Yesterday Garmin launched its Fenix 8 MicroLED smartwatch, the world's first with a microLED display. The panel is a 1.4" 454x454 round display that offers a brightness of 4,500 nits. We assumed that AUO produces the display, and indeed the company confirms this today.
This is an exciting moment for the microLED industry, and for AUO. This is not only This is the world's brightest wearable, and at 4,500 nits, quite a bit ahead of the brightest OLED (at 3,000 nits). However, a big question remains regarding the power consumption of the microLED display.
The microLED display is the only difference between the Fenix 8 Pro MicroLED and the Fenix 8 Pro AMOLED. The microLED watch carries a high premium of $700 (over 50%). It is indeed much brighter - but the microLED watch has a drastically reduced battery life: Garmin says that the AMOLED version lasts up to 27 days (15 days always-on), while the microLED one lasts for only up to 10 days (4 days always-on).
As the watch specification is otherwise similar, we have to assume that the microLED display consumers about 3X the energy compared to the OLED watch. This is a surprise, as one of the advantages of microLED displays should be the high efficiency, even at higher brightness.
We can only speculate at this stage. First of all, Garmin may measure the battery life at full brightness - or at 4,500 nits. The AMOLED does not reach that high, and likely is peaked at around 2,000 to 3,000 nits. This could partly explain the power consumption difference.
MicroLED should, though, be far more efficient than OLEDs - at least in theory. In real life, we have seen several cases where companies tested microLED display prototypes and found the power consumption to be very low, much lower than comparable OLEDs. We can assume that the main problem is that the production lines and supply chain is immature, and so these initial commercially produced panels are simply not up to par with existing AMOLED displays.
In such wearable displays, in many cases around 70% of the energy is lost in the backplane, with only 30% being consumed by the light-emitting frontplane. If the backplane of the microLED display is not optimized, it could lead to lower system power consumption indeed.
In the meantime, it remains to be seen whether this watch will enjoy much success - as it will be a tough choice for consumers, to pay 50% more and receive a drastic reduction in battery life. Only when very high brightness is needed does this make sense.
Thank you the5krunner for helping with this article.
