Paperwhite Second Gen: First Impressions

[Ocicat]

Originally Posted by xendula

Thanks for your review, Jack, and so glad you have such a great device. I now wonder if I should try one last time and get one from BB.

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

I'm considering trying one more at BB too.

Yes, give it one last try and I hope you both win the lottery.

Maybe you could subtly open the PW box in the store, it is half charged, and turn it on. If the screen looks bad, dump the open box back on the shelf and leave.

During week days, BB here have almost no salesmen on the floor, very empty aisles.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

Ah does it? I have never noticed it on the PW1, but on the PW2 it was quite annoying, at least one the one I noticed it on. The font would start off dark and thick for a brief second and then revert to be thinner and lighter. It was happening every page, yes.

Yes it happens mostly on AZW3 books from what I can tell and only at certain font sizes. To fix it you have to jump font sizes a full fresh wont work.

[xendula]

Originally Posted by Ocicat

Yes, give it one last try and I hope you both win the lottery.

Maybe you could subtly open the PW box in the store, it is half charged, and turn it on. If the screen looks bad, dump the open box back on the shelf and leave.

During week days, BB here have almost no salesmen on the floor, very empty aisles.

If I can remind you: you have to rip the box open to get to the device, so not so very subtle

Originally Posted by xendula

If I can remind you: you have to rip the box open to get to the device, so not so very subtle

That, and at the BB I bought mine there were no accessible boxes. The sales clerk had to use the rolling steps thingy to retrieve one from a shelf about 12 feet above the floor! I'm not sure why they keep them stored way up there.

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

Can anyone with a PW2 please tell if theirs does this. When you turn a page, does the font start off thicker for a brief second and then get thinner? My PW1 doesn't do this, but my second PW2 did.

No, but I did encounter this (see attached screen capture) after I displayed the Reading Navigation toolbar and the Preview Pane then went back to the page. After the Preview Pane closed, the top paragraph was displaying the font much thinner than it had before. It had looked like the bottom paragraphs. This is in an eBook I modified to show all the text in bold. I think the top paragraph somehow lost its bold setting. I read about 3 hours in this book and this anomaly only occurred once. I did see this fairly often in the PW1s though.

EDIT: Depending on your monitor, you might need to zoom the attached image to see what happened. To zoom it, click/tap on the attached image below, after it displays in the pop up window click/tap on it again and it will display in its own browser tab or window. Then click on it again from inside its own browser tab or window and it will zoom to actual size.

......

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by jswinden

No, but I did encounter this (see attached screen capture) after I displayed the Reading Navigation toolbar and the Preview Pane then went back to the page. After the Preview Pane closed, the top paragraph was displaying the font much thinner than it had before. It had looked like the bottom paragraphs. This is in an eBook I modified to show all the text in bold. I think the top paragraph somehow lost its bold setting. I read about 3 hours in this book and this anomaly only occurred once. I did see this fairly often in the PW1s though.

EDIT: Depending on your monitor, you might need to zoom the attached image to see what happened. To zoom it, click/tap on the attached image below, after it displays in the pop up window click/tap on it again and it will display in its own browser tab or window. Then click on it again from inside its own browser tab or window and it will zoom to actual size.

......

Yeah this has been around since the first Paperwhite. Changing to custom font and it doesn't do it but on PW2 not an option. You can change font sizes then back to fix it if it gets to be every page.

Originally Posted by Blossom

Yeah this has been around since the first Paperwhite. Changing to custom font and it doesn't do it but on PW2 not an option. You can change font sizes then back to fix it if it gets to be every page.

I paged back then forward and it fixed itself.

I also notice that every once in a while when closing the definition pop up I see two quick page refreshes. The first page refresh leaves the definition pop up displayed, but makes it flicker. The second page refresh closes it. It only happens occasionally and it isn't annoying or anything, but it is another anomaly.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I paged back then forward and it fixed itself.

I also notice that every once in a while when closing the definition pop up I see two quick page refreshes. The first page refresh leaves the definition pop up displayed, but makes it flicker. The second page refresh closes it. It only happens occasionally and it isn't annoying or anything, but it is another anomaly.

I will have to look for that on my PW1 I don't think it does that but I never really notice flashes even when I turn a page.

[fearindex]

Originally Posted by jswinden

No, but I did encounter this (see attached screen capture) after I displayed the Reading Navigation toolbar and the Preview Pane then went back to the page. After the Preview Pane closed, the top paragraph was displaying the font much thinner than it had before. It had looked like the bottom paragraphs. This is in an eBook I modified to show all the text in bold. I think the top paragraph somehow lost its bold setting. I read about 3 hours in this book and this anomaly only occurred once. I did see this fairly often in the PW1s though.

FWIW, this happens on my PW1 too when e.g. the light settings pane closes. Jumping to the next page (full screen refresh set to always) and then back fixes the issue.

Personally I wish I could set all Kindles to auto-refresh the full screen every time a window or pane is opened or closed. It doesn't bother me, e-ink residue bothers me much more.

