My Oasis has splotchier lighting than any early Paperwhite or Voyage I've seen.

[disconnected]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Perhaps I just don't read enough colour books to see why this matters. Almost everything I read is monochrome, and the occasional coloured chart is not worth losing the benefits of e-ink to see better. As for colour e-ink, it's reportedly still worse in numerous dimensions than B&W, including refresh time, total lifetime, and resolution. If a colour Kindle came out with all of those worse, would it be a net benefit? I really don't think so. Most books are mostly monochrome.

I think you've misunderstood. He's saying the screen has uneven color (white to gray or yellow) not that it doesn't even have color.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by WilliamG

And apologies, - for number 4, I didn't mean what you think I mean. I meant evenness of color - as in it's yellowy on the right of the screen, and not "even". I edited the post to reflect that.

Oh right. I think I'm either very lucky or I have really bad colour vision, because I can never see this. At all brightness levels it seems perfectly even to me. It frankly seems supernatural, even though I know how it's done. Light coming from one edge shouldn't work that way! (And, for you, it seems it doesn't...)

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by newkindlefun

The disappointing part is that they clearly can produce a near perfect specimen because we've seen them. It's not that the technology isn't there, it's simply that they don't keep that production standard.

Yeah, they seem to be persistently trying to stretch the production envelope. What might happen -- what has often happened with earlier Kindles -- is that in a few months these niggles will be sorted out and consistency will rise and you'll all be able to get Oases that look as good as mine does without having to win a production lottery first. (No, you can't have mine! )

[WilliamG]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Yeah, they seem to be persistently trying to stretch the production envelope. What might happen -- what has often happened with earlier Kindles -- is that in a few months these niggles will be sorted out and consistency will rise and you'll all be able to get Oases that look as good as mine does without having to win a production lottery first. (No, you can't have mine! )

Can you post a pic of yours?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Yeah, they seem to be persistently trying to stretch the production envelope. What might happen -- what has often happened with earlier Kindles -- is that in a few months these niggles will be sorted out and consistency will rise and you'll all be able to get Oases that look as good as mine does without having to win a production lottery first. (No, you can't have mine! )

I don't really believe that any longer, not after getting the Voyage. I bought mine less than a month ago, and the frontlight is far from even. So I don't think it really matters whether I order the Oasis now or a year later, it will still be a lottery.

[WilliamG]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I don't really believe that any longer, not after getting the Voyage. I bought mine less than a month ago, and the frontlight is far from even. So I don't think it really matters whether I order the Oasis now or a year later, it will still be a lottery.

This 100%. Even people who say theirs is perfect - when they post pictures - the more discerning among us are like... "NOPE!"

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by WilliamG

This 100%. Even people who say theirs is perfect - when they post pictures - the more discerning among us are like... "NOPE!"

Well, I believe that there probably are much better Voyage screens out there than mine. Still, the blotches are not particularly visible in my typical reading conditions (I never read in the dark), so I'm not terribly bothered by it. I still like my Voyage, and I think I'm going to like my Oasis too.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by WilliamG

Can you post a pic of yours?

Sure, though it'll do no good. Attached: one in lighted room with light at 13; one in a darker (but still lit) room, light at 8. No shots in full sunlight (because it's night here), none in a dark room (because the camera canna handle it without flash).

Note: shadow cones are clearly visible in the dark shot, but they're visible only to the camera: the same is true of the apparent brightness variation/shadow cone on the right of the light shot. To my eyes, both are entirely invisible and the screens are unvarying brightness fields: a clear consequence of the human eye's logarithmic intensity response versus a CCD's more nearly linear one.

This effect in particular is one reason why all such pictures should be more or less totally ignored, and posting them is a waste of time: the light you're seeing when you look at those images is the light from an almost-certainly-uncalibrated LCD screen with brightness response that depends mostly on screen age and manufacturing variation, after being picked up by a camera CCD with completely different optical properties to the human eye; the result bears little to no resemblance to the light being emitted by the actual Kindle and which your eye will thus see completely differently. To my eye, and I believe to any normally functioning human eye, the dark shot of my particular Kindle screen would look like an unvarying colour plane. I have extremely good night vision (perhaps to compensate for my crazy myopia!), normally go around with the house lights off, and routinely read on intensity zero on the PW1 after only a few minutes of adaptation time. If anyone can spot light intensity variations on this Kindle, it should be me. I can't. Amazon did not optimize their Kindle screens and lighting systems for cameras: it optimized them for human eyes. Unfortunately I have no way of detaching your eyes and transporting them here to see what I see... ah well!

