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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 30 days ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    Maybe you are right Cohen2501, but...What is the main purpose of smart watches? Yes, to see everything on the display readable as much as possible anytime and everywhere. These watches are for humans and they have a right to make a choice. Battery life is only the marketing staff and we can get to the situation when we would need more brightness especially for reading maps at night in woods, wherever..because these watches are designed for outdoor activities.

    @GARMIN We love your products. Please let us make a choice to override the ambient light sensor, many many more people will appreciate it! These watches are little bit expensive aginst the competitors and this adjustment will help us more then you can imagine. I understand your concencerns about the battery life, which is an big advantage against the competitors and I really like it but you can submit the additional announcement that the override of light sensor can have an impact on the battery life and you are safe from business point of view. It is impossible to make an announcement by you how to cheat on this with enabling flash light and only temporary solve the problem...it is sad... :(Thanks for your understanding in advance.

  • 0 28 days ago

    +1 Here… in direct sunlight it is perfectly readable. But inside, i find it always too dim. This needs to be a setting!! I would set it on auto dimming, but would use a 1.5 multiplier to the current settings in every light environment.

  • 0 28 days ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    Dear Garmin - I think that the large number of complaints about this issue should be enough for a ‘fix’ to be done without needing your engineers to look at the dimming! This is your top of the line and newest version so this type of problem should (and must) be solved. ‘That’s just the way it is’ doesn’t cut it as a response. I was about to pull the trigger and upgrade to an F8 but not now. How many lost sales will it take to get your ‘engineers’ to come up with a fix?

  • 0 28 days ago in reply to Garmin-Laurie

    Just allow the users to set their brightness levels.

    And implement a environment light controlled back-light for MIP displays.

  • 0 27 days ago

    As a new AMOLED user coming from MIP, yes this is annoying. Why not just give us the option to set the brightness for all cases? That is what the Apple Watch with OLED does. What is the reasoning behind @Garmin-Laurie's answer of "it's not possible to disable"?

    Another dumb quirk is I can only get the Ultra-Low setting for sleep mode where regular mode only goes to Low. Why not offer it in other modes?

  • 0 27 days ago

    I’m experiencing this problem too.

    Hoping for a quick fix or must consider returning.

  • 0 27 days ago

    Just bought the Fenix 8 and is experiencing this also. Watchface is barely readable in a dim room.

    This is a must fix and honestly should have been fixed long ago.

  • 0 22 days ago

    I'm in the process of replacing AMOLED to MIP due to this issue. If it's not fixable, then I can't use it. Hope MIP will keep up with battery life.

  • 0 21 days ago

    Another vote for fixing the AUTOMATIC ambient light sensor settings.  I can see the time on my amoled fenix 8, but just barely, and the smaller font info is impossible to read.  C'mon Garmin, get it fixed.