I took NextGen #2154 from PHL to BOS on 10/15 in First, seat 2A. My impressions:

• Car and seat were comfortable.
• No true seat recline, but I rarely recline my seat, so not a big deal.
• Row 2 has a window. Row 1 has a wall. Row 3 has mostly a wall. Not a good surprise for someone intentionally booking a window seat and finding it is a wall seat. The Amtrak seat picker map should show the window locations. The current seatmap looks like it was prepared as a middle school graphics project – and that may be an insult to middle school kids.
• The First Class service was great. The person behind me in 1A did not care for anything on the F menu (they were out of the cheese plates), and the attendant cheerfully got her something from the Café car. Nice.
• The power car end of Car 1 (First) had lots of wheel and noise from the power car. I assume Car 9 on the other end would be similarly noisy – and that it the “Quiet Car.”
• We left NYP about 10 minutes late and about 10 minutes later reversed back to NYP. They had to “reboot” the train and did so by powering everything down (HVAC, lights, toilets, everything) and then restarting systems one at a time. That worked and we left NYP a second time, now 60 minutes late.
• My GPS showed us at 160 mph for about one minute in Rhode Island.
• Both the old and new sets tilt through curves, but the NextGen Acela, for reasons not clear, is limited to no-tilt speeds through curves. Amtrak added about 10 minutes to the run time between NYP and BOS to accommodate this restriction since there are lots and lots of curves. The speed that actually counts is the station-to-station speed and the NextGen’s are no faster and often slower than the legacy sets, at least until they sort out the tilt speed issue.
• After the late departure from NYP, we lost another 30 minutes partly due to being out of slot and getting stuck behind commuter trains and arrived BOS 90 minutes late.
• Without prompting, Amtrak provided me with a $75 voucher toward future Acela travel (only Acela, good for one year) as a goodwill gesture.

The new sets are bright and comfortable, but it seems there are still a lot of bugs to be worked out, both mechanically and operationally. Acela 2154 in 2002 was scheduled WAS to BOS at 6 hours and 33 minutes. Now, 2154 with NextGen's, is scheduled at 7 hours and 5 minutes. Progress?