totally black or just darker, as soon as i turn mine on the backlight goes out, and it is hard to see in certain conditions, hit power agian for a second and the backlight will come back on, it goes out to save batteries, you can go to menu to set light to stay on longer, i hope im not stating the obvious but when i first turned mine on i thought this screen is to dark and i can not see it, but after reading and playing with it i figured it out, good luck.