As with all of biology, the degree of logarithmic response varies between individuals and can even vary between eyes in one individual (it is in part a property of both the neural architecture in each eye, and of the neural architecture of the visual cortex). It is quite possible that the people perennially dissatisfied with lighted Kindle screens simply have a less intense logarithmic response than those who are satisfied. I wonder if people who are dissatisfied have relatively poor night vision and are easily dazzled in bright sunlight? (Though this is also influenced by factors varying from rate and degree of iris dilation through to things in the higher levels of the visual cortex, so again shouldn't be taken as any sort of real evidence of anything. Vision is *complicated*.)

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Well, I believe that there probably are much better Voyage screens out there than mine. Still, the blotches are not particularly visible in my typical reading conditions (I never read in the dark), so I'm not terribly bothered by it. I still like my Voyage, and I think I'm going to like my Oasis too.

Your quote makes me wonder something.
I wonder if it is because we set the lights to our comfortable level in whatever light we are in.
Heck, I made my unlit K4 have splotches the other day. I turned it until the sun was directly hitting it.
On reading, we aren't trying to see if we can see splotches. We just want to comfortably read.
On my backlit tablet, I generally keep it at 1% light in the house.
Anything higher gives me a headache.
I do have to turn it up if I want to show anyone else anything on it.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by WilliamG

This 100%. Even people who say theirs is perfect - when they post pictures - the more discerning among us are like... "NOPE!"

As my post above has mentioned, this is a property of the *pictures*, and more particularly of the camera, not of the Kindles. All you're proving is that a camera is not an eye.

(Try taking a picture of some screen you think *is* evenly lit with a camera. It'll probably come out looking uneven!)

[NNolan]

The lighting on my new Oasis looks good to me, and I love the ergonomics. For me, it's a keeper.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Sure, though it'll do no good. Attached: one in lighted room with light at 13; one in a darker (but still lit) room, light at 8. No shots in full sunlight (because it's night here), none in a dark room (because the camera canna handle it without flash).

Note: shadow cones are clearly visible in the dark shot, but they're visible only to the camera: the same is true of the apparent brightness variation/shadow cone on the right of the light shot. To my eyes, both are entirely invisible and the screens are unvarying brightness fields: a clear consequence of the human eye's logarithmic intensity response versus a CCD's more nearly linear one.

This effect in particular is one reason why all such pictures should be more or less totally ignored, and posting them is a waste of time: the light you're seeing when you look at those images is the light from an almost-certainly-uncalibrated LCD screen with brightness response that depends mostly on screen age and manufacturing variation, after being picked up by a camera CCD with completely different optical properties to the human eye; the result bears little to no resemblance to the light being emitted by the actual Kindle and which your eye will thus see completely differently. To my eye, and I believe to any normally functioning human eye, the dark shot of my particular Kindle screen would look like an unvarying colour plane. I have extremely good night vision (perhaps to compensate for my crazy myopia!), normally go around with the house lights off, and routinely read on intensity zero on the PW1 after only a few minutes of adaptation time. If anyone can spot light intensity variations on this Kindle, it should be me. I can't. Amazon did not optimize their Kindle screens and lighting systems for cameras: it optimized them for human eyes. Unfortunately I have no way of detaching your eyes and transporting them here to see what I see... ah well!

As with all of biology, the degree of logarithmic response varies between individuals and can even vary between eyes in one individual (it is in part a property of both the neural architecture in each eye, and of the neural architecture of the visual cortex). It is quite possible that the people perennially dissatisfied with lighted Kindle screens simply have a less intense logarithmic response than those who are satisfied. I wonder if people who are dissatisfied have relatively poor night vision and are easily dazzled in bright sunlight? (Though this is also influenced by factors varying from rate and degree of iris dilation through to things in the higher levels of the visual cortex, so again shouldn't be taken as any sort of real evidence of anything. Vision is *complicated*.)

It does look like you have a small hair in the lower right hand corner. But I couldn't see lights.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by NullNix

I wonder if people who are dissatisfied have relatively poor night vision and are easily dazzled in bright sunlight?

As for me, yes in both cases. I don't have a good night vision, and I cannot stand the direct sunlight more than a couple of minutes, then my eyes start to hurt. I'm extremely myopic too.

That said, I'm not exactly dissatisfied with my Voyage. Yes, I can see the color variations in many different lighting conditions, but not in ALL lighting conditions. I usually read in the daylight (not direct sunlight) or lamplight, with brightness level at 7. In those conditions, I can't see the color gradient.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

It does look like you have a small hair in the lower right hand corner. But I couldn't see lights.

Oops, that wasn't embedded in the screen, that *fell* on the screen while I was trying to find a good camera angle. obvious solution, which I shall implement in the fullness of time: go bald!

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Oops, that wasn't embedded in the screen, that *fell* on the screen while I was trying to find a good camera angle. obvious solution, which I shall implement in the fullness of time: go bald!

Well now on the bald part, my husband could see the lights. He has been going bald since I met him.
Note, he is far-sighted and I am near-sighted.