9to5Google
By Andrew Romero & Ben Schoon
In its current state, Wear OS is lacking in a lot of areas. Fortunately, Wear OS 3 is on its way, and smartwatches like the Skagen Falster Gen 6 will be eligible for the upgrade, making the watch even sleeker than it already is. For the full review, click the link below. For now, here are the highlights!
Hardware & design
Wear OS has always been housed in some very beautifully designed smartwatches, and the Skagen Flaster Gen 6 is no different. The round chassis looks fantastic and the thin extended lugs are extremely pleasing visually. With a rotating crown plus two other buttons on the right-hand side, the look of a gorgeous watch is completely fulfilled by Fossil.
Previous versions of the Skagen Falster have culminated in this design and it definitely hits the nail on the head.
Software & health
What the Falster Skagen Gen 6 can do with Wear OS is pretty impressive. With the Snapdragon 4100+, there were no hiccups in performance that we noticed. When Wear OS 3 comes around, the 4100+ chip and 1GB of RAM will likely do the trick for the new software, though Wear OS 3 performance remains unknown with these specs.
As far as Fossil's health suite goes, you can track blood oxygen, heart rate, and sleep all in the onboard apps. What we did notice was that compared to Fitbit's tracking, the results didn't seem as accurate.
Battery life
With sleep tracking being one of the main features on the Skagen Falster Gen 6, you'd expect battery life to be longer than it was. In testing, we only got around 24-30 hours on moderate use. In all, battery life could be much worse than it was. After using it all day and tracking sleep, we were left at 10% left in the morning, which is definitely usable.
The saving grace? Charging speed. The Falster Gen 6 charges from that 10% all the way to full in a matter of about an hour or less. Fossil officially claims that the Skagen Falster Gen 6 can reach 80% in 30 minutes, which isn't bad at all.
In all, while the Skagen Flaster Gen 6 isn't a perfect smartwatch, especially with Wear OS 2 at the helm, the future does get a little brighter since this Fossil watch is promised to get Wear OS 3. That being said, we're happy with the Skagen Falster and what it's capable of currently. Though, if you're looking for a fantastic health suite, you may want to look elsewhere.