost mirror finish on its frame, a bit like the Google Pixel Watch 2, and while it does look nice I know I would be concerned about scratches and blemishes. The Dark Grey option is anodized with a more rugged-looking matte finish, and comes paired with either an ash gray or dark gray sports strap, the flashier orange strap is only supplied with the metallic version.

On the right-hand side, theres a push button and a speaker, while all the other sides are blank and minimalistic. On the base, youll find an array of four optical sensors for fitness tracking and two pogo-pin pads that attach to the magnetic charging puck.

The screen is large, sharp and bright and its extremely responsive to touch input. There are large bezels on all sides, but for the most part, youd never know. The UI has a black background throughout, and the majority of watch faces are dark, too. This means you rarely see these chunky bezels unless youre really looking for them.

My biggest gripe with the screen isnt the fault of the screen itself, its just that the watch doesnt have an ambient light sensor. This means that on many occasions, the display is inappropriately bright or dim. Thankfully, it only takes a couple of taps to adjust the brightness, but its a hassle that you wont experience with the more expensive watches on the market.

CMF Watch Pro: Features

• 110 sport tracking modes
• CMF Watch companion app for Android and iOS
• Bluetooth calling with AI noise reduction

As you might expect with a watch at this price point, the functionality is quite limited compared to a Wear OS device or an Apple Watch. Theres no app store, everything that you can use comes preinstalled and ready to go out of the box. That said, the most commonly used smartwatch features are present here, and theres more than enough for most people's needs.

Theres also no Wi-Fi onboard, so for any feature that requires internet access, like weather info, youll need to be paired to your smartphone via Bluetooth. The CMF Watch app is available on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store and it makes it as simple as can be to get up and running.

Most of the CMF Watch Pros features are accessed by tapping the button on the right-hand side. In the resulting menu, youll find everything from timers and alarms to music controls, phone calls and fitness tracking. When you open the Exercise app, youll find a comprehensive list of 110 different activities to choose between. I was pleasantly surprised to see that some of my more unusual hobbies, like inline skating and snowboarding, were represented here so theres a good chance that your sport of choice will be on the list.

Most of the tracking works similarly, measuring your heart rate, workout duration and location data (where applicable). Its enough information for the casual user, but it might be a little lacking for true fitness buffs. You cant use the watch to track your reps while strength training, for example.

The CMF Watch Pro can also check your stress level and blood oxygen levels, and it can monitor them 24/7 if you want it to, though that will cost you some battery life. Personally, I chose to keep the 24/7 heart rate monitoring active, which is the default, and activated the other sensors manually.

You can make and answer phone calls directly from the watch, so long as you are connected to your phone, and the function works quite well. My friends told me that my voice came through clean and clear, and the surprisingly loud built-in speaker meant that I could hear them well, too. The only frustration is that you have to manually add contacts to the watch, they wont appear by default, so youll need to do a bit of set-up before you can call people on a whim.

One feature that I found quite appealing was the camera remote, which allows you to trigger a photo or start a timer using your watch. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work with my Vivo X100 Pro, and the literature says it won't work with an iPhone, either. Still, I've seen it demonstrated with other Android devices, and if yours happens to work, it could be handy.

CMF Watch Pro: Performance

• Up to 13 days of battery life
• Heart rate, sleep, stress and SpO2 monitoring
• Built-in multi-system GPS

The CMF Watch Pro is advertised as having up to 13 days of battery life on a charge, but of course, that all depends on how you use it. Personally, I used it with the always-on display active, 24/7 heart rate monitoring and notifications enabled for all of my most-used applications. With this configuration, you can expect to be charging it every five days or so.

When it's time to charge, you do so with the proprietary magnetic charging puck that comes included in the box. It's a bit of a flimsy connector and I think it could benefit from some stronger magnets or a ridge to lock into as it's very easy to accidentally disconnect it. That said, it gets the job done well enough, and it'll juice you back up to full battery in under 2 hours.

Nothing hasn't provided any information about the processor powering this watch, nor is there much information about its operating system, but what I can tell you is that it feels snappy and responsive in use and I haven't experienced any freeze-ups or stutters in my usage. In terms of fitness tracking, its hard to gauge exactly how accurate the measurements are, but my step count always came close to the figures Im used to seeing on my other devices, and my average and maximum heart rates were very similar to the readings I got with my Amazfit Balance, too. The only oddity was that sometimes it would think I was asleep when I was relaxing and watching TV, so the sleep data might not be the most reliable out there.

Otherwise, the only real performance issue I experienced was the connection between the CMF Watch Pro and my phone. Unless I had recently used the CMF Watch app, the Bluetooth connection would just randomly drop, and that means no more notifications until you reopen the app, which seems to bump start the connection.

This happened every day without fail, and no matter how many permissions I gave the CMF Watch app, it didnt seem to change. I tried pairing the watch with a couple of different phones, and the results were always the same, so its not an isolated problem, either. On the plus side, there has been at least one firmware update a week since I have been testing, so Nothing is actively working to make the experience better. Fingers crossed one of these updates brings with it better Bluetooth connection stability.

CMF Watch Pro: Scorecard

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CMF Watch Pro: Should I buy?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

CMF Watch Pro: Also consider

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CMF Watch Pro: How I tested

Our reviewer wore the CMF Watch Pro as his primary smartwatch for over two weeks, and it accompanied him in travelling, commuting and during regular workouts. It was paired to a Vivo X100 Pro for the majority of the testing period, but was also tried with an Honor smartphone and a Google Pixel to compare.

The tracking results were compared to historical results from the Amazfit Balance and TicWatch Pro 5, as well as the built-in step counter on the smartphone and the Strava app for GPS accuracy.