[vmsda]

I have had the Ultra for about two months now. Before giving my first impressions, let me tell you what kind of customer I am: I read a lot of books from a Calibre maintained library, all converted into EPUB; my PBs (the Ultra is my third) connect to the net only and if only there is new firmware available and recommended on this forum. So, based on my modest requirements,

A. What do I like in the Ultra? And what small improvements would I like to see?

1. Excellent perceived build quality.
2. Spectacular footprint, much more wieldy than my previous 622 and 626.
3. Physical reading experience on a par (not noticeably better) than with previous PBs.
4. Books inherited from other PBs could easily be flagged as "read". Now, ReadRate wants to connect to the Net to tell the world at large I have "completed" them. So I have to open every book, jump to the last page, close the book, have it "completed". Ludicrous.
5. I also indulge in concurrent audio+reading books, especially for poetry and foreign language reading. The audio player reproduction is acceptable. But I found no way to control the audio player and the reading screen from the same interface. Very little thought obviously given to user experience.

B. What are the Ultra weak points?
I spend so much time reading that I hardly ever play with other features. Still:
1. I hardly ever use the two side buttons. Perhaps they are there for future apps, for normal reading they can be dispensed with.
2. The multisensor control is too sensitive, and is more suited to bigger screen sizes anyway, only adds to the price in small screens. It could be useful to enlarge poorly reproduced figures, but I have not been very successful with my experiments.
3. The camera and the scanner yield indifferent to poor results. They felt more like work-in-progress than features-ready-to-be-shipped.

C. Am I disappointed with the Ultra?

Not at all. For normal reading and audio I consider the 6" display as the most practical (except for technical books with plenty of figures), and the Ultra's build quality with matching case in such a practical footprint trump the machine's weaker points.

Having said that, it should also be pointed out that there is still a lot of work to be done for the expectations and the hype around it to be fulfilled and, last but not least, for the customer to be rewarded with the full money's worth of functionalities.

D. Anything else?

Yes. Perhaps even more than other PBs, the Ultra displays the type of hesitations typical of a product and/or marketing strategy unsure of the customer base to aim for. But that is another story.