A general conversation about the future of MIP for our watches..

I do hope they keep the MIP displays for future watches. I for one was thinking between a 265 and a 255 and I checked both in-store. For one, what I love about MIPS is using it at night. It doesn't blast my eyes with its brightness or blue light compared to my Galaxy smartwatch that I replaced. Another nitpicky but big thing and personal preference is that I don't like the new UI design on the new AMOLED watches. Call me simple or whatever but I like the utilitarian-focused look of the mips UI compared to the flashy AMOLED UI. Another thing that I think many people overlook is that around 40% of the worlds population live in a tropical climate (including me) meaning the sun is essentially out every single day for the entire year. Thus while an AMOLED may be fine, the annoyances of glare or not turning on when flicking my wrist would add up fairly quickly. Lastly, while the battery issue will probably go away in a few generations, currently, it's better enough for me to stray away from the 265/965. I use my watch daily for activities for up to an hour WITH music. I easily drain 20 - 30% per activity. Currently, my watch lasts about 3 - 4 days without a charge. I can see the AMOLED version in 2 - 3 days. Doing the math, id be charging the watch around ~105 vs ~146 per year. When you add up those charge rates I'd be killing the 265/965 much faster, which would be an issue since batteries can't be replaced.

Unfortunately, I don't think Garmin will keep MIPS so the best hope for those who like MIP displays is that

1. Continue to make the Forerunner 255/955 series alongside future offerings
2. Hope your retailer has some old stock by the time your current watch breaks
3. Thankfully Garmin products have a fairly long lifespan, so just pray yours doesn't break.

I guess what Garmin is trying to do is to make the watch appeal to more consumers by slowly adding more smartwatch features such as an AMOLED display. However, I got the forerunner as a fitness tracker, not a smartwatch, I don't want notifications on my wrist, which is why I turned them off. I don't want an always-on display or having to turn my wrist and the watch not turning on (even happens on the mips, but at least you can still see the time on the mips if it doesn't turn on the backlight). I don't want to kill my watch faster by charging it more often. Overall, just a few nitpicks of mine that make me like mips, and while I'm sure most if not all of us will slowly adjust to Amoled in the future, I can confidently say I will miss mips.

Since I was in a similar situation to yours a couple of months ago (deciding between Forerunner 965 and 955, coming from MIPS Fenix 5+), and came to a different conclusion (bought a 965), I thought I'd share my experiences.

I was also worried about using an amoled watch at night. But Garmin's sleep mode watch face is really good and I've had no problems. The watch face is very dim, subtle, and shows only essential information (time, next wakeup etc.), so there are no distractions from just checking the time at night. At least compared to my old Fenix 5+ with backlight, 965 was an improvement in that respect.

On using the watch at day, this is clearly something where things are different based on where you live. If you are constantly under bright tropical sunlight, MIP is definitely a plus (if you have a watch where glass reflections don't ruin it). On the other hand, here in Finland I've always been disappointed in how often MIP requires me to turn on the backlight, even in the middle of the day in autumn/spring if I'm under the tree canopy (the sky reflection spots coming from everywhere through the canopy made my Fenix 5+ maps really difficult to read without backlight, even with no sapphire glass or touch layer). When I bought the 965, I imagined that I would use the always-on-display, since that's what I was used to with my 5+. But surprisingly after a couple of days I decided to turn it off, since the wrist-flick action works pretty good for me. And truth be told, looking at the watch at an angle (where always-on would be useful) never worked for me either for 965 or 5+, since glass reflections are pretty strong from that direction, and both MIP and amoled displays produce most of the light directly away from the screen.

The above means that in practise, I charged my old Fenix 5+ every 3 days from 30-40 % to 80 % (with maybe an hour of running). Now when I do the same with my 965, it's only about once a week. (Of course 965 has newer hardware and better battery, so probably it means that I would get about the same from mip 955 and my amoled 965). And when I've gone backpacking, the 965 goes from 80 % to 30-40 % after two days with ~10-12 hours hiking with GPS. That's good enough for me, since if I go for longer hikes, I'll take a power bank for my phone anyways, and charging the watch won't take much juice out of it.

I definitely hope Garmin will continue producing both amoled and mip watches, because people have different needs. But as someone who was really sceptical about amoled, I've been surprised about how well it works for my needs.

(Regarding Garmin's UI style differences between amoled and mip: I understand why people might dislike the flashier amoled ui, but on the other hand, we've already accustomed to such UIs on our phones, so I've already forgotten about the whole issue.  )

Thanks for sharing your experiences and as much as it may suck to be seeing mip displays going away, I know a lot of us mip die hards will begrudgingly adapt and learn to like the new amoled display. Especially since the technology is always being improved upon, meaning we're bound to better brightness levels and battery

One thing I forgot to mention (but I've written about in another thread) is that the improved contrast and colour of the amoled display really made a difference on reading maps. That was always a sore point with my Fenix 5+ (and important to me, since I do hiking a lot, with more detailed countour maps than Garmin provides), but now with 965's large amoled screen, the maps are a delight to use.

As much as I like MIP, I think phasing them out in place of amoled is a given as nicer looking face is what the general market wants. Who looks at the watch face all the time? So battery drain and burnt in are non issues so long users don't use the always on feature.

It's not like looking the watch all the time. You can look the watch also with "side eye" without any movement... with AMOLED without always on -feature doesn't let you do that, and then if you want to look it, you then really need to look it. 

I think this is my main thing I'm not so happy with AMOLED. Always on, would help with that probably, but then there's the battery life (and possible burning), but can one get used to that, that the watch if black, if you don't make the movement to look at it. And then how good will the gesture work..

That was one of my points I wrote earlier. Of course this depends on the light and the watch, but at least on my old Fenix 5+, I couldn't most of the time see the mip screen properly when I glanced at it from the side at an angle. Indoors it was too dim, outside there were reflections.

My experience was that mip is better if you already happen to have your arm in the correct place so that the watch points almost directly at you. Then you don't have to move your wrist. Otherwise mip and amoled + wrist flick are quite close, at least on my use.

I do that pretty often and haven't noticed problems reading the 955 MIP. I think most when I look at the watch without notification are those.. I just side eye get a glimpse and I'm happy with it and no need to then watch the watch knowingly. 

But how annoying will this be in the end and can one get used to it how easily is most likely TBD.

It's possible that 955's screen is better than older Fenix 5+'s. I'm glad if that's the case.