Garmin MIP / AMOLED Palette

No, I never thought he did any AI thing. Also why would he? I thought from the beginning that he took a pic in angle because I know it's so hard to take pictures (I often nedd to do it when I report things to Garmin customer support) without reflection. So I assumed (and still do) that he did an angled pic and then used some picture editing tool to "distort" it so the rectangle looks rectangle more or less. This is what I would've done (on a good day, on a regular one I would just posted the cropped original image :) 

dpawlyk said:

I don't entirely disagree. But I don't think trying to make it accurate would be fair either (it might make things look worse than they do in reality). The MIP displays are kind of weird.

Yes that's true.

Speaking of MIP's weirdness, MIP is at a huge disadvantage that it looks its best outdoors, but customers are most likely to be looking at watches indoors (at a running store, race expo or electronics store) when they make a purchase or evaluate prospective purchases, assuming they don't just blindly buy a watch online. And MIP looks its worse indoors.

I really think this is one factor which made the demise of MIP inevitable. (Ofc there are others, like the dominance of Apple watch, along with the general sentiment that MIP displays are old and uncool.)

flocsy🤠 said:

No, I never thought he did any AI thing. Also why would he? I thought from the beginning that he took a pic in angle because I know it's so hard to take pictures (I often nedd to do it when I report things to Garmin customer support) without reflection. So I assumed (and still do) that he did an angled pic and then used some picture editing tool to "distort" it so the rectangle looks rectangle more or less. This is what I would've done (on a good day, on a regular one I would just posted the cropped original image :) 

Yeah, you're right. That has to be the dumbest thing I have ever posted here haha

dpawlyk said:

It would have taken more work for no apparent benefit to do what you what you thought happened at first. That realization might have been enough t reconsider what you thought.

Yep, it was a pretty dumb assumption on my part. I should've thought twice.

It was def wrong of me to assume that he used AI to manipulate the screenshot when he explicitly said he took a photo. Super condescending and stupid of me

flocsy🤠 said:

No, I never thought he did any AI thing.

I didn't say you did. (I just said we said the same things regarding screen shots and simulators and displays.)

flocsy🤠 said:

Also why would he?

Yes. More work for no apparent benefit.

FlowState said:

Speaking of MIP's weirdness, MIP is at a huge disadvantage that it looks its best outdoors, but customers are most likely to be looking at watches indoors (at a running store, race expo or electronics store) when they make a purchase or evaluate prospective purchases, assuming they don't just blindly buy a watch online. And MIP looks its worse indoors.

I really think this is one factor which made the demise of MIP inevitable. (Ofc there are others, like the dominance of Apple watch, along with the general sentiment that MIP displays are old and uncool.)

Yup. The MIP displays don't match people's experience and they look bad in the store. Many people don't understand how they work.

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I use the Edge (cycling) devices. Many people who use them orient them to be square to their faces (at a 45'-ish angle) where it's almost always in shadow. The displays work better if the device was mounted flatter.

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I'm considering getting a Fenix 8 watch.I'd go with the AMOLED because the resolution is significantly higher. The AMOLED screen apparently works reasonably well outdoors.

dpawlyk said:

Yup. The MIP displays don't match people's experience and they look bad in the store. Many people don't understand how they work.

I think Garmin has this problem in general, where they sometimes try to do the "right" thing (especially from a technical pov), but it looks wrong to many users.

For example, when they determine PRs (e.g. best 5k run), they have an interesting algorithm:

1) If you ran much farther than a given PR distance, then the algorithm uses the time of the fastest exact matching distance to determine the PR. e.g. If you ran 7k, then the algorithm uses the best 5k sub-section of your run to look for a 5k PR

This is what most people expect to happen.

2) If you ran slightly farther than a given PR distance, then the algorithm uses the time for the entire activity. If you ran 5.06 km, Garmin uses the entire activity time to look for a 5k PR.

Most Garmin forum users think 2) is a bug.

But I think 2) is intended to cover the common use case of road races, where your recorded distance is almost never the same as the nominal race distance (due to GPS error and the fact that you probably actually ran more than the nominal distance, due to not running the tangents perfectly).

But Garmin doesn't do a good job of communicating what they do or why they do it, in this case.

Contrast with Strava, which just uses 1) for PRs (estimated best efforts). It's simple and everyone understands it. But as a result, all my Strava estimated best efforts from races are slightly too fast.

dpawlyk said:

I'm considering getting a Fenix 8 watch.I'd go with the AMOLED because the resolution is significantly higher. The AMOLED screen apparently works reasonably well outdoors.

Yeah, AMOLED destroys MIP in terms of resolution, colour, refresh rate, and brightness.

MIP has great visibility outdoors (especially in bright conditions) and can stay visible/glanceable indefinitely. Even at night, you have the option of leaving the backlight on indefinitely. AMOLED devices aren't allowed to stay at full brightness indefinitely.

My main reason for not wanting an AMOLED watch is the loss of "instant glanceability".

AMOLED needs to be at full / high brightness to be seen outdoors, and Garmin won't allow their AMOLED watches to be at full brightness for extended periods of time (like an entire activity), due to burn in and battery life concerns.

So, as many reviewers pointed out during the great Garmin AMOLED transition, you have to turn your wrist to get the display to go to full brightness, but that's ok because Apple watch users are used to it.

I prefer being able to literally glance at my MIP watch and see my data instantly, especially when I'm doing a hard interval running workout. I don't want to wait a split second for the gesture to be recognized and for the screen to light up. I also don't want to have to press a button.

It's a small thing, and obviously most runners don't care. Even a lot of pretty fast runners I know just use their garmin as a strava syncing machine. During workouts, they go by feel / stay with their pace group, and they don't look at their watch.

If I'm being honest, I don't need instant glanceability.

I will say that even Garmin admits that some users want instant glanceability - in the context of watchfaces. They cite the user's desire for instant glanceability as a reason to implement "always active" mode for CIQ watchfaces (where the watchface is updated once per second, in "low power mode", for MIP devices.)

I'll also say that Polar apparently found a way to keep their AMOLED displays visible during an entire activity, by continuously flipping between bright mode and very bright mode, at the cost of battery life. Apparently they did this for the use case of mounting your watch on a bike handlebar, where it's not possible to use the gesture and not feasible to press a button. I wish Garmin would implement this as an option for their AMOLED watches, but I guess it's not a very commonly requested use case.

(There are a bunch of topics in the Garmin forums from users wishing that their AMOLED display wouldn't dim after a few seconds. Probably represent a minority of actual users tho.)

It's not easy to mount an edge in a way that it is the right angle to your eyes (big enough fonts), right angle from the screen tech's point of view and the Sun's angle and it also doesn't reflect the Sun (which apparently sometimes happens), all while the Sun is slowly moving on the horizon  and we're fastly turning to all directions... (probably it also depends which one, because they use different display technology and maybe some also different coating)

???

It's easy to mount it at about 45'.

If it's mounted that way, either the sun in front won't hit the screen that well or your body puts it into a shadow.

Sure the sun and we are moving (doesn't everybody know that?). Nothing is going to be perfect.

A flatter orientation works better more often than a 45' orientation.

Flatter sometimes reflects the sun and you don't see anything, I have to put my hand above it to make a shadow. But it might also depends on where we live. Here we have lots of strong sunshine.