After almost 1200 replies, I thought, hey, why not chip in some thoughts...
I have an original batch PW1. As someone said earlier, "blotchula!". No pinholes though with it. I was OK with using it and enjoyed reading despite the colour rainbow. I then picked up an Aura about 3 weeks ago and found the customization of fonts and even lighting was great. Unfortunately, the contrast was lower due to the decreased whiteness of the background on the Aura which when looked at closely, resembled small grey tiled diamonds (a search in the Kobo thread will show a close up of this pattern that someone took a picture of).
Traveling to the US brought me in contact with a BestBuy which led me down the temptation path......and I bought not one, but TWO of the PW2's since I spent so much time trawling this thread and hearing about wide variations in screens. My premise was to keep the best PW2 and return the other unless they both were bad.
On opening and evaluating the units, I have compared them to my PW1 and Aura. Both units are in pretty good shape.
No pinholes (my Aura has 3 so I know how to find them).
Lighting is much more even than the PW1 but just a shade poorer than the Aura (the Aura has a beautiful even lighting system).
Some "dust" appears embedded in the layers of both units. Only visible when unit light is on max and unit turned so that you are looking at a sharp angle to the screen from top down. No different compared to the PW1's I have seen. When reading normally, the dust is not seen even at max light.
There are very subtle shades of discolouration but compared to the PW1, these can not be considered "blotchula" and I even find myself questioning whether I am seeing discolourations or just tricking my mind.
Contrast is great - slightly better than my PW1 and way, way better than the Aura.
Embedded fonts work well at improving readability since the stock fonts imo are not very good.
There is a variation of white balance between the 2 PW2's. One is slightly warmer yellow that I assume is due to variation in the LEDs. Both are warmer than the PW1, but not as warm as the Aura.
In conclusion, both units are pretty good imo. So good that I am not bothering to return either one as my wife quickly grabbed the one I "thought" I was going to return and claimed it as her new toy! Now she expects me to find her a nice case since I simply reused my PW1 cover....
