When you are paying upwards of Rs. 10,000 on a smartwatch, it is evident that you seek more than just a mini assistant on your wrist. And there are dozens of watches that do that happily. The Apple Watch SE is a great one to consider for its form and function, while its more expensive cousin pushes to the limits those very aspects! Most other watches in this price range try to copy the Apple Watch (the Oppo Watch) and hence, if you are looking for variety, it is easy to be disappointed. Not from the Fossil group though.
The Fossil Gen 6 is one that stands out with a very smart design, and if you pair it with a nice strap, you have got one very handsome looking watch on your wrist. But what if you want something more extravagant? Look at the Skagen collection then, wherein its latest model, which is the Skagen Falster Gen 6, seems to be the perfect choice. I mean, BOY! Those looks can kill! Wow!
Ahem, excuse me for the sudden outburst of emotion. The Falster Gen 6 has just launched in India and at a starting price of Rs. 21,995, it is well within reach too. Is it the best one then? I wore it for two weeks to find out.
Before everything else, a wristwatch has to look good by all means! That is its main purpose since you can see the time on every nook and cranny of your digital screens these days. The Skagen Falster Gen 6 does exactly that — looks ravishing. It takes the concept of minimalist design quite seriously; the cylindrical body with the flat display and those beautifully crafted crown and buttons in matte black evoke strong emotions — in ways that even the Apple Watch can’t.
This is where the Skagen Falster Gen 6 won me! It served its purpose. Why do you need to do anything else on this, right? My unit came with the silicon strap attached but I bet it looks even better with a tasteful smell mesh strap, or a leather one.
Part of its appeal also depends on the watch faces that come pre-loaded from Skagen. Of course, you can download Facer and get some gaudy faces for free but the select faces from Skagen look the best. All of them are functional and gel in well with personal and professional spaces.
And, it is built strongly too. In my two weeks of use that involved a short trip, the watch survived knocks and bumps into walls, Train doors, airport luggage, and what not! At the time of writing, there’s not even a single scratch on this watch.
The 44mm casing holds a circular and flat 1.28-inch OLED display, which is highly responsive to touch. It makes most watch faces look lively and makes it easy to read texts. Brightness levels are good indoors but sunlight legibility is nowhere as good as an Apple Watch. Hence, you might be struggling to see under the sun.
The Falster Gen 6 is based on the Fossil Gen 6 and hence, the user experience doesn’t vary. Other than the Skagen watch faces, it is essentially a Wear OS device under the skin. Specifically, it is a Wear OS 2 device and Skagen doesn’t give any date on that mystical Wear OS 3 for non-Samsung watches yet.
Similar to the Fossil Gen 6, a Snapdragon 4100+ chip powers the Skagen Falster Gen 6 watch. It also gets 1GB RAM and 8GB ROM, both of which do an overall better job than the Fossil version. Unlike the Fossil Gen 6, the Skagen version did not keep going into a self restart spree, and throughout my time with it, the interface was snappy. You can read and reply to messages, check email snippets, run some apps, and a lot more. You can take calls on it via Bluetooth from your smartphone, and the audio quality is decent. I had almost been sold until I observed the weird bugs that break the experience. Seriously, why Fossil why? Why can’t any of your beautiful watches just work the way they are intended to.
At the time of reviewing, my unit of the Skagen Falster Gen 6 underwent a connection bug that couldn’t pair to my Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra via Bluetooth. It was not until a few restarts before I could see the notifications updating on its own. While in a Wi-Fi zone, the watch can pair to the network to deliver notifications faster but on the move, it is buggy at the moment.
Skagen relies on the Google Wear OS app on Android and iOS devices to pair the watch and act as its companion app. All the health data can be viewed on the Google Fit app. While the pairing was easy with an Android phone (when it worked), the Skagen Falster Gen 6 does not want to pair with an iPhone easily. And even when it does, it cannot reconnect to the iPhone.
Additionally, I also observed the Skagen watch heating up quickly while using Google Maps, or running some demanding apps while outdoors. The battery life also deteriorates quickly, wherein my watch ran out of juice by the evening. BTW, note that I used the watch for taking calls, and did some smartphone tasks on it directly. Charging is pretty fast though — it takes only around 40 minutes to fill up the battery from 10 percent via a 10W charging adapter.
Similar to most full-blown smartwatches, the Skagen Falster Gen 6 has the standard kit of monitoring systems. It can monitor heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, steps, calories, sleep, and the lot. Now, I am no fitness enthusiast and hence, I did not put this Skagen watch through hard times (even if I were, I wouldn’t put this beautiful timepiece through sweaty workout sessions).
I did put the outdoor workout mode on while exploring the city on my vacation though and the data was mostly comparable to my sibling’s Apple Watch SE. The step count, heart rate data, and SpO2 data was comparable. Note that I did not have a medical device to check for authenticity and we always recommend not relying on this data for medical applications.
The Skagen Falster Gen 6 seems to be a product for watch connoisseurs — especially for those who want an exquisite design as well as all the smarts of a modern-day connected device. But it suffers from the same issues that plagues all other Fossil products, i.e., it has a very unreliable platform to work with. Wear OS 2 despite its smartness now feels obsolete with the way it works. Nobody likes their expensive smartwatch to lag every now and then, and certainly struggle to pair with the phone. That Wear OS 3 update better come fast, considering how good these watches are built!
The main reason you (and me) would consider the Skagen Falster Gen 6 over anything else is the way it looks! That classy design paired with a beautiful finish and a durable build is what would make me put down my money on it. The basic smart bits are good too, although they lag behind the benchmark-setting Apple Watch SE. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 trumps the Skagen in terms of functionality but it simply cannot match the beauty that is the Skagen Falster Gen 6.
Should you buy this? If you care for the looks, then go ahead certainly. If you seek an overall great experience, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is still the better buy for Android users. And, the mighty Apple Watch SE and Watch Series 7 remain the ultimate kings, if you have an iPhone at your disposal.
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