I'm not much of a reviewer, but in my opinion the new basic is really good, very fast and responsive. Its touchscreen works very well, I've had no problems with it (it uses infrared, not capacitive). I use tapping to turn pages and no problems there either. The swiping is a bit more problematic, it does not always react to swiping (you have to swipe when viewing books on the home screen and in collections) and I envy the page turn buttons on the Voyage which you can use instead of swiping.
The screen and contrast are not that much different from the 2012 basic kindle, the text is a tiny bit less bold, but contrast is still excellent. I've posted a picture where you can see the minor difference in text. It is more noticeable in daylight (that's when I took the picture), in the evening under my reading lamp I don't really notice it.
http://imgur.com/gallery/pANOe2Y
The software should be the same as on Paperwhite, so you are probably familiar with it. I've not encountered any bugs so far.
I purchased a sleep/wake cover from Ebay (
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ULTRA-THIN...E:L:OC:US:3160), but the new basic feels too heavy in it, so I'm now looking for a gel case.