This year, we’ve had two big releases from Garmin so far: the Garmin Instinct 3 and the Garmin Fenix 8. Both scored very highly in their respective reviews, and both have made their way onto our best Garmin watches list for 2025.
They also share another common trait: both Instinct 2 and Fenix 7 watches previously only came with memory-in-pixel (MIP) screens, a duller display than most watches, and one that conserves energy. When Garmin introduced a version of the Fenix with a vibrant AMOLED screen, which is less power-efficient but brighter, like a proper smartwatch instead of a fitness tool, it called it something else – the Garmin Epix Pro.
As Garmin moves to streamline its watches, it’s gotten rid of the Epix line. Both the Instinct 3 and Fenix 8 arrived with three screen options for the user to pick at the point of purchase; a Fenix or Instinct E, a cheaper watch with a MIP screen that only comes in one size; a Solar option, which uses a low-power MIP screen in conjunction with Garmin’s Power Glass solar technology to extend battery life on long outdoor excursions; and a bright AMOLED screen.
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Both watches now have AMOLED options, and looking at the promotional material above, Garmin has gone heavy on this as a selling point. In 2023, the Garmin Forerunner watches also moved from MIP screens to AMOLED screens, with the release of the Garmin Forerunner 265 and Garmin Forerunner 965. These did not get MIP solar-powered options: for that, you’d need to go back a generation and get the Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar. Its Venu and Vivoactive watches also bear AMOLED screens with no MIP options.
It’s clear there’s a trend happening, with Garmin slowly shifting its range over to AMOLED screens, possibly in order to compete with other smartwatch manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung – both of which are making rugged outdoor-focused Ultra watches to encroach on Garmin’s turf. The biggest barrier to making Garmin’s entire range AMOLED at the moment seems to be its Power Glass technology, which is only used with MIP screens at present, likely due to their low power output being offset by the solar power technology when used in bright light.
Due to the general shift that Garmin has taken over the last couple of years, I believe that once Garmin’s technology gets to the point where its Power Glass can offset the power consumption of its AMOLED screens, we’ll never see another Garmin watch with an MIP screen again. And that would be a real shame: the low power screen technology once symbolized, to me at least, everything Garmin watches were really about.
The best Apple watches and best Android smartwatches always place health and fitness highly amongst their features, but they’re really extensions of phones: they’re designed to answer messages and take calls on-wrist, load on third-party apps, use maps and so on. I’m not knocking them: they’re incredibly useful, the sort of super-spy gadget I would have wished for growing up in the 90s, which only seemed possible on the wrist of James Bond. Now we’ve all got them. But with all these features, coupled with sleek black-screen looks, comes a short battery life.
Garmin watches are everything proper smartwatches aren’t. They are big, chunky things with raised bezels like G-Shocks. Most of them are covered with buttons, eschewing the slick teardrop look of the Google Pixel Watch, which can’t be used wearing gloves, in favor of rugged utilitarianism. Until recently, they didn’t have touchscreens, and they had dull MIP displays that reminded me of digital watches or old Nintendo Game Boys, two gadgets very close to my heart.
These low-power MIP screens were part of the reason that older Garmin models lasted so long, but as battery technology improves, the MIP screens are being phased out. I get it: it’s easier to see an AMOLED screen in the dark, and people looking for smartwatches are now more likely to spring for a Garmin over an Apple Watch. However, part of the reason I loved utilitarian Garmins is that I have enough bright, flashing screens in my life, and just want something dull and dark and visible in bright sunlight to capture my training metrics.
If an Apple Watch is the Tim Burton Batmobile, a Garmin watch is the Christopher Nolan one: lumpy and military and eminently useful, able to take a few knocks in the line of duty. The MIP screen contributed to the anti-flashiness of it all, and even though I loved a lot of the AMOLED Garmin watches during testing, I hope Garmin doesn’t completely wipe the MIP from, er, memory.
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matt.evans@futurenet.com (Matt Evans)
