Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As a former Paperwhite owner -- addict, really -- I was really excited to see the Kindle Voyage announced. It seemed on paper, and from the initial reviews, like the Voyage would address all the lingering issues with the Paperwhite (especially the lower-than-print resolution and the laggy touch screen), providing a new standard for the best-in-class reading experience. Unfortunately, Amazon is evidently having a ton of quality problems, and those pre-release reviews from journalists were evidently based on hand-picked review units that didn't accurately represent the many flaws of the production model. This is just not a device that justifies its top-of-the-line price with a top-of-the-line experience at this point. While the unit is attractively designed and the screen looks great when it works, the quality problems are evident in both hardware and software. My unit had the seemingly common problem of an unevenly colored backlight -- orangish on top and blue on the bottom, distractingly evident in low light and belying its main claim to fame, the supposedly best-in-class screen. The PagePress buttons were annoyingly inconsistent in use, often requiring several attempts before a press would work. The UI is still very laggy and unresponsive in general, especially irksome with the random delay before page-turning. Font choice is more constrained than with the first Paperwhite, which initially allowed users to add their own fonts (though Amazon later, unfortunately, disabled this feature). What's worse, my unit locked up frequently and wouldn't always respond correctly to the unlock button, sometimes hanging and requiring a restart rather than allowing a swipe to unlock it. Navigation between books, to the home screen, and even turning pages sometimes resulted in a crash, a blank screen, or an "Application Error" message, requiring a restart. All told, this feels like a rush job, a device that wasn't ready for prime time when it was pushed out. Amazon needs to fix the software bugs and get much better QC going on its hardware manufacturing, especially with the device's key component, its screen -- which at this price ought to be flawless, not unevenly lit. And Kindle phone customer support is really terrible. Whatever you do, don't call in to report your physical hardware problems. After being transferred to the second rep in a row who asked me to restart the device again and again and wouldn't believe I was reporting an obvious hardware flaw, I just hung up and emailed instead; luckily, Amazon's email customer service is always responsive (and eventually provided me with an exchange order, albeit for a unit that will ship more than a month from now). With any luck the replacement unit, when it eventually arrives, will work better; in the meantime, I'll be wishing I'd stuck with my Paperwhite instead! UPDATE: After more (attempted) use of the Voyage, I'm revising my rating down to one star because the Kindle has been hanging and crashing very, very frequently. A quality problem like the ugly uneven backlighting is one thing, annoying but not unusable -- but a Kindle that dies and needs to be restarted every half-hour is a paperweight, not a Paperwhite. At this point, I'd strongly recommend that buyers avoid this product for a long while, until the quality-control problems are demonstrably resolved. In the meantime I'll be considering switching to a Kobo Aura HD or H2O for my e-reading needs (and not buying from Amazon!). UPDATE 2: My replacement Voyage, once updated with the newest firmware (and why should I need to do this for a just-manufactured device?), is mercifully free of the constant crashing and hanging of the previous unit. The UI feels much more responsive and less laggy across the board, as well; apparently the Voyage's previously show-stopping software bugs are being fixed at a reasonable rate. However, this unit also has the color-gradient problem -- apparently this defect is very widespread! In fairness, I have compared a few Paperwhites and an Aura HD alongside this Voyage, using the inverted-photo technique many people have exhibited online, and found they also have slight brightness gradients in their lighting as well -- but the Voyage's is considerably more severe in color.