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Too low brightness in low ambient light.

Istvan
3 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 in reply to kezzad

    As long as the engineers do not see it, let alone acknowledge it, and a forum employee does not understand that you cannot take clear photos with it (tried with S24Ultra and iPhone 15 PM), then it is better to go to the store yourself and confront Garmin with it immediately. And if that doesn't work, just return the watch.

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to 5334613

    Your right about this. I had the Epix Pro 2 and the issue wasn't there. It detects light, causing the Amoled screen to light up (this is normal), but as soon as the sensor detects no light, the screen will not light up (this is also normal, when wearing it under your sleeves of your sweater) but when doing a arm gesture in the dark (then it's not normal) because it goes out off dim mode and STAYS dark. So the sensor is incorrectly adjusted. So if you walk in the dark and you do a arm gesture, the screen goes off dim mode but the screen remains dark because it gets no light. As soon as you illuminate the screen, the sensor detects it and the Amoled screen goes to 100% brightness. So the Amoled screen only react to light.

  • +1 3 months ago in reply to 1246733

    Update September 13, 2024: 

    We have received some great examples of this concern. So our engineers are aware of the concern with the display becoming too dim in low conditions. There will be a Software change coming to address this. However this is not a time frame set for this as yet. 

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    Very nice to read that the problem is known and that software engineers will look into solving this with a future update. I was really hesitant to return the watch as I cannot read the text and data in dark environments. I payed 1200€ for this expensive watch, so the display should of course work well in every circumstance. Sorry for rambling on, but I just had to be sure that Garmin will look at the concerns from the owners of this beautiful watch. Thank you for the information.

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to 1246733

    Good news that the Engineers have some examples of the issue and are working on a fix.

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to Snowbren

    Dang, I hadn't even thought about that. If that is true, the intended software "fix" will create a new problem.

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to 9638684

    Nope, that won't be a problem. People always complain about battery life! But it's advertised with "up to," like "this toothpaste protects against up to 100% of cavities" or "this deodorant protects against up to 100% of sweat".

  • 0 3 months ago

    Is it possible that this issue is isolated only to a certain model/color, or maybe even a production batch?

    I have the 47mm Titanium model with the orange strap, and have no issues with either third party or stock watch faces (I tried a bunch in different low light conditions, tried to reproduce)

    Someone on FB compared the DLC version to the Titanium and mentioned that the Carbon gray DLC does indeed have poor visibility in low light.

    Hopefully the engineers will consider this, instead of just cranking up the brightness all together. My watch is perfect in low light right now and I'd hate it if it got too bright lol.

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to dadonev

    I also have the 47mm titanium with orange accent and orange strap and I have the same issue with the dimming of the screen. Almost impossible for me to see.