Fenix 8 Pro Battery-gate: Why AUO MicroLED Panels Drain Battery – Industry Expert Speaks about Garmin’s latest woe

I’ve followed microLED tech for this site for about two years, as it became apparent that it represented a big leap forward for the industry. I’ve made a few expert contacts who know far more than I ever will on this subject.

It was no surprise that AUO was the supplier to Garmin, as the company announced today in a press release.

We are proud to collaborate with Garmin to launch the first Micro LED smartwatch. This milestone not only showcases the innovation of Micro LED in wearable applications but also marks a significant step toward commercialization. With AUO’s deep expertise in Micro LED R&D and streamlined process integration, we work with our partners to bring differentiated, high-performance wearable solutions to market. [Wei-Lung, CTO,  AUO]

Both Wei-Lung and Garmin’s Shrick stated the benefits of the technology in the joint press release as they apply to the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro MicroLED.

• Exceptional Brightness and Clarity: The 1.4-inch MicroLED display delivers outstanding brightness and unprecedented clarity, particularly in bright outdoor conditions, making it ideal for elite athletes and outdoor adventurers.
• High Dynamic Contrast and Vivid Colours: The display provides high dynamic contrast and vivid colour saturation, contributing to a superior visual experience.
• High Pixel Density: With a pixel density of 326 PPI, the display matches the resolution of Garmin’s other premium smartwatches, ensuring sharp and detailed visuals.
• Superior Image Quality: The MicroLED display, driven by AUO’s proprietary LTPS active matrix backplane, offers exceptional image quality.
• Rapid Response Time: The display has a fast response time, enhancing performance for dynamic activities and user interactions.
• Extended Lifespan: MicroLED technology is claimed to have a longer lifespan than other display technologies.
• Environmental Adaptability: The display performs exceptionally well across diverse environments, from sun-drenched mountain trails to nighttime runs and extreme sports conditions.

That is a positive and compelling list. Particularly, the environmental adaptability, speed and general image quality. But something is missing.

More generally, it is broadly accepted that the additional benefits of microLED are that it:

• Consumes less power due to self-emissive pixels that don’t require a backlight.
• Minimal burn-in risk because they use inorganic materials.
• Maintain consistent colour and brightness at wide viewing angles.
• Generate less heat, which is ideal for compact devices.

OK, the last two might have been overlooked for a press release. However, the mitigated burn-in risk is a big one. Why wasn’t that mentioned? And that’s made more ominous by the blatant omission of the daddy of all benefits – lower power consumption. That’s the whole point of microLED on a wearable. Almost.

The lack of a battery performance claim in the press release then backs up what we see in the Fenix 8 Pro microLED specs – battery consumption is decimated in almost all modes.

So I investigated further, starting with AUO’s site to see what claims they make about their product’s energy efficiency. Energy savings from microLEDs are an industry-wide feature that will be splashed all over their site, right? You guessed it, I couldn’t find anything anywhere. At least not easily. I dug more deeply into a few of their blogs…phew! I wasn’t imagining things; there it was

Direct Quotes from AUO

• From May 13, 2024: AUO states, “Micro LED display technology stands out with its high resolution, high brightness, low power consumption, and high reliability features, positioning it as the best solution for next-generation displays.” auo.com

• From May 22, 2023: AUO describes MicroLED as offering “higher resolution, increased brightness, lower power consumption, and enhanced reliability.” auo.com

I wonder if those posts will be edited in a few days? Luckily, I’ve added a screenshot, above ;-). Let’s see.

Industry Expert Speaks

Let’s clear a few things up first.

Firstly, the brightness performance isn’t unique to microLED. Whilst Garmin’s 4,500 nit claims are market-leading and super-impressive, it’s not linked to the tech per se. Existing AMOLED displays can and have gone even higher than that, albeit not on wearables. For example, some smartphones have 6,000 nit AMOLED displays. The tech can do it.

Similarly, Garmin claims in its marketing materials that visibility is good from tight angles.

This claim is further backed up by Dcrainmaker’s images comparing different Garmin models, which show that angled visibility is superior. Great, I’m not doubting that.

But this is also not an inherent feature unique to microLED. AMOLED can do it as well.

Battery Performance

So we wanted to try to work out the reasons why battery life deteriorated, and this is what we (he!…my contact) came up with:

• The specs imply the microLED consumes about 3x the energy of an AMOLED display of the same size
• Garmin may measure battery performance at full brightness and compare it to the full brightness from AMOLED; the latter would be below 3,000 nits. However, this is unlikely as Garmin has already introduced brightness-reducing techniques when the watch is in various states. Full brightness for extended periods is not a real-world scenario, but this could play a part when brightness is cranked to the max.
• microLED prototypes have been tested by companies and shown to have lower consumption. I guess the clue is in the word ‘prototype’.
• The assumption is that the main problem is immature production lines and supply chains yielding subpar displays that are not yet on par with AMOLED
• In these kinds of wearable displays, 70% of the energy is typically lost in the backplane, with only 30% consumed by the light-emitting frontplane. If the backplane of the microLED display is unoptimised, it could lead to significantly higher system power consumption. The guess is that the problem lies here.

Take Out

There’s no definitive takeout here for once.

Through firmware, it’s possible that Garmin could make display integration and fine-tuning fixes that will boost performance to ‘normal’ levels.

More likely, the issue is in the quality of the display. After all, these are known to suffer high failure rates, too. Perhaps, as the source says, the entire manufacturing supply chain needs improvements at multiple points.

It seems unlikely that Fenix 8 Pro microLED’s battery life will improve through firmware. So we await the next wearable to try their luck with this new tech, perhaps Samsung or one of the Chinese companies will be next?

Perhaps these issues also explain why Apple last year backed out of its contractual commitments to microLED on Watch Ultra (3/4)

This is a big disappointment for me.

Tech is hard to do sometimes. Perhaps sometimes, we overlook the difficulties of creating technological wonders on our wrists.

 

Samsung Demonstrates microLED Watch – Garmin & TAG to follow

Sources:

• AUO Press release

Last Updated on 26 January 2026 by the5krunner