The downsides are that the physical buttons are terrible, and since I don't do any online shopping the "home" section of the device is pretty useless. There are also some persistent rough edges to the software in terms of pages read, home page, and some minor typography issues.
I thought about getting the Glowlight version but when I tried it in the store, the contrast was noticeably worse. I'm going to wait till I can see a Kindle Paperwhite or Kobo Glo in person before I decide to buy a new reader. (A built-in light is a big selling point for me, as I often read in bed.)
There's a Python script out there that will easily crack the B&N DRM should you choose to buy from their store after all.
Just keep the wifi off on any of those devices and copy ebooks over as if it were a USB drive and you've foiled their horrible DRM and remote-wipe schemes.