I just bought a 2X. Like many people, despite Garmin's objections ;) a $350+ watch is a lot of money for me, and as someone just getting into this price tier of watches I want to do something to protect it. I also want to know what kind of impact this really has on the solar charging. Knowing this does two things, 1) It allows me to evaluate one of several protectors to see which gives me the best solar performance, and for the community to share that information. 2) It allows me to know if I receive poorer charging that this is my fault and not to blame the watch.
The output from the watch today is not super helpful for this. I can only kind of estimate the rate the counter increases to see how much the protector affects charging. I would love something that lets me see something like Instantaneous milliwatts from the panels, or something similar that I could compare with a protector held in front of the screen or not.
I don't really expect Garmin to change their mind and say protectors are okay/recommended, but why not give us something that lets us make better choices more easily?