Kindle PW front light...

[Chi Cygni]

Originally Posted by Illyria

I have FINALLY, after almost a year of being undecided, ordered a PW from Amazon today.

The main reason is that both of the two frontlit readers I already own, while having perfectly uniform light, are much too bright even at their lowest setting for my sensitive eyes and I simply cannot read with them in the evening, let alone at night in bed. I got the Cybook because of the night mode feature but even the bright white letters on the black background hurt my eyes. Since the Paperwhite can be dimmed much lower I have such high expectations in this regard.

Now I'm just really really hoping that I will get a good unit without blotches, colors etc. The many problems I have heard about were the reason I got the Kobo Glo and Cybook in the first place. Wish me luck!!!

You seem to be like me in this respect. My PW is not 2 weeks "old" yet. I am extremely pleased with it. I also tried Cybook HD and returned it and quality of PW light is incomparable. I also have sensitive eyes and I virtually cannot stand white letters on black background, everything starts swimming and I get dizzy. I was also afraid of faulty screen and too bright light but I got a good one - from amazon.com. I have a feeling my particular PW has lower range of light as I can read on 24 and in pitch black room I have it at 10. If I can read comfortably I guess you also will. Good luck

And Andy, I don't regret buying it now, it really for me has everything I need to be happy. And I am I bought a nice case from amazon.uk which I can recommend if anyone is interested (not slim case)

[Illyria]

Originally Posted by Chi Cygni

You seem to be like me in this respect. My PW is not 2 weeks "old" yet. I am extremely pleased with it. I also tried Cybook HD and returned it and quality of PW light is incomparable. I also have sensitive eyes and I virtually cannot stand white letters on black background, everything starts swimming and I get dizzy. I was also afraid of faulty screen and too bright light but I got a good one - from amazon.com. I have a feeling my particular PW has lower range of light as I can read on 24 and in pitch black room I have it at 10. If I can read comfortably I guess you also will. Good luck

And Andy, I don't regret buying it now, it really for me has everything I need to be happy. And I am I bought a nice case from amazon.uk which I can recommend if anyone is interested (not slim case)

The night mode on the Cybook HD does hurt my eyes but without it, it's even worse. Either way, I can only read with it for a few minutes. I hate tha tmy eyes are so light-sensitive. I'm currently writing my Bacherlor's thesis and the glare of the PC is killing me. I have the lighting of my monitor down to about 10% and need to regularly put in eye drops. But in exchange my night vision is excellent!

I'm very encouraged that despite you having sensitive eyes as well you can read comfortably with the PW. Because if I have the same problems with the PW, I will have to conclude that readers with frontlight are not suitable for me and have to stick with the normal Kindle. But hopefully it will work for me. It is estimated to be here by Thursday but I'm hoping for an early delivery on Wednesday.

[Chi Cygni]

Originally Posted by Illyria

The night mode on the Cybook HD does hurt my eyes but without it, it's even worse. Either way, I can only read with it for a few minutes. I hate tha tmy eyes are so light-sensitive. I'm currently writing my Bacherlor's thesis and the glare of the PC is killing me. I have the lighting of my monitor down to about 10% and need to regularly put in eye drops. But in exchange my night vision is excellent!

I'm very encouraged that despite you having sensitive eyes as well you can read comfortably with the PW. Because if I have the same problems with the PW, I will have to conclude that readers with frontlight are not suitable for me and have to stick with the normal Kindle. But hopefully it will work for me. It is estimated to be here by Thursday but I'm hoping for an early delivery on Wednesday.

I remember when I had Cybook, the light was quite harsh and with blue tint. I didn't enjoy reading on it at all and my eyes felt tired after a short while. I was also afraid that screens with light are not for me but PW changed it. I had to fiddle with light levels to find comfortable one but now I am glued to it. And as for light sensitivity I cannot stand very strong sunlight, and flashing lights drive me crazy. I wonder if I could ever drive a car as I find it very distracting if sun shines sideways through trees creating flashing disco effect as you drive. The same goes for white text on black background.

That said I am not bothered by PW flashing the screen every 6 pages. I hope you will like yours! And I am very glad I waited until now to buy it, I am in Belgium and even if Amazon releases something new any moment I will not be able to buy it for the next 6 months anyway. For once I am not an early adopter and it paid back. Frankly speaking PW has everything I could want to enjoy reading. I put my own font on it and my own dictionary and enjoy the experience.

Let us know please what you think when you get yours, for mine it took less than 48 hours to get to Belgium from the US.

[Illyria]

Originally Posted by Chi Cygni

Let us know please what you think when you get yours, for mine it took less than 48 hours to get to Belgium from the US.

I definitely will. Less than 48 hours? Wow, that was quick. I ordered mine yesterday at noon and it still has not shipped yet despite being in stock. Recently amazon.de is agonizingly slow with shipping, possibly because I might be one of the last people in the country not to have Prime!

[Illyria]

Now I'm even more nervous about my new PW because within hours, the old model I bought was listed as not available anymore because of the new ones. Seems like I will be getting one of the last ones lying around. Hopefully it will be in a good condition, not one that others did not like. I don't think I would be able to exchange it for another one if the lighting was bad!

