GPS screens

I find my Etrex hard to read in sunlight, unless the light is on max, which drains the battery. Why don’t GPS units use the same technology as kindle screens to make them easier to read outdoors?

The Kindle uses electronic paper / e-ink. Currently this is only available in black and white. No one has made a colour version yet.

Also it has a very slow refresh rate. If you had the screen updating every second, you would notice ‘ghosting’. So not very useful for scrolling around the map, or displaying your speed in real-time etc.

Low refresh rate would not be suitable for the dynamically updating numbers and maps etc used on a GPS device. I imagine.

They vary, the later Oregons have a screen that uses ambient light to up the effective brightness and they work pretty well. The Satmap Active 12 has a button you can press to temporarily up the backlighting levels, also works okay.

They vary, the later Oregons have a screen that uses ambient light to up the effective brightness and they work pretty well.

It does work very well. Need the back light for the darkness though (or it’s hard* to read) You can set it so it stays on 15, 30 secs, 1m, then you need to tap the screen to turn it back on.

*What’s the difference between light and hard?

You can get e-ink in colour but it’s fairly new. The new pebble will have it. There was another smartwatch whose name escapes me that had it a few months back too.