Nav too bright at night
 

I picked up my 2005 X5 4.4i today, and it is absolutely fantastic.

My one complaint thus far is that the nav screen does not seem to dim at all at night. On my other 2 cars (and every other nav screen I've ever seen) the screen is dimmer at night and changes to a different color scheme to preserve night vision, however in my X5, it remains bright and retains the daylight color scheme. This is pretty blinding, and I can use the brightness setting to turn it down, but then its too dim during the day.

Is it supposed to be changing to a night mode when the lights come on or is this normal operation?

I don't tend to have the screen on NAV unless I need the directions, and even then I am not looking at it.

I usually have it on my last 8 phone numbers as my car is my office while I am driving the 40km to get to and from work, which is a dark screen anyway.

Alternatively, play with the colour selections......

If you hit the "MENU" button and go to "Settings", on the second page is an option to adjust the brightness. Also, the brightness can be tweaked using the dial on the headlight switch that adjusts the intensity of the dash lights.

Yeah, I've done both of those things, and they do solve the problem. I pretty much just wanted to make sure that it was normal behavior for the screen and not a broken nav.

That said, I'm a little surprised (not to mention annoyed) that the thing does not have a "night mode" like every other car I've owned with nav. On the other hand, if that's my biggest gripe with the car, I'm in pretty good shape.

It dims automatically
 

Mine, (I'm pretty sure) dims according to ambient light levels as well as being able to dim further using the two methods mentioned above...

Seedar

Isn't that what that small circlular opening is at the bottom of the monitor...a light sensor? At least that's what I thought it was...

my screen gets darker when my headlights are on

Can I reopen this thread and ask the question again. I also find that the screen is too bright after dark and AFAICT it does NOT dim automatically by 'lights on' or ambient light level. So, in a 2004 X5 with Mk IV Nav, SHOULD the screen dim automatically or is the brightness level only set manually?

The screen is controlled by the light sensor, it used to react quite fast but too many people complained and then BMW reduced the sensitivty of the sensor.

The screen brightness will still be linked to the illumination dimmer control though.

There used to be a day-night mode in very old nav software versions but BMW removed it for whatever reason, the newer nav software no longer has day-night capability.

I'm not so worried about (not) having day/night mode for the nav, it's more a problem of overall brightness. It doesn't seem to change at all, but I'll take a closer look at the dimmer control and also see if it responds to the light sensor - now I know it has one.

Thanks.