Well the new PW 2 has been introduced and claims to have improved screen lighting. It will be available in the USA in late September. No idea when Germany will get it though.

I'm one of the minority who had great difficulty with the original PW's screen lighting. I tried several units and they were all blotchy with color blobs, shadows, and some text was fuzzy on occasion. Most seem to be able to overlook these flaws, but if it bothers you I would return it and wait for the PW 2.

[Illyria]

Yes, returning it would probably be the only option in that case. But I don't know if the PW2 would possess as low a brightness setting as the first PW has. Hopefully so.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Chi Cygni

...which when turned down for night reading has comforting slight yellow tint.

Hm, pity you got one of those. The ones with that yellow tint have a different sort of LED's compared to the earlier ones. They're quite prone to just stop working for no apparent reason.

Keep a hold on your receipt

Spoiler:

Sorry. I just had to take advantage of that opportunity.

[Chi Cygni]

Originally Posted by Illyria

I definitely will. Less than 48 hours? Wow, that was quick. I ordered mine yesterday at noon and it still has not shipped yet despite being in stock. Recently amazon.de is agonizingly slow with shipping, possibly because I might be one of the last people in the country not to have Prime!

I don't have Prime either but somehow Amazon.com delivers kindles fast as lightning.

Originally Posted by Illyria

Now I'm even more nervous about my new PW because within hours, the old model I bought was listed as not available anymore because of the new ones. Seems like I will be getting one of the last ones lying around. Hopefully it will be in a good condition, not one that others did not like. I don't think I would be able to exchange it for another one if the lighting was bad!

Don't worry, it should be fine. I was fully aware ordering PW that a new one would be coming soon. Besides I think they do have a lot of previous PWs as you can still order them to Belgium from US. And it will most probably stay like this for months to come, you at least have Amazon in your country.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Hm, pity you got one of those. The ones with that yellow tint have a different sort of LED's compared to the earlier ones. They're quite prone to just stop working for no apparent reason.

Keep a hold on your receipt

Spoiler:

Sorry. I just had to take advantage of that opportunity.

sir, you've been karma'ed that really made me laugh (right after my blood pressure went down)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Well the new PW 2 has been introduced and claims to have improved screen lighting. It will be available in the USA in late September. No idea when Germany will get it though.

9th October.

[freezer2k]

damn,


Now i'm thinking of returning the paperwhite...

I won't like it if the PW2 will be much better!!

[Chi Cygni]

I'm definitely keeping mine. Screen is excellent and the rest I can live without, looks to me like it can be fixed by software upgrade anyway.

[cortman]

I owned a PW for a couple weeks. I liked the capacitive touch screen and the software was pretty nice. It ran nice and fast too. I really didn't like the frontlight.
I wound up getting a Kobo. The light is second to none and the touch screen was adquate, as was the software.
Really, the big drawback about the PW for me was no expandable storage. Especially since they cut the storage in half from the previous generation. They lost a customer on that one.

[Illyria]

As I'd hoped, I already got mine today. It seems that I have been lucky because the lighting is perfectly even, no matter what brightness setting is chosen, much better in that regard than I had hoped. I will have to wait for the evening to see how I like it when reading in a mostly dark room.

I am a bit disappointed that the contrast seems to be worse compared to the black K4 and even the Keyboard. It kind of feels like reading through a pane of glass but I'm sure I will get used to it. On normal days I will probably continue to use my other Kindles and read with the PW on rainy days, at night, and when using public transport in the evenings.

I would not have thought so but in daylight (and it's rather overcast today) both my KK and black K4 look thoroughly white compared to the PW at medium light setting, which still looks yellowish. If I raise the brightness more, the PW becomes uncomfortable because of the "monitor effect". But I guess the yellowish tint is what makes it kinder to the eyes to read at night, so that would be okay and what I got it for anyway but still, during the day my other Kindles win.

The new PW is advertised as having better contrast but as I'm so relieved to have gotten a very uniform lighting, I will keep it and won't exchange it for the new one next month. Or I would see myself pining for better light every night until then...

One thing though, I cannot use my PW in any way while it is charging. The touchscreen just goes completely haywire, does not go to home, every attempted action ends up in changing the font size and then suddenly it flips through the pages in fast-forward. There is absolutely nothing I can do to control it and at first I thought it was defective until I unplugged it and everything was fine again. Is this normal? None of my other readers have this problem.

All in all, I'm satisfied with my new Paperwhite and cannot wait for tonight to see how it it fares then and how my eyes will take to it. But I can already see myself not using the Kobo Glo and Cybook much anymore. Compared to them, the PW clearly wins.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Illyria

One thing though, I cannot use my PW in any way while it is charging. The touchscreen just goes completely haywire, does not go to home, every attempted action ends up in changing the font size and then suddenly it flips through the pages in fast-forward. There is absolutely nothing I can do to control it and at first I thought it was defective until I unplugged it and everything was fine again. Is this normal? None of my other readers have this problem.

I haven't got this problem with my Paperwhite, at least not while connected to the computer. I'll try two different chargers tonight.

I've noticed that some tablets can go haywire when you try to use them while charging. They actually feel like as if current is running throuh them, especially if they've got metal housing. Reversing the charger in the power socket (turn it 180 degrees) cures that. Maybe it also works for the Kindle?