Trying to Understand the AOD

Hello.
I think the watch Face Clear & Powerfull from IQ -shop has this functionality..In the config option  you can set the AOD with various criteria e.g. after sunset etc.
BTW.tell me  how long last your 965 with real AOD on level 1  without gestures?

I'm getting about 4-5 days of battery life with my current setting, with about an hour of GPS time each of those days.

Unfortunately, the watch face from CIQ will not help my situation, it's only in activities that I want the before-sunrise/after-sunset settings.  It just seems odd that that granularity was available in the (much) older 945 but is not in the 965.

Well, that's a pretty good running time
I thought Watch Face settings work globally, not just on the clock face. It remains only to submit a ticket to Garmin, or wait for an upgrade. I want the new OLED version too, but the need for gestures puts me off (for the same reasons as you).

I've sort of got used to it now , having had the 965 for a few months now (955 before that), I keep the AOD off for general and on during activities. I mostly run so don't have the bike issue OP mentioned. I do sometimes find the gesture sensitivity not as sensitive as I would like and when doing intervals (as an example) if its very bright when the gesture fades to AOD one cannot easily see (say) the remaining rest period etc. A flick of the wrist addresses this of course. I do wish one could also adjust the brightness of the AOD level a tad also. I doubt I could easily go back to the 955 as I've got used to the larger screen size , slightly thinner form of the watch and the display is really great (apart from the caveats mentioned), Clearly it depends on use case - I can imagine in some use cases , the screen could be irritating and MIP would be more suitable.

Tend to agree with your comments.  It really feels like a "before sunrise or after sunset" feature on this watch would solve most of my problems - for the exact opposite reason they work so well on the 945's backlight.

I may just have to turn gestures back on for Activities - even though I don't like it for cycling, the only risk/hurt there is that it burns through a bit more battery.  The risk/hurt in running of not being able to see the screen is more significant (although a simple press of a button solves it - i.e. similar to turning on a backlight).

I was thinking to suggest as a "workaround" maybe one could create an activity with and without AOD by copying an activity , but then I realised one cannot toggle the AOD per activity only activities in total. 

The reason I thought of that is for example I have a run activity with live segments and one without live segments as sometimes one really doesn't want to be interrupted with segments.. (As an example).

I suppose the only solution is to keep changing the AOD setting before the activities where its is or isn't required...but as you say some more granularity of the choices would be very useful.

Yep there are a number of ways where a per-activity setting would be nice.  Segments as you suggested, but also AOD, sensors connected-to...unfortunately those are global settings.

I am still trying to get a handle on AOD "during activity."

Last weekend I did a long ride where the bright sun overhead often made the AOD display almost completely unreadable.  I had to either tap the screen (touch is "on") or a button in order for it to brighten enough to read the navigation clues.  Not exactly ideal when trying to also maneuver a bike on high traffic roads!

Yet a few days ago I was riding in bright daylight and the screen was oddly VERY bright and readable, to the point I think there may have been a bug causing the display to stay "on" and not timeout like it should (i have mine set to 8 seconds).

I don't really know what the answer here is to make this usable on the bike.  Any suggestions?  I may just have to buy a dedicated bike computer, if so, well played Garmin.

my two cents. Tried the 965 and 955 simultaneously, on my own "triathlon" bike, sup, running in the woods. And that's my opinion as a "daywalker". MIP can beat the darkness but OLED can't beat the sun. And I also had the annoying Autofire lights on the bike. So as Russell Crow said in Gladiator "Not yet, oled-not yet"

Be kind said:

I also had the annoying Autofire lights on the bike

What's this?