Upgrading from a PW1, this is the first Kindle I've ever owned with a flawless screen: not a single fleck of dirt caught under the uppermost screen layer (even my K4 had one of those, even though the text appeared to "float at the top" as it does on the Oasis: the fleck was still above it). You *can* see lighting imperfections if you try, but it's really hard, and they're barely perceptible. It's also the first Kindle I've ever owned on which I can't see the pixels.
It's lovely to hold, so light I'm almost worried it'll fly out of my hand: even with the case on, it's only imperceptibly heavier than my PW1 was with the case off. I thought I'd have to flip the buttons over, but in fact the forward-page button is right under my thumb by default. I was also worried about the feel of the back and the smudgeability and reflectiveness of the glass front: in fact, the back is a mixture of PW1-style rubber (on the bezel) and plastic (on the screen) and is perfectly all right to hold, while the front is less smudgeable than my glasses, much easier to clean, and appears less reflective than my PW1's front was: in most lighting, it is entirely nonreflective.
One worry about the case: not only does it not protect the bezel, but it also doesn't protect the *sides* of the Kindle, so unlike the PW1's case is probably not sufficient to keep the Kindle dry when walking in a light rainfall. Ah well, books don't take well to rain either: I'll just stick it into my raincoat's pocket or under my jumper as I do with them
it *does* protect the screen, which is its primary purpose as a case, so I'm not unhappy with that compromise.
It arrives with a half-full Kindle battery and a case battery which appears half-full but which after ten minutes charging the Kindle battery snaps to empty, so I guess it's nearly empty but uncalibrated (either that, or I have a faulty case! I'll know in a few days, but it's probably the former). It also downloads its new firmware instantly as soon as it connects to wifi, and it does so at the start of setup, long before you get a chance to turn wireless off, so don't turn your Kindle on for the first time at a time of day when bandwidth is expensive! It blew about a tenth of my monthly bandwidth allocation in less than two minutes... ah well, it's nearly the end of the month anyway.
Software-wise, coming from firmware 5.6.1.1, I'm very impressed with the quick settings panel (easy access to wifi off at last!), the Bookerly font and the revised Caecilia, less than impressed with Ember (reading in sans serif on a screen this high-res? come on...) and deeply unimpressed with the ridiculous home screen (I don't know where those 'reading lists' even come from but none of them are things I want to read: I might find out when I get far enough into the manual. There's hardly any room on the Home screen for your actual *books*, it's so busy trying to push new product at you; thank goodness you can turn it off).
The changes to things like the on-screen keyboard and toolbar are also bizarre: rather than dividing the width of the screen up semi-evenly between buttons, the area you must hit is now no wider than the text of the button, and 90% of the toolbar is often left empty and unresponsive; this leads to things like the 'Aa' font change button being really rather hard to hit (it's not even at the edge of the screen any more), and when reading periodicals the nearly-useless 'Clip this article' button is huge and extra-easy-to-hit because its label is large. Whoever thought this was a good idea is an idiot.
All things considered, the lightness is probably going to dominate most other things: it really does make it lovely to use, as does the higher res: the larger capacity and near-complete lack of delay when doing anything at all (due to the faster processor, I guess) is worth having, too. I'll see what it's like for bedtime reading later; if it turns out to not be as good as my PW1 was, I'll demote the PW1 to the role of "bedtime book" and use the Oasis the rest of the time