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Too low brightness in low ambient light.

Istvan
4 months ago

Hi,

Just received my Fenix 8 AMOLED 51mm and sadly noticed its new feature, which significantly decrease the brightness in low ambient light. Not to be confused, I do not mean the configurable timeout (4, 8 or 16 sec) or focus or red shift either.

Imagine I am in a dark room. Brightness is set to maximum, battery saver is off, gesture is on. When I raise my arm, the screen comes up, but it is too dark. If I illuminate the watch display by a flashlight, the brightness goes up automatically. When I switch off the flashlight and keep the display busy, the brightness goes down again after a few seconds.

In this dark mode I hardly see the display, and can not see the small letters/numbers at all. I had no this issue with EPIX, of which brightness was independent form the ambient light.

Unfortunately I did not find any settings to get rid of this kind of dimming.

Any thoughts?

Best regards,

Istvan

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  • 0 3 months ago

    Smae here. Got my Fenix 8  Amoled 51mm on the 4th Sept and noticed this day 1,sorry on Night 1. This Auto Ambient Disply Dimmer is not good at all. We need the option to keep the screen at any brightness level that we want plus the Time out for display on needs to longer then 15sec. Come on it's our watch and we need to decide how we want to use or display it.

  • 0 3 months ago

    Come on Garmin give us the option to have full brightness all the time!!!! This is ridiculous i got a watch with 30 days battery life and the screen deems in low light making the watch unreadable for what?? Preserve battery?? This is a joke!!

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to FlowState

    MicroLED would solve the burn-in problem (so presumably no more dimming if battery life is good enough). 

    It won't solve the issue for those of us who prefer MIP simply because it's non-emissive. I know some people complain MIP is too dim indoors but that's how I want it: pretty much how a standard watch would be rather than a bright computer display that's on at all times. I don't know how people actually use their watches but for me if I'm not working out I'll check the time from time to time and hardly interact with it otherwise. I know, you can turn it off entirely with Amoled but then discreet glances are out of the question and a black box on the wrist just feels... wrong.

    Probably I'm a minority within a minority anyway.

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to ep013

    I like MIP too but I'm pretty sure we're both in the minority. I think eventually MIP will completely disappear, only to maybe make a comeback in 20-30 years when it becomes retro cool, like Casio watches today.

    Probably not, since Casio (and other retro tech like vinyl and cassettes) were actually cool in their day, but MIP was never cool. Garmin users have been complaining about dull and washed-out displays forever. Non-Garmin users have said stuff like "your [Garmin] watch doesn't look real" around the time of the earliest Apple Watches.

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to FlowState

    Make it three, I'm also in the MIP team. Not because I think it's the best technology, but I think that it serves it's purpose for an outdoor / sports watch the best.

    I'm no fan of gestures to make something readable or auto dimming depending on environment - at least not in the current form. There may come technology that's suits better and is more modern, but for me AMOLED is still in the "more bling"-departement...

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to bw
    bw said:
    Make it three

    +1 = 4 ;)

  • 0 3 months ago

    This may have been how the battery life is seven days versus six days with Epix.  By having a lower level of light, when the screen is effectively dimmed, it uses less power and maybe that’s what gives the extra day of always on battery life.  Unless the battery happened to get larger, I hope this is something that could be addressed with software to give people preference for a little bit brighter so as to see the screen easier when it’s not directly on facing you.

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to bluefish

    Why do folk who don't have a particular type of watch feel the need to endlessly comment in threads that are therefore not relevant to them?! Methinks they protest too much. Bizzare! 

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to 8532528
    8532528 said:
    Why do folk who don't have a particular type of watch feel the need to endlessly comment in threads that are therefore not relevant to them?! Methinks they protest too much. Bizzare! 

    What makes you think I don't own an Amoled watch? Bizarre. I currently have 7 different Garmin models here. And you ?

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to 8532528
    8532528 said:
    Why do folk who don't have a particular type of watch feel the need to endlessly comment in threads that are therefore not relevant to them?! Methinks they protest too much. Bizzare! 

    Can’t speak for anyone else but it’s an interesting topic. It’s relevant to any Garmin user who currently has a watch from a line which has gone all-AMOLED (like Forerunner.) The next Forerunner I buy will necessarily be AMOLED, unless I get a used or discontinued watch. Not to state the obvious, but for a smartwatch, the display is one of the most important components, as it’s the primary way we interact with the device.

    So obviously it’s interesting to me when I see a bunch of threads like:

    - the gesture doesn’t work so well

    - please stop auto-dimming the AMOLED display during activities

    - I can’t read the AMOLED display outdoors

    It’s also interesting to me when DCR reviews a Polar watch which manages to keep the AMOLED display bright continuously during an activity, at the expense of battery life

    I’ve also used an Apple Watch (which is ofc AMOLED), so it’s not like I’ve never seen an AMOLED display on a smartwatch before. I happen to think AMOLED looks so much nicer than MIP for a pure smartwatch, so if I wasn’t a runner, none of this would even be an issue for me. (I would have no reason to even consider Garmin as a brand.)

    It’s not like I’m on a secret mission from the MIP Mafia, sent here to troll happy AMOLED users or trick them into returning their watches. Like obviously the market has spoken, the ship has sailed, AMOLED won and MIP has failed.

    So I’m very interested in the future (and present) of displays in Garmin devices, which afaict is being discussed in this topic.

    Same reason I’m interested in the new Fenix 8 UI — it will probably be coming to other Garmin lines in the future.