I agree with all of this, and I've noticed as much with the other readers. Some users promote Kobo reader as a quality alternative, but I haven't tried it.
Kobo works quite well: you can set it up without an account (needs a bit of manual fiddling) if you really want, and either way after that you can just plug it in and drag-and-drop epubs to the device. Battery life, responsiveness, etc. are all fine to me (the older devices actually did a bit better IMO and it mostly only gets bogged down for comics, regular books are fine)