E-ink is meant to be flashing! Appeasing the mainstream tastes has, in my opinion, actually made things worse in this regard since the Kindle 2/3 days. The first Kindle 4 software version was a disaster for me when it didn't support always refresh even for pages, glad they fixed that though.

OK, I understand why Amazon does it, but a further option would be nice for us who dislike ghosting more than flashing.

I love e-ink, but for me it requires full-screen refreshes to work well. I find myself clicking page turns etc. all the time just to invoke a refresh if it wasn't done for some reason.

[elemenoP]

Originally Posted by jswinden

That, and at the BB I bought mine there were no accessible boxes. The sales clerk had to use the rolling steps thingy to retrieve one from a shelf about 12 feet above the floor! I'm not sure why they keep them stored way up there.

Obviously: to keep a stampede of Mobilereaders from tearing open every box to get the best one!

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

Obviously: to keep a stampede of Mobilereaders from tearing open every box to get the best one!

I would open the box in the store and do my best to check it out there. If it had obvious issues, I could return it easily enough.

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I would open the box in the store and do my best to check it out there. If it had obvious issues, I could return it easily enough.

Good idea. However you need to check the stores rules and regulations. I once ordered and paid for three items online at Best Buy for in-store pickup. When I went to the BB to pick up the items, I discovered they had substituted another item for one of the three. They are not supposed to that and admitted they were wrong to do so. No problem I said, just refund the money on that item since you don't have in stock what I actually ordered. I thought that would save me a trip back. However, they said they cannot offer refunds on purchases on the same day as the purchase. I escalated this all the way to the store manager but they wouldn't budge. I think they could have just been blowing smoke up my backside, but in the end I had to go back to the store the next day to return the item for a refund. I'm not sure what their exchange policy is.

[Yolina]

I did the "light on full in pitch black" test on my PW2 - I would never use that setting in real life - but we know how bad that looked on most PW1.

[sparklemotion]

Originally Posted by jswinden

No, but I did encounter this (see attached screen capture) after I displayed the Reading Navigation toolbar and the Preview Pane then went back to the page. After the Preview Pane closed, the top paragraph was displaying the font much thinner than it had before. It had looked like the bottom paragraphs. This is in an eBook I modified to show all the text in bold. I think the top paragraph somehow lost its bold setting. I read about 3 hours in this book and this anomaly only occurred once. I did see this fairly often in the PW1s though.

EDIT: Depending on your monitor, you might need to zoom the attached image to see what happened. To zoom it, click/tap on the attached image below, after it displays in the pop up window click/tap on it again and it will display in its own browser tab or window. Then click on it again from inside its own browser tab or window and it will zoom to actual size.

......

Thanks for the pic. That's exactly what my PW2 did while reading, but it was even all over the page. What I mean is the text would flash darker/thicker for a second while turning the page, but then settle into a lighter/thinner font on the actual page.

After reading several hours on my PW2 in various lighting situations I have decided to keep my PW2. However, it is far from being the perfect eInk reader with whiter screen and darker more contrasty text that it is advertised to be. But it is the best eInk reader I've found so far.

Before I get into the screen and lighting discussion, I want to say I like the firmware improvements and features on the PW2.

As you can see from the photo of my PW, when at the optimum light level(s) for reading the screen is a bit shadowy looking all over except around the perimeter edges. It looks a bit dingy or dirty looking. The lower I set the light level the dingier and darker the screen appears, and the higher the light level the whiter and cleaner the screen appears. It is not bad, but it can affect reading. The key is to discover the optimum light level(s) at which to read wherein the text looks the best and the light doesn't cause eyestrain.

Optimum light level(s) for reading: I'm defining the optimum light level(s) for reading to be when the light is as bright as my eyes can comfortably read before starting to cause eyestrain. (Your settings might be different of course.) On my PW2 that seems to be:

• Level 14 when reading in my home/office room with plenty of artificial lighting and daylight coming through the windows.
• Level 12 when reading in my recliner with only a table lamp nearby but not directly illuminating the PW and after sunset, so no daylight entering the room.
• Level 7-10 when reading in my recliner after sunset with no artificial lighting except the PW2.

Note: My optimum light level(s) for reading are based on using the included Caecilia Condensed font at size 3 (where 1 is smallest size and 8 is largest).

When at the optimum light level(s) for reading, the included fonts are so thin that they lack enough darkness and contrast to be usable with my dingy screen. They look washed out, my eyestrain is bad, and the system is a big fail for me. However, when I substitute a thicker/fatter font or bold the text, the text is dark enough and contrasty enough to read for hours without eyestrain.

Bottom line is this, I can read comfortably on my PW2 without eyestrain for hours at a time as long as I modify the fonts to make them thicker which causes them to display darker and with more contrast. To do this I either have to use an embedded font that is thicker/fatter or I have to add CSS code to make all paragraph text bold. Either way, that means taking the time to deDRM every eBook, modify it, rebuild it, then send it to my Kindle cloud. Doable and easy, but a PITA.

Photo: Text in this photo is the included Caecilia Condensed font at size 3 at normal weight.