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

you'll find out with the next Fenix  model.... they are made for good battery iife esp the pro model... if they go to amoled then thats it for MIP except for the instinct potentially... also depends how much improved power on amoleds is.... the enduro is another model thats made for ,max battery life, might stay on MIP.... they are watches hyou dont look at the screens that much unless you want the map function.... amoled is a gimmick unless you use batteries a lot

you'll get your answer when the next fenix and enduro models come out, they are made for long battery life esp the fenix pro and enduro... so they should use MIP for longer battery but if they drop that then thats the end of it except for the Instinct... amoled is a nice to have feature but apart from betger maps  and better specific lighting situations , theres no practical gain.... i picked up a 955  30% off when the 965 came out, worked out half the price of the 965, it went up to 40% off.... i usually pick up older models at big discounts... the new models have curved screens that stick out above the bezel more and are more prone to getting scratched.. 

Can’t speak for anyone else, but when I bought my current 955, it was the first time I’d ever gotten a Garmin from the previous generation (965 was already out), and the reason was MIP.

If you ask any blogger, reviewer, influencer or journalist, AMOLED is good and MIP is bad tho. If you ask redditors, ppl who like MIP are stuck in the past. To me it’s kind of ridiculous bc nobody says that ereaders are obsolete/outdated, even though e-ink is very similar to MIP, and there’s also sort of a competing product (iPad and other tablets) which uses AMOLED.

Then again it makes sense for ppl who admit that part of the value of wearing a smartwatch (especially apple watch) is social status and/or how others perceive it (especially the display). I mentioned a few times that even 10 years ago, ppl were telling me that my Garmin didn’t “look real” (probably bc they thought the display looked really cheap indoors.)

It also makes sense if you don’t care about having to turn your wrist (which most ppl do anyway) and wait for the display to go to full brightness.

Bitti said:

On duplicate activities: This is a stab in the dark, but do you have automatic wi-fi upload turned on in the watch? I was thinking that maybe the watch first syncs with the phone, then both sync through wi-fi when it becomes available?

That sounds possible explanation, one would be directly from the watch and other from GCM, as that would nicely explain the double, but then I've also seen triple, which umm. But worth to disable auto wi-fi upload to test that theory. But like normal case is pretty much that watch and phone will get the internet via wifi at the same time, eg. me arriving at home.

Set auto-upload in the watch as disabled. Let's see does that have any effects. 

Never had problems with these setups with 955, so maybe 955 is just so lazy to use wifi upload that it's already there and duplicate check works.

FlowState said:

I think it would be great If Garmin adopted that Polar AMOLED trick where the display stays readable for the whole entire activity (by constantly flipping between normal brightness and super bright).

Have no experience on that. Don't know would that flipping work nicely. I have always on display setting on during activity, but the display is so dim that one can't really see anything from that. Did put the timeout now to 15s during activity, maybe that would help more.

During diving the display had normal brightness for the whole dives which works nicely. Didn't feel that the battery usage for 1h diving was bad. But probably in the other hand wouldn't want that for 2+h activities.

Maybe some easy toggle is the display always on with normal brightness or not, might be something that could solve these.

FlowState said:

I think he said it worked really great, especially for ppl who mount their watch on a bike handlebar, but the downsides were it burned through battery like crazy, it wasn’t documented, and you couldn’t turn it off.

If it burns battery like crazy I don't think it's then solution. I did use also my watch in the handlebar during the vacation trip and tapping the screen wasn't so bad, but this kind of is also pretty heavily dependent on which kind of biking and which kind of routes. Technical MTB with forks during descents where you need both hands in the handlebar one couldn't just tap the display vs. relaxed biking with not so technical ones easy to take one hand off the handlebar and tap the display.

FlowState said:

Yeah stuff like this really bugs me. It’s form over functionality, and a step backwards in usefulness

I think this is also really dependent on your use cases. For me the not always on display has not been issue out side of specific use cases during the activity. Mostly trail running and following the trails when there's a lot of forks to look that you take the right paths. So I can imagine some people having no problems with AMOLED.

The handlebar use case have been ok, even I thought that it would be like use case that is really crap with AMOLED, but the tapping the screen to wake it, wasn't bad for me, to which I'm somewhat surprised. Compared the map reading, which kind of has been the thing that causes most pain with AMOLED. Also some the pain would go away, if the map wouldn't so eagerly to save the location, damnit. 

Yeah I agree it’s use-case dependent. Like I said my use case is glancing at my watch during hard running workouts, but even in that case, many ppl prefer not to look at their watches at all (as it becomes a counterproductive distraction.) I talked to a relative who’s a subelite runner (he runs with a 235 and won a 5 miler recently), and he said he wouldn’t want any kind of change in his “workflow” when he glances at his watch during a workout. Otoh, his older brother in law — who can still run a 1:20 half — has a 265 now and loves it. 

So it could very well be the case that the AMOLED apologists are right and you think you’ll hate it until you try it. I’ve tried apple watch with workoutdoors (the so-called “garmin-killer” app) and I’m kind of ambivalent. I think Apple Watch is a better smartwatch than Garmin ofc (yes I realize apple hobbles iphone functionality with anything except apple watch), and I think their gesture detection is better than Garmin’s. But it’s not really a direct apples to apples comparison either way.

I guess one of these days I should borrow an AMOLED Garmin and try some hard workouts with it, as well as a few steady state runs.

I started out feeling that way about the AMOLED and 965 , but I now am so used to it its not even an issue. I don't have any issues seeing it, currently i'm in a very sunny environment and I though I may have more of an issue but the gesture and glance has been fine.

FlowState said:

So it could very well be the case that the AMOLED apologists are right and you think you’ll hate it until you try it.

I think this is also big point. I wasn't loving AMOLED at start that it's just stupid, MIP and always on is like must, but granted I got into the mind set that my next sport watch is probably going to be AMOLED and started to accept that. This getting Garmin dive watch wasn't so planned that it was something I had thought about as option.

At least some cases I feared for AMOLED, the side eye looking what is the time and watch in handlebar has been pretty much non-issue in my use cases. And the difference how good the maps looks was WOW-effect. Granted the "save location" thing is annoying.

Apple watch is just not an option. I don't want anything to do with Apple's walled garden and not seeing that it would in my usage be a replacement that I would be happy, it's just smartwatch in my eyes.

Will probably daily drive this Descent Mk3i until there's the next gen Epix/Fenix/Forefunner's and probably then buy that as a new daily driver and put this into "dive only watch" usage. The Epix Pro (Gen 2) of course have never optical HR than this, but otherwise not a reason for "upgrade".

Also this 51mm watch hasn't been so huge and bad as one have thought, especially with the nylon strap it's pretty nice also in the hand, the normal strap did feel bad when you wiggled your hand and the watch is heavy and jumped around or you would need to wear it pretty tight that's not otherwise most comfortable, but with nylon strap you get the tightness just nice. But like also that was one reason to have Forerunner as they were nice and small.