introduction

The Skagen Falster Gen 6 is part of Fossil’s recent range of smartwatches. With the Falster Gen 6, the watch gains performance faster thanks to the Snapdragon Wear 4100+ platform. There are also faster charging times, improved power consumption and updated health sensors, including the addition of SpO2 monitoring.

Out-of-the-box features include standalone GPS support, NFC for payments, built-in speaker and mic for phone calls, and everything you’d expect from a modern fitness smartwatch like monitoring heart rate tracking, training and sleep tracking, and continuous heart rate monitoring.

Like the Falster 3, this smartwatch maintains a sleek and minimal design, and the watch case only comes in a 42mm size with 20mm straps that are interchangeable for yours. There are five finishes to choose from, each with a woven metal or leather strap.

The new Skagen Falster, along with other Fossil Gen 6 smartwatches, will ship with Wear OS 2.3 out of the box and can receive the Wear OS 3 update in the second half of the year.

Unboxing, design and manufacture

The Skagen Falster Gen 6 comes with an adjustable wrist strap. The included fast charger can recharge the Falster Gen 6 battery to 80% in half an hour.

The Falster Gen 6 looks a lot like the Falster 3. The difference here is the slightly thicker body, but the watch case is essentially the same: a round design with a thin bezel and a minimal, yet sleek appearance. The housing is made of stainless steel or nylon depending on the finish. Additionally, the Falster Gen 6 is swim proof to 3 ATM.

The three-button configuration includes a rotating home button that can be used to scroll through menus and lists on the watch. The other two buttons are programmable to open apps or start a workout.

The rotary knob is a nice feature. It scrolls smoothly and is a great way to read notifications without blocking them with your finger. Unlike previous iterations, scrolling works in all menus and apps. In Google Maps, for example, turning the home button will zoom in and out.

The screen is a 1.28-inch AMOLED panel with 326ppi and has a round resolution of 416×416 px. The animations are fluid and the screen is amply bright. When set to auto brightness, there are three levels of adjustment or set one of five levels for manual brightness adjustment.

The watch is a stylish piece of jewelry, and I wouldn’t say that of most smartwatches. That’s the approach Skagen takes and you’ll see when you dig into the watch’s software.

Wear OS and Fitness

The Falster comes with Wear OS 2.3 out of the box and Fossil confirms that the Wear OS 3 update is expected for its Gen 6 range. is currently working to keep the user experience on Wear OS 3 as consistent as on the current version of Wear OS. The model I reviewed was running pre-release firmware and I attribute this only to Google Pay not yet working. Otherwise, the firmware is stable.

Fossil’s approach to Wear OS with Gen 6 hasn’t changed much from Gen 5. The best way to describe it is: Stock Wear OS with some added wellness features and watch faces avant-garde watches.

Many aspects are customized for Fossil, such as the custom charging animation, custom watch faces that feature Skagen’s branding, Fossil’s Wellness app, and Saved Faces app. The highlight of the watch software is the customization of the watch faces and their color schemes.

There are nearly two dozen Skagen watch faces, and you can deeply customize the color schemes of these watch faces to your liking. Some watch faces have fully customizable colors that will let you swipe across the color spectrum and then adjust the color intensity.

The way a Fossil watch is configured by default is different from the approaches of other brands. To begin with, the always-on function is activated and the relaunch for alarm clock is deactivated. It’s more like a traditional watch in that the time is still visible, but the screen doesn’t wake up or change when the watch is moved. Touching or pressing a button on the watch will wake it up anyway.

When a notification arrives, there’s a short window of time where raising your wrist will show you the alert. Always-on might not be the best approach to battery life, but Fossil has a certain philosophy when it comes to battery life in its watches, which we’ll cover in the battery section.

Saved Faces is a feature that allows you to save and recall watch faces and their color settings to match your outfits.

Fossil’s approach to fitness is through its Wellness app on the watch. There’s no “Wellness” companion app for the smartphone, and it was designed to sync with a Google Fit account. The Wellness app can track basic activities (like steps), workouts, sleep, and SpO2 (blood oxygen), and will mostly sync with Google Fit. As of this writing, SpO2 readings can only be taken on the watch itself. Workouts and sleep data are synced with Google Fit.

Fitness can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be, and it depends on a fashion brand’s smartwatch demographic. The Wellness app tile lets you quickly start an indoor or outdoor workout. The only difference is that the outdoor training option will enable GPS tracking, which the Falster Gen 6 can do on its own.

If the Wellness app is too simple, just use the preloaded Google Fit apps on the watch. There are way more fitness modes for activity tracking.

The metal mesh bands are nice on the Falster Gen 6, but it’s not a comfortable band to train on. We would replace the band with a more breathable/flexible band which would be more ideal for the activities to follow.

Depending on your activity, the left wrist can sometimes trigger the Google Assistant via an accidental long press of the home button. Consider doing push-ups or warming up your wrists. This often happens to me during yoga workouts, but it’s not uncommon with smartwatches that have protruding buttons.

Performance and battery life

Fossil’s Gen 6 watches are all designed to last a single day and maybe a little more. The watch is intended to have an always-on display and all fitness and tracking features enabled, which, in turn, eats up more battery life. To have the best experience with the battery life of the Falster Gen 6, you will need to incorporate charging this watch into your daily routine. That means you’ll still have to bring the charger for a weekend.

A Fossil representative offered the following scenario as the ideal: the battery lasts all day with enough reserve to keep up with your sleep until the next morning. Then you take the watch off and put it on the charger while you get ready for your day. This is where fast charging speed comes in.

The Falster Gen 6 now offers even faster charging. Fossil promises that the watch will be able to charge to 80% in just half an hour.

In my experience, battery life has always lasted just under 36 hours. That’s with all features activated and all settings ready to go, including always-on display – that’s how the watch was intended to be used.

Battery life with all features enabled

Conclusion and judgment

What you should know about the Skagen Falster Gen 6 is that it is a fashion piece first and everything else is secondary. That means when you compare it to other smartwatches, it’s not just the specs on paper, but also how their watches look and feel when you’re wearing them.

Instead of focusing on how it does things, how long it will charge, or how fast it can do things, the consumer who knows and knows the Fossil Group brands will look at it and buy it the same way they would a bag, belt or watch – with intuition. The types of questions they ask are “How does this look at me?” or “How does that make me feel?”.

The $295 price tag will get you a sleek and stylish smartwatch that does everything a modern smartwatch can, including fitness, sleep tracking, and SpO2 tracking. It also eases the software experience by not needing a secondary smartphone app.

The Skagen Falster Gen 6 isn’t about any technological innovations or impressive hardware, it’s more about the look and feel of wearing this timepiece.

Advantages:

• Durable and elegant design
• Bright and colorful display
• Quick charge
• Highly customizable watch faces

The inconvenients:

• Not technologically innovative
• Poor battery life