Is this normal? New F6X user (photo)

Customize the watch-face and change the Bkgd. Color if you want more 'light' face. Otherwise yes this is as clear/bright: keep in mind this is not OLED screen.

Thank you for your reply . I'll be sending the watch back. This is terrible. It's hardly readable.

Phil

Well the watch is intended for outdoor/sport, that translates to superb read in sunlight and very good battery life. Example my 6x Sapphire keeps battery for ~19 days with training and almost all of the measurements on. Compare this to the OLED's watches 1 to few days battery and you can see why this technology is used in the Fenix.

Your explanation of the technology gives me a better understanding, thank you. At an angle of about 45° the screen brightness is acceptable. But is it normal? 

This is how it's always been with Fenix watches. Sapphire glass makes it worse. Gorilla glass is a little better. My solution, which works just fine for me, is to enable gesture backlight throughout waking hours.

I have the 6X Pro Solar and I charge the watch once a week after a drop of around 50% with 10 hours of activities recorded. Using the backlight this way barely dents battery performance.

Outdoors in daylight it is a total non issue.

yes, it is normal, this is the way the screen works.

it is a transflective memory-in-pixel technology.

• -- not so bright indoor - the AMOLED screen consumes a lot (a smartwatch has to be recharged almost everyday). yes is bright.
• ++ the garmin screen consumes power only when a change is to be made in the display.
• ++ once set does not consume power - therefore you have 24 days (it is an example) of power
• ++ in the bright light is fantastic visible, as the light is reflected differently by the pixels.
• ++ keep in mind that is an always on screen!

indoor yes, you will feel it is a little bit darker, but set the backlight triggered by hand movement (at least in the period you are awake)...or a simple upper left button push will show you all you need.

a 10-20% backlight level is enough for most, I use 30% because of my bad eyes...

I like it exactly because of this technology!

enjoy it, it is a fantastic watch!!!!

just me,

robert

Yes, its normal, this is a transreflective display, in other words, it requires external light reflecting on the pixels of the display. That's why when you turn your watch towards a non light emitting surface you won't see a lot, if you turn it toward a light source it will get bright. Set background light to on at gesture, my Fenix is very good in recognising a wrist motion towards my body (non light reflecting) and the background light provides good visibility. I get 2 weeks of battery life with all actives and background light activated.

The problem with the F6X screen is that it has no antireflective coating. So the reflection of any lightsource is quite disturbing and makes it hard to read the display.

My Garmin Forerunner 945 has a very good AR coating, in comparison it shows a noticeable better contrast than the F6X. I therefore sent the F6X back because I was disappointed that Garmin doesn´t provide such a good screen on their top priced product. Not to mention the bluish background light..

So yes, it´s a transflective display but with a decent AR coating the F6X display would be awesome!

Yes. The display technology is meant to be front-lit by ambient light rather than being lit by glowing pixels. The advantage is that it is very low power consumption technology, similar to a Kindle e-reader, and it is easily readable in direct sunlight. The down-side is that it isn't inherently lit in dim lighting.

You can enable the Backlight to come on with a wrist raise "gesture". I have this option set to On during activity, after dark. (Coros makes a big deal about calling this Night Mode.)

Almost all fitness/sports watches utilize this display technology. The exception is the Suunto 7 and the Garmin Venu. 

Smart watches based on the Android Wear platform and Apple Watch use amoled displays similar to smart phones, but with different tradeoffs. They need to turn the display off or dim it constantly to try to save power and you only get about a day of useable life between charges.

There is no brightness, as in - the screen is not backlit at all, so the brightness will depend on how bright the external light source is (the sun, lamps, etc.)

It is kind of similar to classic Casio digital watches which always show time, but the screen itself does not emmit any light. Which means that you can see the time perfectly fine in well lit conditions, but sometimes you need to switch on the backlight.