Garmin isn’t ready to abandon power-efficient MIP displays on wearables, even as AMOLED improves

A quiet tug-of-war is happening on Garmin wrists. On one side, AMOLED displays are winning hearts with their rich colors, crisp graphics, and gorgeous watch faces. On the other, the less glamorous memory-in-pixel (MIP) screens are still winning endurance contests, especially when the sun is blazing and the nearest charger is miles away. Garmin is increasingly embracing the former, but it isn’t ready to retire the latter.

Speaking to TechRadar, Garmin COO Brad Trenkle explained that battery life remains the biggest reason MIP displays still have a place in the company’s smartwatch lineup.

Unlike AMOLED screens, which produce their own light, MIP displays take advantage of ambient light to remain visible. That makes them particularly useful outdoors, where bright sunlight helps readability rather than forcing the screen to work harder. And Garmin has some compelling evidence sitting in its own product catalog.

The recently launched Enduro 4 sticks with a MIP display and boasts up to 90 days of battery life in smartwatch mode with sufficient solar charging. Meanwhile, the Instinct 3 offers a choice between a colorful AMOLED screen and a solar-powered MIP alternative that can theoretically keep running indefinitely under ideal conditions.

That doesn’t mean AMOLED is standing still. Garmin’s Fenix 9 Pro already boasts a stunning display that can reach 3,000 nits, and Trenkle acknowledges that OLED battery efficiency keeps improving with each generation. However, he says the battery-life gap between the two technologies “has not completely converged,” which is why Garmin doesn’t expect MIP to disappear entirely just yet.

Garmin isn’t ruling out combining OLED displays with solar charging either. Trenkle explained that some of the company’s solar technology collects energy through a ring surrounding the display rather than placing a layer over the screen itself. That approach could let an OLED watch harvest sunlight without compromising display quality. However, Garmin hasn’t announced such a product, and there’s no indication of when one might arrive.

For now, Garmin’s display strategy leaves room for both the watch that looks spectacular at a glance and the one that refuses to quit halfway through an adventure. OLED keeps getting better, but MIP still has one particularly persuasive argument: fewer encounters with a charging cable.