Rating: 
Summary: A More Revealing Look at the Images
Review: As a tarot reader & instructor, I have used several decks, favoring the Rider-Waite deck for over 10 years. However, the more eye-pleasing coloring of the Universal Waite Tarot has brought out a lot of details that were much more difficult to see in the original deck. I use the deck now in my on-line and in-person tarot workshops and find that the improved clarity of the images translates into improved clarity of students' tarot readings. The rich symbolism of this deck makes it easy to interpret intuitively without prior study yet, still offers a wealth of deep, esoteric knowledge for advanced readers.
Rating:
Summary: A More Revealing Look at the Images
Review: As a tarot reader & instructor, I have used several decks, favoring the Rider-Waite deck for over 10 years. However, the more eye-pleasing coloring of the Universal Waite Tarot has brought out a lot of details that were much more difficult to see in the original deck. I use the deck now in my on-line and in-person tarot workshops and find that the improved clarity of the images translates into improved clarity of students' tarot readings. The rich symbolism of this deck makes it easy to interpret intuitively without prior study yet, still offers a wealth of deep, esoteric knowledge for advanced readers.
Rating:
Summary: The cards that I started tarot with and use most!
Review: Choosing the proper deck is very personal and very important. I collect decks and though I don't own them all, the Universal Waite is still my favorite as far as interpretation is concerned. These cards speak to me. This is an ideal deck because of its universal symbology. The coloring done by Mary-Hanson Roberts is very complimentary. The artwork is soft; not as startling and dated as the Rider Waite deck. The cards do what they are supposed to do: offer insight, yet, allow your intuition to take hold. This is the deck for the beginner.
Rating:
Summary: A Beginner's Deck!
Review: Choosing the proper deck is very personal and very important. I collect decks and though I don't own them all, the Universal Waite is still my favorite as far as interpretation is concerned. These cards speak to me. This is an ideal deck because of its universal symbology. The coloring done by Mary-Hanson Roberts is very complimentary. The artwork is soft; not as startling and dated as the Rider Waite deck. The cards do what they are supposed to do: offer insight, yet, allow your intuition to take hold. This is the deck for the beginner.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally a Rider-Waite I like
Review: I have always had a standard Rider-Waite Deck, which I have never used. When I only just looked through the cards, every message always came as a shock to me (both the darker and lighter cards), because te deck was made to do just that: instantly be clear as meaning. I like the images very well of the standard Rider-Waite, but the colours felt like someone banging with a stick at my head, so I had to turn myself away to much subtler-harder-to-read-decks. But sometimes I kept picking them up, thinking 'if they would exist of subtler, more beautiful colours'... and here they are. Finally I can pick it up and read it serenely without being mentally attacked. And yes there are some little detail changes, also again they help me ease-up, because it are the bang-on-the-head details that are made softer. Finally a Raider deck where I can look at the cake, and not made my nose rubbed into it.
Rating:
Summary: Finally a Rider-Waite I like
Review: I have always had a standard Rider-Waite Deck, which I have never used. When I only just looked through the cards, every message always came as a shock to me (both the darker and lighter cards), because te deck was made to do just that: instantly be clear as meaning. I like the images very well of the standard Rider-Waite, but the colours felt like someone banging with a stick at my head, so I had to turn myself away to much subtler-harder-to-read-decks. But sometimes I kept picking them up, thinking 'if they would exist of subtler, more beautiful colours'... and here they are. Finally I can pick it up and read it serenely without being mentally attacked. And yes there are some little detail changes, also again they help me ease-up, because it are the bang-on-the-head details that are made softer. Finally a Raider deck where I can look at the cake, and not made my nose rubbed into it.
Rating: 
Summary: Missing Symbols
Review: I have used the Rider-Waite deck for more than 20 years and am very drawn to the symbology that fill these cards.I have the Hanson/Roberts deck and love the artwork and was excited when I first found that she had colored the Rider-Waite deck. This is a beautiful deck... a little overcolored in some cards...drawing one's eye into areas that neither the original artist or author intended, but that's not bad either... Only, I wish she'd paid more attention to detail..sometimes my eyes fell to the Hebrew letters above the triangle on the Temperance card and that meant something in that reading... these are now replaced with fabric folds in the new version. Sometimes in the Kt. of Swords... the eyes of the horse appearing to be looking back at the knight gave the thought that maybe this 'knight' I'm reading for is moving faster than they can see where they are going... but this newly colored knight's horse is looking very straight ahead. This is only a couple of many, many symbols that were missed or left out, whether to lack of research and study or deliberate, I couldn't use this deck for that reason, so just one for the collection.
Rating: 
Summary: I like the colours, but hate the changed details.
Review: I like this deck's colours, which are generally more attractive than those of the regular Rider-Waite deck, but the changed details are too much for me. Examples - The sun card : the flag is shown as having one side orange as in the original deck and one side red as the book says the whole flag should be, the sun is missing a ray, and the sun's face are painted to look softer and feminine. The High Priestess : the garments are coloured differently (the inner white, the outer blue, and the head cover white), which is nice but the effect of the garments turning to water is lost. The Lovers card : the leafs on the tree behind the man are mostly yellow, and dont look much like flames like they should - it's an important connection between the Devil card and the Lovers card. And the list continues, e.g. it looks like the sun rises behind the emperor and the magician has a white hallo. In my opinion, the details are very important and those changes modify the cards' meanings, and being used to the original details I feel uncomfortable using the deck. The colouring's advantage is to make the cards warmer and more attractive, which are pluses for new readers who are a bit afraid of the original harsher colouring.
Rating:
Summary: nice, but coloring job not great
Review: I own five versions of the Rider-Waite deck. I don't exactly dislike this interpretation--if you're used to looking at the more standard un-shaded versions, this will bring out details that you might not have noticed before. However, I find the colored pencil work more than slightly irritating. It has the look of having been colored in by an amateur in a coloring book. It isn't a very professional or artistic-looking coloring job. It's not atrocious, but it's not really great, either. The use of colored pencils--especially as applied here--also doesn't ring particularly true to the age in which this deck was originally conceived, nor to what one would imagine were Pamela Coleman-Smith's original intentions.
Rating:
Summary: A better option than the standard Rider-Waite...
Review: I spent one year using the Rider-Waite decks and the following three years demagnetizing my mind from their tired old limited imageries (i.e. the pictured pips). This oldie is certainly the top-seller in the American market, and not without good reason: the pictured pips take all the hassle out of your efforts at intuitive reading, and there are innumerable tarot books which adopt it as their illustrator. Hurrah. :-/ Still, I would implore all potential users to give the Marseilles-styled decks a try. They can be more rewarding, in fact. ...
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