Paperwhite Second Gen: First Impressions

[shanghaichica]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Oh dear! Poor guy posting in Kindle fandom land. I've seen so many pics like that with the PW1 just search here at MR and you will see many who have that problem last year. It does seem to be less though than last year where blobs were the biggest issue. Now we got pinholes taking its place and a new issue of sepia backgrounds

The blobs were so bad I was so worried about getting one but my PW1 which was from the third batch has no blobs it would be perfect if it didn't have two very tiny pinholes but it's perfect enough. I don't even see them unless I move my head back and forth real quick.

My pw1 isn't too bad. It's not perfect but I find the screen more than acceptable. At first I also thought that people were just moaning for the sake of it as I thought that my screen was probably representative of all the screens , but then I saw some of the pictures over at Amazon.com. Then I understood what all the fuss was about. Some of the screens were just horrible and I would have returned mine if I'd got one like that.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by shanghaichica

I cancelled my PW 2 ordered due to the jaundiced appearance of virtually every picture of the 2 I've seen.

That's what worried me the most. I want a whiteish screen not a yellow one. And dark text with good contrast. I have a perfectly good PW1 with two more years of warranty so I'm not upgrading unless there's a valid reason to do so.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

That's what worried me the most. I want a whiteish screen not a yellow one. And dark text with good contrast. I have a perfectly good PW1 with two more years of warranty so I'm not upgrading unless there's a valid reason to do so.

As soon as someone figures out how to do a custom font on it I will order one but until them I am holding off. I got the Kindle Fire HDX instead.

[fearindex]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Oh dear! Poor guy posting in Kindle fandom land. I've seen so many pics like that with the PW1 just search here at MR and you will see many who have that problem last year. It does seem to be less though than last year where blobs were the biggest issue. Now we got pinholes taking its place and a new issue of sepia backgrounds

Just to clarify, the ones in the pictures in the linked part of the thread were PW2, not PW1. I know PW1 is a much older story of course with pictures of the issues all over the Internet. PW2 is still a much newer story and we are yet to really see the full picture, as I'm sure you too agree.

I know KBoards can be a tough audience, but I think my concerns have gotten a fair hearing there.

By the way, speaking of quality control issues, it is either that, general LED allowances or generational changes that mean my 2011 Kindle 4/5 official lighted cover shines a colder, brighter light than my new 2013 covers. Some pictures here: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,164293.0.html

It is one thing to have issues with a lighted cover, or even with the screen contrast of a Kindle, but in PW1/PW2 all of these are combining in the single device. With the baby Kindle at least you can swap the lighted cover separately and swap the reader separately if there are issues etc. All those layers and several LEDs (all with allowances that may or may not match) in PW1/PW2 really have potential points of weakness still, it seems.

I did, for a while, consider using the PW1 with a lighted cover but stopped trying that due to the awkwardness of most suitable clip-on lights I found. No matter its imperfections of the latest baby Kindle lighted cover (I had to fix mine: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,131020.0.html), the small light taking power from the Kindle is just that convenient.

If anyone can suggest a great lighted cover for PW/PW2 then I might consider that, of course?

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by Blossom

As soon as someone figures out how to do a custom font on it I will order one but until them I am holding off. I got the Kindle Fire HDX instead.

I am with you on the contrast thing. I remember your K4S really well . I have one, with a not too bad contrast, but my parents both have a K4B, one of which has a better contrast then my K4S, the other one being par. This year I was wondering whether I should get the K4B (at 49 € in Germany, you can't really beat that) but then came the PW2 and I went for it instead.

I hope the contrast will be good. I have one of the good PW1, and I want another PW to leave one at home and have one with me all the time, because I read anywhere. I think I'll leave the best one at home and will take the not too good one with me, but I am really hoping to not be disappointed with the contrast !!

[Jdschi]

Originally Posted by Blossom

As soon as someone figures out how to do a custom font on it I will order one but until them I am holding off. I got the Kindle Fire HDX instead.

Here you are. I guess it is more complicated than the old way, though.

My PW2 is on it's way to me, somewhere in the city, slowly slowly... I'll receive it sometime today, yay! Will report back. I have a Kindle Keyboard and a (broken, only showing the "please load" screen) KT, I'll compare the three.

[fearindex]

Originally Posted by aceflor

I am with you on the contrast thing. I remember your K4S really well . I have one, with a not too bad contrast, but my parents both have a K4B, one of which has a better contrast then my K4S, the other one being par. This year I was wondering whether I should get the K4B (at 49 € in Germany, you can't really beat that) but then came the PW2 and I went for it instead.

I hope the contrast will be good. I have one of the good PW1, and I want another PW to leave one at home and have one with me all the time, because I read anywhere. I think I'll leave the best one at home and will take the not too good one with me, but I am really hoping to not be disappointed with the contrast !!

Sorry to hear some have had bad contrasted Kindle 4's.

This is a bit off-topic but just one more comment on this, I wonder how much the blackness variance in K4S/K4B is a generational thing and just unit to unit differences. My 2011 Kindle 4 has better blackness than Kindle 3, but worse than my two 2012-2013 Kindle 4B/5s, which have by far the best text blackness of any Kindle I have seen.

Overall my own experience has been that every Kindle generation, from 2 upwards, has had better text blackness (I have compared carefully, I still have all of them) than the previous. Only exception has been PW1 which is worse than Kindle 3 Keyboard.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Jdschi

Here you are. I guess it is more complicated than the old way, though.

My PW2 is on it's way to me, somewhere in the city, slowly slowly... I'll receive it sometime today, yay! Will report back. I have a Kindle Keyboard and a (broken, only showing the "please load" screen) KT, I'll compare the three.

That's just fonts to be embedded in a KF8 it's not the same thing. It doesn't work with the Personal Documents Cloud either.

