MFD takes a few seconds to become visible

I noticed the other day that when the car is turned on the MFD is initially black and takes a few seconds (5?) to brighten to the point where it can be read. The image is fine, no static or breaking up or anything like that. (It reminds me a lot of the warm up period on old tube TVs.) I don't recall it doing that before, but in all honesty, when I turn the car on I don't normally look at the MFD for quite awhile and it could have been like that since the day we bought it. There are some threads about dim MFDs, and perhaps the brightest it gets is actually dim, but I cannot say for sure until I find another Gen 2 Prius to compare it too.

 

The dimmer seems to work OK, no glitching in the display brightness when it turns.

This seems to be temperature dependent. When I got up pretty early and it was in the high 40's yesterday it took almost 10s to reach full intensity. Today I slept in, then puttered around, and didn't start the car until 10:30 with an ambient temperature in the high 60's and the MFD was at full brightness at startup (or close enough that I could not tell the difference.) It is acting an awful like like the old CFL light bulbs, which would start out dim and then get brighter as they warmed up.

One slightly odd thing - the 12V battery seems to be a little low again. It was 12.1V this morning when the car was started to the diagnostic mode. One more press of the power button to turn everything else on (but the motor) and it dropped to 11.8V. That seems a bit feeble for a battery that's just half a year old. So I ordered a clamp DC ammeter and will check to see if the car has developed some parasitic current draw when off.

 

Agreed, 11.8 is too low. OEM battery (dealer installed).