Puzzled by concerns over colour patches

[Pushka]

I can understand why blotches of colour on a device called "paperwhite" might be a little concerning and more than a little distracting. There are clearly some that are worse than others.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by twowheels

That's pure speculation that they received hand picked units.

True enough. It would be astounding to me if Amazon public relations people didn't ensure the press got perfect devices, but I have no evidence I am right here.

there are many alternate explanations that don't involve malice.

I did not accuse anyone of malice.

[Barty]

I guess if you give your white shirt to the cleaner and it comes back with pink and green blobs, It's A Good Thing tm

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Barty

I guess if you give your white shirt to the cleaner and it comes back with pink and green blobs, It's A Good Thing tm

I think the blotches causes eye strain because your eyes are trying to compensate for the unevenness of the screen. It may not bother everyone but many here have probably found out by reading on one with this problem it's more than annoying it gave them a headache.

There is a serious issue with the PW. Amazon has never released such horrible quality. I was reading on a blog so take this with a grain of salt. That there is only one factory that makes the front lit lighting. Amazon may be stuck accepting this quality till a solution comes up that is accepted by the people who make it in China. The blog also mention a shortage on components that makes the lighting layer. I don't know if it's true but there doesn't seem to be a good fix coming anytime soon if so.

[sirmaru]

Originally Posted by twowheels

I posted pictures of mine, which I thought to be near perfect, and somebody commented that it had pink hues. I don't see them... sure if I try really hard I can see hues, but I can see hues on any light emitting device, including this LCD monitor that I'm looking at now. It may be that some are worse than others and that the light layer doesn't lie perfectly flat or something amplifying the affect? I don't know.

I had the same experience. My PW screen is near perfect for me. I posted two pictures and others saw color and grey blotches.

Of course, they enhanced the view to see it. I don't enhance the view when I actually read on it. If we use a camera, we can enhance anything to see all its blemishes.

I use it at PW light level 22 in good ambient light and it's screen background is a perfect white. For poor ambient light I use my KFHD7-32 and it works perfect under those conditions with its Autobrightness enabled.

@Blossom: I suspect that the Amazon QC staff works under very bright fluorescent lights with high PW lighting at or near it's maximum of 24. Thus, they never see the "defects" reported by posters here who tend to use low PW light levels in poor ambient light. Thus, it appears most CS "reconditioned" replacements sent to those same posters have exactly the same "problems."

Folks having these problems with the PW screen should really just send it in for a refund and buy a KFHD7-32. NO ONE has reported problems here with that model.

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by Victoria

The puzzle part for me, is, why does it matter ? Why are people seeking a pristine pure white screen, when, nothing around us is pure white? Reflected colours are beautiful.

It's not about the screen. It's not about how beautiful it looks. It's about the text and how easy it is to read.

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by Fluribus

It's not about the screen. It's not about how beautiful it looks. It's about the text and how easy it is to read.

Exactly.

[weatherman]

Yeah, if I were looking at art it might be different but as others have said you don't see reflected color on a book (or on any other Kindle, for that matter). Reading is best done in uniform light.

Personally what I found most distracting about the color blotches on my first kindle is that they were most visible in my peripheral vision. Looking at the area directly they might be hard to identify, but they are very distracting when just out of my focal area.

[mobilewilier]

Disappointed with my PW screen, which has a green patch in top right and pink around the edges. It's noticeable also to my wife, especially in dark rooms. Shame as I am based in HK which makes a return to the US impractical.

I use futura font with big line spacing to reduce the impact of the gloomy area, but it's very obviously green to me and just makes the screen ugly looking when reading. It's a shame as i feel that the screen is the most important part of the e-ink device and why i chose a new device over my ipad for reading. Now i need to keep another background light on to reduce the impact of the color patches.

Does anyone have any other tips for reducing the non-uniformity, or do we just need to accept this is a hardware problem?

[xendula]

@mobilewilier: Someone here was in the same situation but in Australia, and Amazon customer service worked with him/her to get her a replacement unit and even refunded some of the shipping cost AFAIK.
The only wayto make the color blotches show less, is sitting in a very well lit room, which kind of defies the purpose of the PW light.

[mobilewilier]

Originally Posted by xendula

@mobilewilier: Someone here was in the same situation but in Australia, and Amazon customer service worked with him/her to get her a replacement unit and even refunded some of the shipping cost AFAIK.
The only wayto make the color blotches show less, is sitting in a very well lit room, which kind of defies the purpose of the PW light.

Thanks for the advice. They refused to ship to HK, but they will upgrade me to a non-SO version without cost, and will ship the replacement to arrive in New York within 2 days.

Now I have the logistical nightmare of trying to get my HK Kindle to NY, and the NY one to HK (groan)....

[tmf2]

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

I thought initially you might be putting us on here... Hmm.. I guess to each their own, but I prefer my devices not to have color hues on them. If you like that sort of thing, I can say the PW is definitely for you then.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Victoria

I was just puzzled over why the colours are so troubling. They could be considered a terrible defect, or, just a reflection of coloured light.

From the reports I've seen, these colour are reflections of coloured light from sources external to the Kindle PW, but are a flaw in the lighting system of some units.

The one PaperWhite I've seen (in a Waterstones shop) looked perfect to me at all lighting levels, so I can understand people being cross if theirs doesn't match what's been advertised.

[mobilewilier]

I bought two PWs. One is perfectly uniform in lighting. The other has v distracting colors that even my wife immediately noticed. Although I can still technically read on the defective one, the experience is unpleasant with text in the green patch being very dark and muddy. So much so that I need to use external background lighting which defeats the purpose othe lit screen. This is definitely a Quality Control issue with the screen where the light is not being refracted uniformly. Sometimes I cannot even raise the brightness above 14 or the colors appear prominently.

I don't believe that an ereader whose main selling point is the reading experience should come with these coloration defects. Just my opinion.

Good news is that a different customer rep has agreed to ship me a non SO version to HK, free of charge! Now that is great service and has restored my faith in amazon. Hope the replacement is better!

[xendula]

That's great customer service, so happy they could help you out, mobilewilier! Keeping my fingers crossed that your new one will have less color blotches.