I'm disappointed, to be honest.
It was great for daytime flights (LHR-LAX, HKG-LHR and I was hoping to get it for AKL-HNL) but lousy for sleeping in.
Ultimately, it's a symptom of the malaise that set in under the previous management, whereby people who didn't know much about aviation thought they could reinvent a better wheel. The other obvious example was the genius idea to reposition the loyalty program from "fly to earn" to a retail-based "earn-to-fly", which valued loyalty to shopping partners more highly than return custom with the airline.
I'm disappointed that there won't be Premium Economy Spaceseats on AKL-HNL, and doubtless soon on LHR-LAX too.
I half-agree with Xiaotung. I think Premium Economy should go from double the discount Economy fare level up to half of the Business Premier fare level, but 2-2-2 in a 777 was always far too much real estate for the number of seats that could be sold.
When the 77W was configured, the airline basically chose to pack Economy in terms of both reduced width and legroom and also gave Premium Economy too little seat pitch. They then had to backtrack, at which point one row of Premium Economy was removed, but this lost 15% of the seats for sale. From that point they were always on to a loser financially.
Ultimately, the error was unrealistic configuration, and he fact that they tested the seat in a shed during the day so its deficits on nighttime long-haul flights were not uncovered until it was too late.
I haven't seen any mention of space seats ever being removed from the current 77W's so one would assume that they will still remain on the NZ1/2 LHR<->LAX<->AKL run in the short term, but we can only speculate what will happen with the new 77W's as there has been no mention on whether these will have them or not.
When Air NZ launched PE I'm pretty sure pricing was supposed to be around 50% more than economy, but this has slowly increased. Pricing is way above what you've mentioned though, just a rough example you're now looking at around NZ$11k for a return BP flight to London and around $7k for PE vs around $2.5k - $3.5k for economy depending on the date.
Air NZ are getting smart with some of their PE discounting though when it suits them, the current $1000 deal to HNL is a pretty good deal and really shows what competition does on a route. It's a shame there is none on direct flights to North America.