Looking for Fitbit with screen that's visible under sunlight

They're all visible under sunlight if you hold your hand over it to shade it.

Aside from that, it depends mostly on the angle of the light and glare. There are no OLED displays and very few LCD displays that really look good under direct, full sunlight.

I got my wife one of these Amazfit watches when her Fitbit (I mistyped it as fibtit soooo many times just now) Charge 5 got flaky and would not charge or come on half the time (just like her Charge 3 did after a couple of years).


View: https://www.amazon.com/Amazfit-Fitness-Tracker-Monitoring-Resistant/dp/B09Z6CRHJ6


So far (4 months) it has been great. Works as you would expect but it is paired with an Android phone so I don't know if that will make a difference. Basically all she wanted was something that can show the time and date, track her steps, and do basic notifications. No need for any crazy invasive other tracking like heartrate, pulse oximeter, blood pressure, etc. on some of the more fancy ones.

The screen is decently bright but in direct sunlight on a bright day, you need to shade it a bit to see it really well.

I figure that if they are all going to likely crap out after a couple of years, we might as well go with a $50 one instead of $150 since they mostly do the same thing and look about the same.

The current Inspire 3 is a color OLED, but not sure how bright it gets:
That color OLED is a big step up. It might sound silly, but adding colors really does make the Inspire 3 feel more modern, while the brighter display makes notifications and metrics more readable

Paladin said:

Aside from that, it depends mostly on the angle of the light and glare. There are no OLED displays and very few LCD displays that really look good under direct, full sunlight.

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I have an Apple Watch and it’s fully usable under direct sunlight; it goes up to 1000 nits:

Obviously it’s not perfect, in that it looks like it’s only at 80% brightness and contrast in full sun, but it’s not a problem to use. That said it’s still $249 for the cheapest model

OrangeCream said:

I have an Apple Watch and it’s fully usable under direct sunlight; it goes up to 1000 nits:

Apple Watch SE - Technical Specifications

View all technical specifications for Apple Watch SE.

www.apple.com

Obviously it’s not perfect, in that it looks like it’s only at 80% brightness and contrast in full sun, but it’s not a problem to use. That said it’s still $249 for the cheapest model

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Interesting. I'm sure it is a bit subjective as far as what 'looks good' or whatever. I think I must have my Galaxy Watch 6 Classic set to limit the brightness or something because in theory it goes up to 2000 nits but, for me, it still just looks 'ok' in bright, direct sunlight (by which I mean like Noon time sun on a clear day).

EDIT: Oof... ok. I take it back. I turned off 'Adaptive Brightness' and turned it all the way up and it is silly bright at the max. The colors get a bit blown out and weird but it is super bright. It's just sunny here today but it definitely is visible in the fairly strong sun. Wow.

Paladin said:

EDIT: Oof... ok. I take it back. I turned off 'Adaptive Brightness' and turned it all the way up and it is silly bright at the max. The colors get a bit blown out and weird but it is super bright. It's just sunny here today but it definitely is visible in the fairly strong sun. Wow.

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Yeah, 2k nits is crazy bright. 1k is bright enough for full sunlight but the image quality looks like an LCD panel from 2001; functional and you get full color but not something to crow home about today.

Look at some Garmin watches like Instinct line. They use MIPS screens which are similar to e-ink like on a Kindle, so they are 1000% readable under the brightest of sunlight. I've had no issues with it in both dark and bright conditions on the beach or dark hallways. You also get 2 weeks of battery as a bonus to have a battery-sipping screen.

Downside is it's not touchscreen and it is "bulky" by some people's standards. There is a smaller thinner version of the Instinct 2S, but it still looks more like a Casio G-Shock or Timex expedition watch than a fashionable smartwatch

asbath said:

They use MIPS screens which are similar to e-ink like on a Kindle, so they are 1000% readable under the brightest of sunlight.

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It isn't the MIP part that makes it work in sunlight. MIP stands for "memory in pixel", and does two things:

• It saves power by allowing the screen to refresh (or not, if nothing changed) itself without involving the main system processor. This is sort of e-ink-like in that the screen displays whatever it was last told to display until told to display something different without needing to be constantly updated. It is un-e-ink like in that e-ink accomplishes this physically while MIP displays accomplish this electronically.
• It saves memory on the host processor by having the screen frame buffer stored on the display. This is different from e-ink in that the screen can be read by the processor like it is a chunk of RAM. This functionality isn't always used, though.

The actual display technology of the Garmin Instinct is transflective LCD, which is not very like e-ink, and predates it by several decades. Yes, bog standard LCD, similar to a digital watch from the 80s. Garmin has been using it for a long time, and it generally is very readable in sunlight since its standard operating mode uses the sunlight to illuminate the screen instead of fighting the sunlight with very high brightness.

Yeah, I have a Gamin Fenix 6x and the brighter the light or day, the brighter the screen on my watch is. Bonus is I only have to charge it once a week and it does everything an Apple Watch does. If I need to look at it in the darkness, I just push the light button to see the display. And it's a heck of a lot more rugged than my previous Apple Watches were.