I originally started looking at media players because my Sansa Fuze mp3/media player was starting to lose battery. I looked at Archos 43 IT briefly before I came across these. Since I originally started looking at players, my use has become far greater than I anticipated. I'm using this like a power smartphone...just without the phone.
Anyway, I own the 5.0. It is adequate for web browsing. Of course the web is a varied experience. Websites are constructed and formatted very differently. Some load up great and give a very good mobile experience. Others will load the entire page, meant to be viewed on a large monitor, on the 5" screen. obviously you can't see a thing and you're pinching to zoom the entire time. Screen refreshes kick you back to the 100% view. This is not a fun or satisfying experience. You're zooming in to 1000% so you can see the fields you need to fill in. then it pops back to 100% and you do it all over. On the other hand, when it's best , it's a snappy experience with the data being presented in a format that fits the screen and is highly viewable.
So, that being said, if I was laying down in bed and needed to browse web and do research/shop...I would DEFINITELY want a tablet or laptop. but I don't have one, so I make do with the 5.0. "Pity the fool" with a 4.0 because THAT cannot be fun...looking at the same webpage only an inch smaller.
I find that the 5.0 screen in general is a good size. It basically takes "handheld" to a reasonable limit. I can cover the entire screen with my thumb and still fit it in my pocket and use it as a phone. Netfilx is fine and I often watch for a couple of hours without any problem.
There are some complaints about the display because it's the same 480 x 800 as the 4.0 screen. It appears lower-res. However I can tell you that it really is quite a good display- especially with brightness turned up. It's like good stereo gear. You like your new stereo- sounds awesome. Your ears get used to a good setup and then you compare side-by-side and the newest setup makes the old one seem poor. It's all relative.
The keyboard app on the device is adequate. I had issues that had me looking at other keyboard apps. I paid for SwiftKey and found that there were very frustrating glitches with editing where if I had predictive text on, the keyboard would leave remnants of stuff I had deleted attached to the cursor so the editing problem I was having got worse and worse as the "bad edits" piled up on each other. After many hours I dumped it and went to GoKeyboard (free) and have been very, very happy with it. Lots of options...you can get it set up just the way you like.
So to wrap up, I would give the unit 10/10 for overall value. The amount of things that this device can do, and do rather well, is amazing. Once you have been to a bunch of places with wifi, and logged on, the device remembers these wifis and you get logged in everywhere you go automatically. It's a fantastic value at $230 compared to an unlocked Galaxy SII, say, at around $800. That being said, I'd rate it maybe 6/10 for web browsing. You'll want websites that are optimized for mobile devices. Or apps that drag up a version of the website for mobile. Read other reviews here and also over at
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=238