Why are the Fenix 8 data fonts so small?

Agree! I'm with the Big Easy watch face again and super happy. I think Garmin doesn't intentionally make their watch faces appealing to promote third parties' (there's some business logic), so that's good for marketing. Then, as soon as we get the watch, we change it to something humanly readable (at least for those over 40 years old).)

Exactly, due fact the WF runs in a virtual environment which requires power. It's also weird stock faces can't be customised from connect app, that makes them even less usable. Stock faces experience is a distatser. 

it's crazy that the font size of some of the data fields are so small. they have been small on my prior Forerunner watches, but these stock faces are ridiculous. the only motivation I could see is to save on battery power since things like HR have such a small area to update. but there should be an option to increase things if the user wants. there is so much wasted space, and as people have noted, it requires eagle eyes which I don't have. 

I'm just wanting a simple analog watch face that has 1hz (or faster than once a minute) HR updates that matches up well with the minute marks on the bezel.

anyone able to share a picture of what this watch face looks like on a MIPS display. I would think they would have to make the font a bit bigger with the lower pixel density? (there is no name for this face I'm talking about on the watch ... it has simple analog hands with nothing in the center, two side bar data fields with progress bars, one field on top and two fields on the bottom.

Because of the too-small fonts on the 8X Solar, I've gone back to my 7X.  I was planning to sell my 7X but now I think I will sell the 8X.  The 8X offers some nice improvements and I really like the watch but the ridiculously small data fonts (e.g., day and date) spoil things for me.  I won't ever upgrade again unless the watch lets me use reasonable size fonts.  

the only saving grace for me is that even with the tiny data fonts, the stock watch faces are in general high battery consumers. I've had much better luck with some Connect IQ faces like Big Easy/Big Easy IQ and Segment 34 which use a lot less battery than any of the stock faces (and they show a lot of data -- Segment 34 MAX and Big Easy may be be something you could consider if you haven't already returned the 8X.

Hmm, I've been using the Portal stock face for several months now, zero issues with battery life.  I generally use 3-5%/day, depending on the amount of GPS activity (more skiing in winter, less in summer months with my old Edge 1030 my primary GPS tracker - F8 just logging for Intensity Minutes, something that was woefully tough on my F7 battery life).

I don't love the font sizes either, my old eyes struggle with them a bit, but I'm not seeing the battery issues, at all.

I'm guessing that maybe you not using AOD? AMOLED or MIPS/Solar?

perhaps more than you asked for, but on my 47mm AMOLED F8, using AOD, 1/3 brightness, AOD dim timeout of 4 seconds, and 8 hours of sleep focus using the battery saver mode (which amounts to 1.5%), I have seen roughly:

Portal: 13%/day (11% for 16 hours of smart watch use while awake)... this is probably the highest battery user of the ones I've tried and sad because this is the digital face I would choose from the stock ones if it weren't for the high drain rate.

Deep Sea: 9%/day

Unnamed Analog face: 9%/day

Industrial: 11-12%/day

in contrast, watch faces like Big Easy, Big Easy IQ, Segment 34 mk2 use about 8%/day.

also worthy of note, I'm still running FW13.35.

Yeah, but it was designed too look good in Youtube videos with Super Macro enabled in camera :D