As someone who’s surrounded by the latest and greatest of technology, I’ve always found myself a little skeptical about recommending a smartwatch. That’s mainly because I had a terrible experience as an early adopter of the Moto 360 smartwatch.

Design & Build Quality

The Danish watchmaker Skagen has always favored a minimalist, thin and lightweight design. Although the new Falster 2 is not necessarily the thinnest smartwatch out there, it does have a very simple and minimal look. In fact, it has the most subtle design elements of all the watches that Fossil announced under its different sub-brands today. My review unit, as you can see, is the Gray Magnetic Steel variant of the watch with Magnetic Mesh strap, but you can also get it in a variety of different colors like Black, Rose Gold, and more. Skagen Falster 2 Design

Display

Besides the design, the Falster 2’s display is also something that I really like. It has a 1.19-inch circular OLED panel, that looks nice and bright. It is worth pointing out that the display has huge bezels, which makes it look like the watch has a dated design. The watch faces, however, are mostly black, and it helps mask the bezels.

The Skagen Falster 2 is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100, which isn’t necessarily the most powerful chipset out there. We’ve seen watches running on this chipset for quite some time now, and it would have been nice to see it running on Snapdragon Wear 3100.

The Falster 2 is also packed with a ton of features. It makes up for the omission of a bunch of handy features from its predecessor like GPS, Heart-rate monitor, and NFC. This means you’ll now be able to go out for a run wearing the watch and track metrics like pace and distance. It also comes with Google’s new and updated ‘Google Fit’ app with a new design and interface, which I am excited about.

All thing considered, I must say that the Skagen Falster 2 is shaping up to be a really good smartwatch. In a little time that I’ve spent with it so far, it feels like a well-polished watch. The highlight of the watch has to be the design, really.

Skagen’s watches have always eschewed the grand look for simplicity and minimal looks, but the Falster 2 seems like a well put-together watch. Honestly, even Wear OS already feels like accomplished, as I am yet to find something that’s frustratingly annoying. Skagen Falster 2