Kindle Voyage - First Impressions

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

As someone who suffered with color hue issues on all of my lit kindles, (I did eventually get a decent PW2) I'm curious to know as well. It's a marvel not to see color blobs on my H20.

But the H2O does have a brightness gradient (or least, mine does). My H2O and Voyage have a more or less equal amount of dimming towards the top of the screen. I don't see it visually on either, but the pixel values of a photograph clearly show that it's there.

[sparklemotion]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But the H2O does have a brightness gradient (or least, mine does). My H2O and Voyage have a more or less equal amount of dimming towards the top of the screen. I don't see it visually on either, but the pixel values of a photograph clearly show that it's there.

No device is perfect, but my H20 is quite evenly lit to my eyes. That said, I would assume it's fairly common to have the top of the device be slightly dimmer than the bottom since the lights reside at the bottom. However, on the voyage I had, there was an extreme gradient where the top of the screen was obviously yellow and the bottom blue. So not a slightly darker yellow at top and a slightly lighter yellow at bottom. No, instead it was two completely different shades, yellow to blue. I see it on all of the pics posted on the board, but to varying degrees.

Then there was the second issue of various other color hues entering the equation on the lit kindles. To my eyes, at least. I had pink and green blotches in the extreme on my PW1 and also on the voyage, but to a lesser degree. I still easily saw them on my voyage, however, especially at lower light levels and when reading in a dim room. I do not have this issue on my H20. So, like Rizla, I wonder what Kobo is doing differently.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

However, on the voyage I had, there was an extreme gradient where the top of the screen was obviously yellow and the bottom blue. So not a slightly darker yellow at top and a slightly lighter yellow at bottom. No, instead it was two completely different shades, yellow to blue.

Yes, that's clearly not right.

[Rizla]

In actuality, perhaps we are seeing a radical change in the Amazon front-light approach. We are not seeing blobbing on the Voyage, but rather a color gradient, which is quite different, and is observed on the Kobo device (though it's not as extreme).

So perhaps Amazon has transitioned to a lighting tech more closely resembling Kobo's. The more extreme gradient could be put down to dealing with (what is for Amazon) a new technology, and also dealing with the flush-bezel. In which case, I would expect the issues to be ironed out in a few months.

The lesson is, don't buy straight away!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rizla

The lesson is, don't buy straight away!

I think you're actually perfectly safe in buying right away, because:

1. The issues are only affecting a proportion (whether large or small is open to debate) of devices. I, for example, am perfectly happy with my Voyage, and so are many other people.

2. Amazon have an excellent return policy. If you perceive the device to be faulty, you can return it at no cost to yourself.

What's probably not a good idea is to buy from a shop with a not-so-good returns policy.

[Barty]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That is QC, isn't it? How consistent the product is?

Just speculating here, but perhaps Amazon is pushing the tolerance of the front light techb harder than kobo. When everything is done perfectly they get a better display. But they also have smaller margin of error so you see a wider range of variance.

[xendula]

Originally Posted by DaRon

On the other side it seems to be different here at Amazon.de.
112 reviews in total and 29! out of it with 1 or 2star rating complaining about screen issues. Even some of the 20 3star ratings are complaining. So let's make roughly 40 complaints about the screen out of 112 reviews in total which is ~30%. And I am pretty sure that some people didn't rate yet ( waiting for replacement - like me).
I don't know your definition of 'widely' but 30% should be definitely be a reason for amazon to investigate in this issue.

I had not noticed that. Good catch!
ETA: I just read through some of the German reviews, and even some of the 4 star reviews deducted one star because of what they perceive as inconsinstent lighting or color gradient.

Originally Posted by judith009

The guy with the most popular critical review of the KV just wrote a comment saying that he just got a replacement unit, and the replacement's screen was even worse than the original.

This falls in line with other reports of bad replacements.

[robko]

Originally Posted by xendula

ETA: I just read through some of the German reviews, and even some of the 4 star reviews deducted one star because of what they perceive as inconsinstent lighting or color gradient.

Quite a number of the Amazon.com reviews that were giving 4 and 5 star ratings also talked about inconsistent/poor lighting at one point.

[JoHunt]

(My 1,000th post )

Out of curiosity I read the 46 one-star reviews on Amazon.com which break down as follows:

Screen issues: 20
Device freeze: 9
6" screen too small: 3
No text to speech: 4
Page turn problems: 1
Backlighting/Auto brightness issues: 1
No color display: 1
Can't search for free books: 1
Problems with collections: 2
Screen glare: 1
Buttons not raised: 1
Cancelled due to reports of "defects" 1
Too expensive: 2

Out of 39 two-star reviews, 14 mention screen issues.

[judith009]

Another indication that it's a widespread problem is how Amazon CS is handling it.
-First they were eagerly replacing the units (which is how I would expect their CS to behave).
-Next they said there would be a delay before the replacement arrives (unless people complained a lot).
-Next they started saying that it's not a defect, but rather a known feature of the screens.
-And then yesterday one of the reviewers said they sent 2 emails to Amazon asking for a replacement, but got no response. They said it seems like Amazon is ignoring them, and that they've never seen Amazon CS behave this way.

I'm curious to see how their CS continues to handle this problem. At the moment it seems they might be overloaded.

[pghaworth]

Originally Posted by judith009

...they started saying that it's not a defect, but rather a known feature of the screens.

As someone who received two KVs with the "feature", one worse than the other, I prefer my eReaders without this feature.

[speedlever]

Amazon also has the Kindle Fire phone flop to deal with too. Jeff seems to have his hands full these days.

[judith009]

Originally Posted by pghaworth

As someone who received two KVs with the "feature", one worse than the other, I prefer my eReaders without this feature.

The one that was "worse" had less of the two-toned feature?

[CaffeBreak]

Just got my Voyage. Lighting looks perfect. Am happy with it and very relieved.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by CaffeBreak

Just got my Voyage. Lighting looks perfect. Am happy with it and very relieved.

Good! Had you ever had issues with screen lighting / coloring on previous kindles? I have not, so I probably am not the sort who sees those issues. In which case, I should NOT have even started reading this thread!! It just got me needlessly worried. Glad you like yours too.