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I recently took the survey "What do you think (about PHB2)" from wizards, and taking it, I saw that I'd actually would like to comment or rate all of them. Since there's currently no official way to do so, I need to do it verbatim.

Players Handbook 1 [preordered before release]

The classes and races are solid, however there are some major problems with them: The divine classes get the stick in regards to build paths, as anything else can choose between two of them. And the Paladin gets the stick again, as he is pretty much the non-stickiest defender you can imagine, with the added "bonus" of needing 4-5 of his attributes to be effective. Lastly the Warlock, a striker that is so much a controller, that you'd rather write his role as striker|controller instead of it as secondary. These added effects make him look rather bad in comparison to his peers, the all-time-high-damaging ranger and the almost-never-missing-rogue.

The feats are OK, however some of them are unimaginative, simple damage increasers. - When the first interviews were out about how 4e works, I really thought that could change and feats would mean something. It's still back to mostly increase character power, and only sometimes increase versatility/customize how it feels to play the character. Also, there is a big hole in epic feats: Most of them are just Weapon Critical feats, and if you don't use a weapon (like those poor 4 spellcasters) you'd better choose something else from paragon or heroic, or get some other sourcebooks as your bases are really not covered here.

The items are OK. With the amount of different implements introduce in 4e, those feel like they are a bit undervalued.

Dungeon Masters Guide [preordered before relase]

Now this is a book I almost entirely like. It has one major problem chapter, and the author even admitted to this: Skill Challenges. It was written rather fast, and you can see that. The numbers are broken, no matter how often you crunch them, and the mechanics as described work clunky for most groups. Within mere days, fans had created better, playable alternative systems. It also did not help, that the example adventure "Kobold Hall" did nothing to introduce skill challenges. There really should have been 1 or 2, to present the mechanic in a concrete surrounding.

There's another gripe about math in the DMG: DCs. They were errata'ed almost instantly: QS failed badly. But why? i still don't know. They playtested 4e a lot of times, built the system about basic mathematical premises, yet the DCs are that much too high, and after the fix, too easy again. I'd advise anyone to keep the old DCs, and just drop the +5 for skill checks, or use the new DCs, and add +5 for skill checks. 

Monster Manual [preordered before release]

Solid book. Lots of monsters, mostly balanced. Sometimes, they did not keep themselves to their own ruleset for monsters - which results in too hard or boring encounters. Some of the iconic monsters are missing out, but well, you can't put everything from 3 past editions in the first book. Major failures of the book: in epic, things get really slim; Inclusion of oversized weapons for playable races. 

Players Handbook 2 [June 2009]

First off, this book came to me a lot later(4 months!) than to my friend, and we ordered like 2 weeks apart. This was a start to measly delivery of D&D in europe, where they currently seem unable to deliver close to the release dates - It's always at least 2 weeks late.

The new classes are really a good addition - But some of the mechanics are simply overpowered. First and biggest offender: The Sorcerer. Adding STR to AC that's something I can live with. But adding STR or DEX to any arcane damage roll, is too much. Sorcerers can easily take a lot of multi-target powers, which means that any encounter without elites or solos has just gotten a lot easier for the party to deal with. Second, and also a big offender: Avenger. Rolling twice for pretty much everything is really game breaking. Even if it does not ruin your campaign by overpowering the monsters, it takes a lot of time at the table. Initially, 4e was all about simplifying the game. Avenger as well as Wild Sorcerer, they broke this in already the second core PHB book.

New items: a bit on the slim side, but well - they are only meant to be an addition for the phb items, so i can live with that.

BUT: the feats! Obviously, the guy who crunches numbers for R&D failed again. There are many game fixing feats in PHB2, and I'd advise you to houserule them in as bonus feats or fixed additions to some scores, as they are very much annoying to take, and so much more powerful than anything else. My current houserule on this is: at lvl 5, gain weapon+implement expertise as 2 bonus feats. at lvl 11, gain paragon defenses. at lvl 21, gain robust defenses. There really should never be the need for players to take simple +to-hit or +defense feats just to be able to keep up with the monsters.

Monster Manual 2 [skimmed over it@DM]

It's as solid as the first book. Nice about it is that it expands the epic playscale to somewhere more usable. What I dislike is  the small amount of playable races in it - I so do like my custom NPCs...

So, and that's it for now. Will write about the *** Power and maybe AV series soon.