I came from various manufacturers watches. Went to garmin 3 sapphire then to chronos ss, and now on 5x. On the first two I was able to view the screens just fine on rainy days. The f5X I cant. The upgrades that were made are not visible in fact the screen appears to be a down grade. All my devices have had sapphire glass so this is not the issue. Needless to say I'm very disappointed and after all of the function issues and now after upgrading I can't view the screen without using back light. Tried to upload photos but even the forum is very dated .... I emailed garmin including pics and have yet to get a responre . Its not like your buying cheap. These watches are expensive in fact some of the most expensive you can buy. The chronos was the closest thing to a good tracker / smart watch but well over half the apps designed for it on the market won't load on it. There is a thread dated over a year and going with these issues and Garmin has yet to fix the issue.
The F5 series are designed as OUTDOOR sports watches. As such, the brighter the ambient light, the easier they are to read. This may be the opposite to what you are used to with your smart phone or other smart watch, but this is exactly how a sports watch should be designed. I have to massively increase the backlight on my phone to be able to view it in sunlight - if I was having to do this while running, this would be a huge battery drain at the very time I was needing to use it.
Yes, the downside of the F5X screen is that it is harder to read in low light conditions. Probably the easiest way to deal with this is to use the gesture settings. The backlight comes on when you turn your wrist to horizontal, and off again as soon as you rotate it back to the vertical.
This is not Garmin being cheap, it is optimizing the design and battery life for the most common usage case (which is running outside in daylight). And they provide the backlight facility for those using it in other conditions.
So your saying the F3 sapphre and the stainless chronos aren't outdoors watches. The slight increase in battery life over the 3 doesn't justify losing regular usage. And as for back-lit, it's a pain to make a gesture while driving when it's raining to see your watch. Wasn't an issue till the 5x.
The brightness level is for backlight. In watch mode it is not adjustable. Here lies the issue. I travel offshore on jetskis Occasionally we hit rough weather. Used to be able to view info on my watch under cloudy skies. Now i cant. In rough seas you dont want to stop to view your watch likewise you dont want to take your hands off the bars to shake your wrist to get your watch to light up. Same with surfing. You want to glance down at your watch for quick info. Not everyone surfs those sunny California skies. Many surf systems to get the right surfing conditions. Like I said earlier it was a nonissue till now.
With the F5x try: Settings/system/backlight/not during activity/timeout - no timeout/brightness 5-100%
This means you can turn the back light on by pressing the light button (top left) and it stays on until you press the light button again. The higher the ambient light the higher the brightness needed, so you can adjust as appropriate.
I find this useful, and I decide how I want it as appropriate.
Obviously you can do just the same thing in the "during activity" settings as well.
That's a great work around. I agree that can work in my instance. I need about 30% backlight to use it in the situations mentioned early from the testing I've done. Case in point being that this was not needed on earlier models. I'm not sure of the battery drain using constant backlight tho. Our trips average over 12 hours running gps. So in gps and backlight mode I'm not sure I'll get a full day out of it. Sad, but with the flagship model I'll likely have to leave it at home while doing my outdoor sports and revert back to a fenix 3. Dont want to chance a failure if the watch can't handle it. Thats what the post was about. I can use GPS to track back if needed on other fenix 3 where I don't need to drain the battery by running the backlight constantly . Absolutely enjoy the 5x upgrades to software and i dont believe it gets due credit for the upgrades. But as for hardware the screen update was a big disadisappoint.
I haven’t noticed any difference between the F3 sapphire and the F5X. Have you tried to compare with other 5X watches? Maybe your screen I faulty?
I noticed a little difference but I already read in the forums etc. that there were some difference due to saphire glass. But that didn't make F5X unreadable or F3 very readable in low light. I remember a minor difference but not breaking my experience.
Also try to use watchfaces with higher contrast. New Fenix screens support four times more colour than Fenix 3 series, but not all of these colors are as easy to see as Fenix 3 colours.
Robert, thanks for the response. After a week I finally got a response from garmin. I sent pictures to them this morning. I sure hope its from a bad batch. Ive seen a lot of reports like mine. Maybe there was a handful that went out like mine. Great to hear that yours isn't bad. Definetly gives me some home. I tested mine today while fishing. Using back light and GPS i birned about 12% battery per hour so it won't work for me. But if it's just a bad screen you bet I'll be singing some praises