[ProfCrash]

I have been on Kindle Boards since I got my K1. Every time a new Kindle is launched there are initial quality issues. The K2 and PW1 seem to have had the largest number of issues, I do think that the K2 was a lot worse. That was a disaster.

I can understand why people would wait a few months before buying a new Kindle because there seems to be problems with the initial shipments, Amazon figures out what has gone wrong and gets it fixed. I am hoping that the folks who buy a PW2 3G don't have any issues because those don't ship until November.

It seems to me that the issues with the PW are different in nature then the K2 issues. The sun fade issue was pretty obvious to everyone. The PW issues revolve around the color blobs which some people see and others do not even looking at the same pictures. Folks here have resorted to reverse imanging the pictures to show the uneveness so that everyone can see it.

Clearly there is a problem, many people have said there is one and I trust that those people are not manufactuing drama for themselves. But the problem is more dependent on an individuals eye sight/accuity then past screen issues.

That obviously is not the case for pinholes, dead pixels, and trapped dust and we are seeing that problem with the PW2.

I have a PW2 that works great. I used it again last night. Love it. Thrilled to have it and be comfortably reading for 30 minutes or so before I go to bed.

I have a feeling that the folks who see the color blobs are going to continue to have issues based on their eye sight accuity (I think it is more how you preceive color and sharpness of eye sight then how well you see, at least that is my hypothesis) because I doubt that there is a way to perfect how the light reflects off of the various layers and the like. A small difference can call the light to shift in a way that is bothersome to some folks.

[ProfCrash]

And on Kindle Boards: Obviously people there love their Kindles and defend the Kindle. But I don't think the board gets a fair shake. There are plenty of folks who cross post between the sites. There are more Kindle enthusiasts over there but there are also a ton of folks who are willing to trouble shoot and help folks out. It has become an independent authors haven, I think the vast majority of posts are in the writers cafe now.

And folks are pretty out spoken in terms of what they like and why. But they are good folks and the site is helpful. And it is a ton easier over there to find a good cover for my Kindle (or any other device). It has a different mission and a different customer.

[fearindex]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

It seems to me that the issues with the PW are different in nature then the K2 issues. The sun fade issue was pretty obvious to everyone. The PW issues revolve around the color blobs which some people see and others do not even looking at the same pictures. Folks here have resorted to reverse imanging the pictures to show the uneveness so that everyone can see it.

Clearly there is a problem, many people have said there is one and I trust that those people are not manufactuing drama for themselves. But the problem is more dependent on an individuals eye sight/accuity then past screen issues.

That obviously is not the case for pinholes, dead pixels, and trapped dust and we are seeing that problem with the PW2.

I agree with your analysis of the issue. That's why the issues with Kindle PW (and PW2) are so insidious, though. When you have a single big on/off kind of issue, that's easy to look for and easy to exchange against until OK. But with PW1 and PW2, there is a whole host of issues, some more bothersome to some than others, that create a real minefield for those with such perception - while at the same time leaving those who don't perceive them baffled at what all the fuss is about. I still consider the reason the complexity of manufacturing such a multi-layered device with a number of lights. Regular LED allowances alone can cause issues if one of the lights is of different brightness, for example.

I too think KBoards is a great forum with nice people. Sometimes I think us baby Kindle users don't get quite enough love, though, in the response. It's a Kindle too! We're people too! But yes, I can heartily recommend KBoards. There are good people there.

[Jdschi]

The new PW2 finally made it to me! I really like it! I can see no obvious defects with the screen like pinholes, but I'm not actively looking for them either. The light has some very slight clouds at the bottom of the screen, but it is only noticeable when you look for them and it doesn't bother me when reading (yet). With the light off (or rather at the lowest setting) the screen contrast is better compared to my KK but there is no difference to my KT. But with the light on 10, the screen is fine. It does seem to have very, very faint discolorations like I saw on some pictures here, but maybe I'm imagining things. It definitely didn't distract me while reading. I didn't notice obvious ghosting.
I will try to read in bed later when it is darker since the blotches and pinholes might be more obvious then, but so far, I'm really happy.
The PW2 seems to be much better than my old KT, which aggravated me sooo much - everything that bugged me about it seems to be fixed. I couldn't be happier, but then I am obviously not upgrading from a PW1 so my expectations were lower.

[xendula]

Originally Posted by joehunt

From what I can see the only prolific poster (PP) who posts positive comments about his PW2 is the only PP who actually owns one. On the other hand, one PP has admitted to never even seeing a PW2, other PPs have stated that they returned their PW2s after seeing imperfections that no one else could see, etc. etc.

What does the etc. allude to, and who here said they had imperfections that nobody else could see?

And besides, I just can't understand the reason to post dozens and dozens of times about a product I do not/have never/no longer own

I am looking at two PW2s that I have in my posession right now, as I have not yet sent them back, and I paid for both. Once I send them back, my opinion will not change, and neither will I lose the right to post about it just because I sent them back.

[wlsinwi]

Got my replacement kindle. It is slightly better with less clouding at the bottom.
I'm thinking that this is as good as it gets. No yellowish screen. No pinholes that I can see at this time either. I'm not inclined to return it as I don't expect another one to be much if any different. I'll just sell it next year when the next new one comes out.

[fearindex]

Originally Posted by xendula

What does the etc. allude to, and who here said they had imperfections that nobody else could see?



I am looking at two PW2s that I have in my posession right now, as I have not yet sent them back, and I paid for both. Once I send them back, my opinion will not change, and neither will I lose the right to post about it just because I sent them back.

I must say, it seemed to me too that joehunt dismissed the concerns of disappointed PW2 owners here awfully casually with his comment. It seems like he only regarded the positive comment as useful, which indeed is odd.