Kindle Paper White review : Mobileread users

Please reduce your photo widths to 600px or less as those wide photos screw up the page display. Thanks!

[Trauma Doll]

Hi--as you can see from my posting stats, I'm not much of a regular around here. However, I've been reading ebooks for a very long time (before there were any serious commercial readers--I was one of those people reading bootleg OCR-scanned books on a Palm Pilot back in the day). The upside of this, and the fact that I've owned both the infamous PRS-700 (as pictured in recent threads), and numerous crappy booklights (including the battery-eating Kandle and the various gooseneck ones) means that the slight 'spotlight' effect at the bottom of the PW screen bothers me not a whit. I'm very, very happy to finally have the best 'read in the dark' solution since my Palm Pilot days. I understand people who are bothered by dead pixels (and large dust particles that collected under the screen of my PRS-700 made me crazy), but I'm personally very happy with the display. (I'm also blessed with being a person who doesn't notice blue/yellow/whatever tinges, so there's that.)

What I *AM* struggling with is a lack of intuitiveness with the PW's touch interface, coming from a Kindle 3 where it felt like I had just finally gotten used to the buttons--when to use the back button, when to use the direction-right joystick button, etc. Possibly my broad history with handheld devices, and the fact that I've always got something in my hand (iPad, iPhone, etc) is actually what's throwing me off. The interface, even after the initial tutorial, just isn't quite acting like I'd expect it to based on other previous paradigms (including the touch-interface Sony PRS700 as mentioned above). I suspect this will get better over time with more usage. I've also never used a Kindle touch interface before now (except the Kindle *app* on iOS, which, now that I think about it, is further screwing me up).

I suspect my collection of books on the Cloud is pretty small compared to many of you (3 pages' worth on the actual Amazon site), but navigating/downloading it seems pretty tedious so far. Switching to List view helps a lot. I can also see I'll be spending a lot of time later tonight re-organizing my Collections, as I need them back badly. (Is Calibre still the best solution for this?)

So, short quick out-of-the-box impression: the lighting is fine, especially if you don't let yourself get tricked into being more bothered by it than you would be if you didn't know it was bothering other people. However, the UI, navigation and book-management challenges are preventing the unboxing and start-up from being the ecstatic experience I was hoping for.

UPDATED 10/4: Unfortunately after a little more time playing with it, once I stopped checking out the LED lighting, I realized I have the bluish smudges/clouds along a big sweep of my screen, similar to images posted here and on "Customer Images" on the Amazon product page. Yes, it sucks having to admit my initial impression of the screen was wrong, and I'll probably end up returning it and hoping for a better replacement.

[JoeC]

Thanks for your input on the screen. I am getting very concerned that I'm going to be disappointed.

[Barty]

@Jack: sounds like you are saying with light off the bkg is grayer and text is lighter than the touch. I'm surprised because amazon claims 25% better contrast and people with the 2012 k4 says bkg is lighter and text crisper than 2011 k4. (Of course the new k4 and pw have different screens, and we don't know how the additional layers may affect contrast.)

Does the text gets MORE faded the higher you turn up the light? It looks so in some videos, but hard to judge.

Thanks

[Alecto58]

Just got my paperwhite and am having the exact same issues as jswinden.

I'd be entirely happy with this if this is how it was advertised, but it wasn't, and I didn't see any mention of this in reviews. In fact reviews were stating it was nearly impossible to see the light source. (This is absurd unless you're at 2-3 / 24). The light imbalances across the screen is the only issue I really care about.

I suppose we could have both got defective units, but I doubt that.

Otherwise, a nice device, but not quite as amazing over the nook glowlight as was promised...

Edit -- I'm keeping this. I just discussed this with someone at Amazon and it is the known behavior of the screen. So certainly some interesting reviews and advertising. Still, I like it, but if I had to decide between this and the nook, the buttons would be appealing.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Screen with light turned all the way down (off):

• The screen background is noticeably darker gray than on my Touch.
• Text is VERY noticeably lighter (faded) than on my Touch.
• Fonts look to be about on par with those on my Touch.

