Forerunner 255S Screen & Build Quality

Everything you describe is normal.

Screen is normal, that is how this type of screen looks. Outdoors it looks very good and uses less battery. But it is washed out and lower quality than what we are used to seeing on phones and other watches. 

Regarding buttons, people say it is normal but unfortunately it should not be the case. Many people on even more expensive watches (fenix, epix) have same issue, some exchanged for new watch. It is obviously low quality buttons on all new generation garmin watches. 

I can confirm, what Vizi wrote: The screen is „as designed“.

Have you ever owned a Garmin watch before or reviewed one before buying? They use screens with the „Memory in Pixel“ (MIP) technique. Those are very energy saving, because they don‘t need backlight, but reflect the sunlight. So they look good outdoors in bright sun. (Also they don’t refresh all pixels 60 times a second like normal LED, but every single pixel only when needed - that’s the reason for the name)

The downside is, that in low light you can hardly read them and the backlight that Garmin builds in is just for those occasions, it is a fallback. Screen does not look good with it, but you can read it.

If you don‘t like that, you need to buy a watch with another display technique like OLED, which Garmin also offers for some models, but will cost lot of energy and reduce battery life.

For the buttons I cannot say a lot. Mine are ok, but seems there is differences in build quality.

I have an i2 and understand the screen.

And it's not so much I am complaining, it's more that it's false advertising and I am more upset about that. The difference between the marketing images vs real life is really significant. The screen doesn't look as good as it looks on the website. 

Oh well, thanks to everyone for explaining!

That is true. Garmin sharpens images on their web site so that display looks better than it does in real life. Marketing tactics.

Confirmed.

Is is true, that on the marketing photos all of the MIP-based watches (which is most, at least all Forerunners and Fenixes) show a display, which is unrealistic

- bright

- sharp and

- colorful

The brightness you might get, when outdoors in really bright sunlight. Then also the colors will be good (but not as good as on the marketing photos).
The sharpness from the marketing pictures obviously you will never get, as in real life it is 260x260 Pixels max. (240x240 on my forerunner 245 or even 218x218 on the 255S), which will show Pixels, if you look closer.

But still, in real life it is ok for me, the battery life makes up for it.

It has happened the same to me. I bought the forerunner 255 one. I confess that I'm very disappointed. I was guessing if it could be a fake one. The colors quality on the screen are really too bad. 

Is it worthy to keep it? I'm seriously questioning myself if I've made a good choice. Thank you.

The developer docs show that the 255/955 has 4x times the color (256 colors) when compared to the 245/945 (64 colors). Any idea why the software is not taking advantage of this for better graphics/gradients/aliasing?

https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/reference-guides/devices-reference/

Juliana said:

Is it worthy to keep it? I'm seriously questioning myself if I've made a good choice. Thank you.

Juliana, if you are asking yourself if a Forerunner is a good choice and worth keeping, because of the screen colors, the answer for you is probably „NO“.

In my opinion the FR series provides very good sport watches and they deliver out on the track, while being active. Out in bright light, the display is also showing what it is made for and delivers good contrast, ok colors and is always on. (See my comments above)

Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to offend you, I get your disappointment. But If the style and look of the watch is more important to you than the qualities of the Forerunner series, it is probably the wrong watch for your needs. You should then look for a watch with OLED display, Garmin offers also some models with it.

Garmin uses so called Transflective MIP displays

Transflective means simply that the rear foil attached to the display is not a diffusing white but a slightly silver reflecting one. Compare it with a LCD display on a computer (white diffuser for background light) and some old casio watch which background is silver.

This beings the awesome advantage that the more sun is shining to your watch, the better you can read it because the sunlight is reflected on the back. background led's only required at night.

for a reason which might be garmins secret forever - they use black as background color of their user interface which is totally stupid.

I recommens to change the watchface to a black/white one with a white background, you will see what i mean, it is awesome outdoor readable but the black background can not make any use of this technology