Silver Dial - Unreadable in the Sun / Black Dial any Better?

According to Garmin, the display should be better than the HR's one. I had a black HR too and find the display of the black Luxe (maybe even much) better readable.

Came here to ask about this myself :)  I would like to get the silver Vivomove Style but I'm concerned about the readability, it sounds reasonable of course that bright text on silver is more difficult to read than bright text on black but I would also like to hear more experiences on the difference between the two.

When you say unreadable do you mean like when running or normal use? Maybe I'm mixing this up with some other watch but I understand the colour of the text is configurable? Are you using white or tried any others?

You can't configure its text color. It will always be white. With the black face, I find it easy to read it even when running, cycling or swimming. Not sure about the silver face, though.

I have now had the chance to compare both silver and black Vivomove Style

In "normal" light, indoors etc, the difference is smaller than I expected. On the same brightness setting the silver looks somewhat brighter, either intentional to compensate for bright background (which should affect battery life?) or it just looks that way. I would say black is slightly better but no big deal

In direct sunlight however as OP says the silver is completely unreadable, you can't even tell it's on without shading it. This is (probably) because it has a sort of reflective surface making the surface itself quite bright. The black is of course not super legible in direct sunlight but you can read it without shading, I'd say it meets reasonable expectations.

(and to clarify my misunderstanding of configurable text colours, I saw this video: https://youtu.be/GQNvMO8I-cc?t=115 which has distinctively blue text, and some guy in the comments asked something about blue and the guy answered something about 10 different colours. I think, my german is pretty weak... But I guess it's a video artifact, the configurable colours does not affect text)

I don't know how he configured the text color like this; German is my mother tongue, but he doesn't tell about it, neither in his video nor in comments. I looked through all the settings but couldn't find it. I'm on a Luxe on Android, maybe that makes the difference.

The comment I was referring to is this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQNvMO8I-cc&lc=UgwZZDba158LmcQn8gd4AaABAg

I'm picking up the words green and blue from the question and "... die Farben individuell einstellen. 10 gängige Farben ..." from the reply, but I assume they are talking about the colour configuration under "watch face" and not the text.

I also looked extensively for other colour configurations (I'm also on android though) but couldn't find any

I have returned the Silver dial (moss band); whilst the digital display is readable indoors, it was absolutely pathetic outside, even without direct sun. There were other issues that also made me return it (Bluetooth issues, etc) but legibility was part of it.

i have replaced it with a Black disk and as the other poster mentioned, whilst better, it isn’t night and day. I also find the downside with the black dial to be the gorilla glass is more reflective than it was with the silver dial.

Personally, I find the display a step backward (in terms of brightness) from the Vivomove HR. My guess is that they are trying to balance battery life with screen quality and size. The HR screen was/is brighter and the battery lasted longer, so my guess is that if the screen was brighter on the Style, the battery life would be even worse than it is. 

VERDICT:

Digital display is more legible on the black dial, than the silver, outside, in daylight.

Battery life worse on the Style over the HR

You cannot change text colour - only the indicator bar colours and certain ‘highlights’ but not the text. The screen is the same on the Style and Luxe, on the glass differs. 

I can confirm that the display on silver Vivomove Style is definitely unreadable and even practically invisible at direct sunlight.

Just going into a shade or when shading it by hand, it is quite OK.

It is one of the impractical things about the watch. I am considering a return.

I have a Vivomove HR Sport (all black: case, face and strap) and thinking to get a Style. Too bad the text color cannot be changed, something with more contrast then white on silver would help.

I too watched the YouTube video in German. Blue might be an artifact of the video, but sure looks good!

Who knows, Garmin could make the font color user selectable with a firmware update. Unlike the Vivomove HR the display seem to be full color, top and bottom. 

Frankly I do not find the display of my Vivomove HR that readable in full sunlight (meaning with the sun on it straight on). No emissive display is, only reflective or (to some extent) transflective displays are, like those of the old fashion LCD watches.

The white on black of the Vivomove HR is very easy to see in a well lit room during the day, even by a window, in the car or outside if the sun is not shining directly on the display. Heck, even only the glare due to the glass reflection would make difficult to see the hands in a traditional watch, if the sun is shining directly on it.

I would not mind having to shade the dial of the silver model in full sunlight if the display is still readable outdoor during the day.