This is surprising. On mine the background is noticeably lighter. The screen has a warmer tone to it than my Touch too (not sure how I feel about that yet). The text is nice and dark on both my Touch and PW. Does it have the 25% better contrast that's being bandied about? Not so sure about that.

[Jowi]

When I got my Kindle Fire I was disappointed because the lowest brightness setting was still too bright to read in a totally dark room. How dim does the PW go? Can you dim it to the point where it's almost so dim you can't even see the words or is the lowest setting pretty bright?

[sirmaru]

My Kindle PW is scheduled for delivery on Oct 11. I have a Kindle HD 32 Gb scheduled for delivery on Oct 25.

Should I cancel my PW order? I'll go by the majority opinion of those who respond after my post. Please state reasons if I should cancel the PW.

There is a possibility that the splotch problem at the bottom of the screen was a defect in the first run on Oct 1. Possibly, the second run on Oct 11 may have that problem corrected.

I've already seen some complaints on the Amazon forum that the lack of sound is a serious problem for some folks.

Its possible that the next firmware upgrade will totally eliminate the blotches as well.

Its also possible that SO models have the blotches and NSO models do not. If that is the problem, one can easily convert from SO to NSO for a $15.00 free at the "Manage Your Kindles" site.

Here are some comparison photos. Warning, photos of eInk readers are not what our eyes might actually see. I did side by side comparisons with the PW on the left and the Touch on the right, then I reversed them, took a second photo at about the same angle and settings.

Kindles PW and Touch Side by Side with Light Set to 0/24 (Off):



Kindles PW and Touch Side by Side with Light Set to 14/24:



Note: If I change the settings on the camera to better show the lighted PW then the Touch gets too dark in the photo, and vice versa. I will take some better photos of the PW lighted and by itself. the photos SXS I took at full brightness on the PW were too washed out so I didn't upload them.

Originally Posted by Barty

@Jack: sounds like you are saying with light off the bkg is grayer and text is lighter than the touch. I'm surprised because amazon claims 25% better contrast and people with the 2012 k4 says bkg is lighter and text crisper than 2011 k4. (Of course the new k4 and pw have different screens, and we don't know how the additional layers may affect contrast.)

Does the text gets MORE faded the higher you turn up the light? It looks so in some videos, but hard to judge.

Thanks

No, the opposite: The text actually looks clearer and sharper as the brightness is increased, but blotchiness increases with screen brightness.

[geekmaster]

On your photos with the paperwhite light off, the PW does like a bit whiter (less yellowish tint in the photo). The yellow probably comes from a light-balance issue (incandescent vs. fluorescent).

And if the white balance makes the bluish tint from the PW LEDs look white, that makes the touch even more yellow (or orange, even). By eye, it should look more of blue-green gray insead of orange.

[Zeebra]

So Jack is the Paperwhite going to turn into a Paperweight for you? :-)

Kidding, sucks that the experience is so poor for you, the reviews yesterday all sounded so positive.

[Avwriter]

Has anyone checked to see if Calibre currently recognizes the PW?

[Trauma Doll]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Should I cancel my PW order? I'll go by the majority opinion of those who respond after my post. Please state reasons if I should cancel the PW.

There is a possibility that the splotch problem at the bottom of the screen was a defect in the first run on Oct 1. Possibly, the second run on Oct 11 may have that problem corrected.

I've already seen some complaints on the Amazon forum that the lack of sound is a serious problem for some folks.

This seems like an overreaction--wouldn't you rather decide for yourself? You can always return it.

(Lack of audio has been known all along, the people complaining didn't bother to read the specs, my sympathy is nil.)

Unrelated question for those who have unboxed: I've noticed that on some of my cookbooks in particular (Giada De Laurentiis is one example), the font is trying to represent what I guess were different colors in the original--some of the text is, for lack of a better explanation "grayed out". It's fine when it's a recipe title, but for some of them ALL of the text is grayed out. It's extra-frustrating because the text, during the initial page-turn render, looks correct/black, then finishes rendering to light gray. Anyone else notice this? I tried changing the font style but that didn't fix it.

[zwarbles]

Originally Posted by Avwriter

Has anyone checked to see if Calibre currently recognizes the PW?

Just tried it and it works fine.