Skagen Falster 3 Review

We purchased the Skagen Falster 3 so our expert reviewer could thoroughly test and assess it. Keep reading for our full product review.

With me swapping my workouts to a home setting, I need a tool to help track my fitness activities. Cue the Skagen Falster 3 smartwatch—with fitness and sleep tracking, an easy interface, and a sleek silicone wrist band, it proved to be the ideal choice for my fitness needs. For over a week I’ve worn it nonstop, tracking its battery life, ease of use, and connectivity. 

Design and Comfort: Super fancy silicone

The Skagen Falster 3 opts for a classic watch design with a 1.3-inch circular OLED touchscreen. The screen is really easy to read and it’s crisp with the 416x416 resolution that works out to 328ppi. It also has enough watch faces that you can adjust to a style that feels totally you.

The overall look of the Falster 3 is traditional compared to the squarish Fitbit Versa 3 and Apple Watch Series 6. The watch body is fairly thin at 11mm, and the screen is circled by a stainless steel bezel making for a sturdy and stylish design. Three lugs located on the right side offer customization options, though the middle button is reserved as an apps menu button. 

A 22mm thick silicone strap offers a comfortable fit with ridges that keep the watch from slipping against your skin. While there are plenty of different colors and options to choose for your wristband, if you decide that you don’t like the color or the feel of silicone, you can swap out for leather using any Skagen-branded wristbands. Quite frankly, the silicone band, which has twelve different adjustment holes for optimized fit, is very comfortable.

Setup Process: Charge it first

Once I googled and reset the watch, setup was incredibly easy—and fast. You’ll have to install Google Wear OS on your phone. Apple users can use this as well, but unfortunately, they won't get the full experience. An Android phone is key to the experience for this smartwatch. Follow the prompts on the watch, and within ten minutes, the Falster 3 will be ready for wear. The charge comes at about 50 percent, so if you want to wear it immediately, you can.

Heads up though—the Skagen does not come with any kind of manual to help you set up. I honestly felt this to be incredibly time-consuming and annoying, since I had to google everything. Sometimes, even searching came up empty at first. If you want to look at the full features of the watch, google will be your new best friend.

Performance and Software: Lots of app options, but not very seamless

The Falster 3 can use any features that are in Google Fit by default and a number of third-party Android apps. The apps you can install are a fairly decent amount, considering its 8GB internal storage. The smartwatch has built-in heart rate monitoring, GPS to track your runs, and can support sleep tracking with a third-party option like Sleep for Android, but doesn’t have native support for it.  

You also have access to a good number of Wear OS-compatible apps. Since I tend to leave my phone across the room while I’m working, the Spotify app was one of the first I installed to take advantage of music controls. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support playback from the smartwatch’s internal storage. I ended up fiddling with the Falster 3 so much the first couple days, my mother started cracking comments that I was staring at my watch too much. In my defense, the Falster 3 offers news and features with clickable headlines on your smartwatch that link directly into articles on your smartphone.

When it comes to fitness, aside from the heart rate monitoring, I was tracking my fitness through how many heart points Google Fit awarded me for constantly walking between my couch and my fridge while I was spending more time at home. It’s a similar feature to closing the Apple Watch’s rings and serves as fun motivation. 

However, once I became more active, minor flaws began to show. As much as I love morning pilates, the Falster 3 just wasn’t registering my activity. I even noticed some moments when I had just completed cardio that the Google Fit account linked to the Falster 3 wouldn’t register my activity. As a result, I lost out on the heart points I wanted to gain for that day. In order to get my steps in, I had to go into Google Fit and manually begin and end each workout.

Because the interface is touch-sensitive, sometimes I accidentally bumped the interface and found myself looking at the weather app. If it’s a consistent problem, you can also customize your watch so that you have to press the middle button to turn on the smartwatch’s interface. Another frequent issue that arises—and Skagen is upfront and honest about this on their FAQ page—is that water registers as a touch on the interface. You can wear it while swimming or in the shower, but keep in mind that it can and will trigger as a touch on your interface. I found this out the hard way when my watch skipped my favorite Kesha song as I was getting ready for work.

Despite these flaws, the performance of the Skagen is fairly solid. I never experienced any dropoffs from the Bluetooth connection from my phone, and it even paired and registered any changes on my Samsung Galaxy Buds Live with ease, so you can cross pair it so long as your phone is a happy mediator. And, if you’re a baker like me, you can even set a functional timer on the watch so you can practice your Great British Baking Show skills.

Battery Life: As long as you need

The Skagen Falster 3 comes with three different options for your battery life with its 350mAh battery. If you’d like all the apps and features available to you at all times, the Daily setting is the best for you. That means though that the watch needed to be charged daily. And, worse yet, depending on whether you use it heavily, your watch may not make it the full 24 hours before it requires another charge.

If you don’t have access to your USB-C charging cable for a while, you can swap over to the Extended Battery Life setting. In this setting, the smartwatch sleeps and only uses the essential functions. As I learned the hard way, that means that if you want to check your heart rate, it will not fulfill this request. However, it’s a nice option if you need the Falster 3 to last a few days or through a weekend visit with friends out of town. 

Lastly, if you’re not keen on the daily wear, but you need to know your heart rate or your steps, you can go into the watch and customize what stays on and what you don’t need, giving you a personalized set of options. It’s nice if you don’t care about certain apps, like the weather, or what’s on the news.

Price: Heavier than the watch

At first, I thought the $295 price tag was a joke. After all, there are other, better performing smartwatches you can get out there at a fraction of the price, and many of them offer a more robust set of fitness tracking features with less finicky issues. However, if you’re keen on an Wear OS watch specifically, this is one of the better ones available. 

Skagen Falster 3 vs. Apple Watch Series 6 

There’s a lot of competition to the Falster 3, with many rivals who can do a better job for a similar or better price. Take the Fitbit, for example. At $179 for the Versa 2, you get 6 days of battery life, heart monitoring, and for those who have to deal with them, menstrual tracking. The Falster 3 can do all of these things, but it’s much more limited, with only a few days tops of battery life and no menstrual tracking.

Apple similarly has the upper hand with the Apple Watch Series 6 which boasts blood oxygen tracking levels and even can perform ECGs using the watch. However, keeping in line with Apple products it also comes with a steep $400 price tag, though the Apple Watch SE is a good, more affordable alternative. 

If you prefer all the available features in a smartwatch, the Versa is best for you. Apple is the way to go if you want a distinct brand name with the latest tech and fitness tracking features embedded in a smartwatch. However, if style and keeping with a traditional look are what you’re looking for, then the Skagen can do the basics of these watches, albeit at a heftier price. 

Check out our guide to the best smartwatches for women you can buy today. 

Similar Products We've Reviewed:

• Ticwatch Pro 4G
• Samsung Galaxy Watch