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Need a way to turn off adaptive (auto) brightness

Horgh
2 months ago

Dear Garmin,

The Fenix 8 43mm AMOLED is extremely hard to read in dark rooms and/or at night due to the adaptive brightness. That "feature" dims the display in dark environments to the point where older eyes can't read it. In brighter environments it is easy to read, and I can readily reproduce the problem if I turn the display on while my hand is covering the watch. It is absolutely the light sensor that's driving this behavior.

This is NOT an issue with my brightness setting, that's already set to maximum.

This is NOT an issue with night/sleep mode, the problem exists during the day.

This is NOT a problem with my watch face, I'm using one of the default faces.

This IS a problem with the firmware and the fact that there is no way to disable adaptive brightness. This oversight (or terrible design choice) is ruining an otherwise great watch for many of us.

Fix it.

  • 0 2 months ago

    Anyway, I don't understand why this is setable, if it's always adaptive.

  • 0 2 months ago in reply to kri822aa

    It adapts wrong, that's the problem. In other words, the brightness dims down too much for a dark room. I would much rather turn off adaptive brightness and control the brightness with the existing brightness level setting.

    To explain further... when the watch is too dark in a dark room, I can turn off the display, shine some sort of light source on it, turn the display back on, and then it's bright enough to see (because it sensed the light). But as soon as I turn off the light source, the watch dims back down to a level that's too low.

    This watch has a thousand settings, and yet not this one. Every single phone out there has this setting for a reason.

  • 0 2 months ago in reply to kri822aa

    It's not setable as you put it,that's the problem.

  • +1 2 months ago in reply to Iant..

    Hello. Your watch has an ambient light sensor that will dim the display in low light so that it is not blindingly bright. Your watch will also automatically brighten in bright light conditions to make your screen easier to read. Unfortunately it is not possible to disable this. 

    If this is becoming to dark to be readable, our engineers would love to see these examples. For this, please reach out to me via Private Message. I will collect the specifics of this, including a video of the watch becoming to dim to be readable. And I will report this. 

  • 0 2 months ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    Hi Laurie,

    Yes, I'm aware of how an ambient light sensor works, and what I'm saying is that when it dims it dims too much. Believe me when I say that in a pitch dark room, the watch dims to the point of not being easily readable. We should have the ability to control how much it dims, or to set it to a static brightness that doesn't dim. Your engineers and PMs made the false assumption that all eyes are the same, and they are not. Maybe they can see better in the dark than I can, that I don't know, but I do know that I'm not the only one who has this complaint.

    I will reach out to you via PM.

  • 0 2 months ago

    I have the same problem with my fenix 8. In a dark room, the brightness dims so much that it is very difficult to perceive. The brightness is set to medium. My previous Venu 3 did not have this problem. The Venu 3 was set to minimum brightness and was still well perceived in a dark room.

  • 0 1 month ago

    Still no way to adjust this? Cmon guys, I can't see anything on the watch when in a dim room. Sad.

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    Hi Laurie, today I purchased the Fenix 8 AMOLED. It works perfect but an ambient light sensor is the bad joke. :-( i have healthy eyes but the brightness of display in the dark is insufficient. I can barely read the numbers even if the brightness is on full. Please something with this behavior in the next software update! Thanks a lot in advance! Kind Regards David 

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    I would love to have an off button for this feature, I am visually impaired and cannot read the watch when my Garmin Tactix 8 has auto dimmed to a low setting. This is a very expensive watch and these kind of features should be user configurable

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to 8712119

    In basic terms, if there is six possible brightness levels (1 to 6) then there should be an option to set the lowest brightness level to a number higher than 1. Some people might find a brightness level of 2 adequate while other people might find a brightness level of 3 adequate. This would give people an option that works for them, while minimising impact to the battery life of the watch.