[hieronymos]

The reviewers stumble generally about two things:

I) They fail to read the specifications and start thinking about what AFFS+ is. If they did, they would recognize a) that some backlight bleeding on black background is inevitable with these displays, and that this bleeding will usually only be visible on black, b) that Kobo spent a little less on the hardware and a little more on the screen. Of course, the colors outside cannot be as good as inside, but the contrast is still there - You can not read as well in direct sunlight with any other tablet.
I always told myself that as long as screens cannot perform well in sunlight, they cannot replace pen and paper. The Vox does.
That the screen isn't as anti-glare as it should be (I'm facepalming a little here from a design standpoint), might have simply kept a few reviewers from finding out that you can actually see the image pretty well behind your reflection (from a user standpoint, I just order an anti-glare film).

2) It's not the hardware that is from before yesterday (it's only from yesterday), but the software that doesn't by all means even come close to what the hardware could deliver. That is Kobo's fault and where the reviews, although they fail to understand that, are somewhat justified. The product was rushed and many of us don't have a nice out-of-the-box experience.

In general it's so-so. I can partly understand the reviewers, as many users might actually have felt like them. The Verge review however is simply bad - a person who tries to push harder on a capacitive touchscreen shouldn't write about tech (contrary to a resistive touchscreen, you have to tap lighter, because sometimes the algorithms can't interpret too much 'finger').

I don't know why plastic is considered "poor build" either, rather than a design choice. When you drop them 2 meters, they're all the same anyway, so there is no real way to test build quality.
(My old MacBook frequently fell 2 meters - that was build quality! It's still working!)

End of the line is: I wouldn't have bought any other device, since I want to use my portable device wherever I want - in my basement at night and on a mountain top on a sunny day. For all the other stuff I have a laptop anyway.