I have migrated over to the new blockchain beta wallet, and it's much more intuitive, but lacks the same features as the original wallet. First of all, they've done a very similar thing as Xapo, whereas it suggests that you create a new address (from the Your Addresses section). This gets quite annoying, and it should be a feature that you should be able to toggle on or off so you don't see that message every time you want to manage an address.
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FPCL72Nz.png&t=665&c=dy8If5IUbEN8IQ)
Secondly, and most importantly, there is no way for me to be able to sign a message to my address(es). This is ridiculous, and I'd be floored if Blockchain decided to remove the feature... I doubt it, but in the beta wallet, you're not able to sign a message. I have checked every single link and option, and it simply is not there.
Another negative is that if you use multiple addresses, the activity log on the home page of your wallet does not display which address that you have sent or received money from. In fact, the Transactions page does not show the information, either, until you click on an individual transaction. And given that the transaction lookup is slow, this gets annoying fast when you're receiving multiple transactions a day and need to track or make notes for the transactions. I wish they would display which address that you received a transaction to on the overall activity log.
All in all, the new design is intuitive, simple to use, and I can see that they are gearing it more towards the layman than an experienced bitcoin user.
As far as safety goes? All my coins are still available, but all of my addresses from my original Blockchain wallet are now displayed under a section called "Imported Addresses", which is quite annoying. The addresses are still there, but I wish that Blockchain would have somehow kept my existing hierarchy that I had in my original wallet instead of creating a new section. The "Imported Addresses" section appears grayed out, but it is still manageable and accessible.
All in all, with the experience that I've had with the new wallet over the past week or so, my recommendation is for you to wait before you update. I feel that Blockchain still has some more implementation to do for the new structure and design, and it's not quite ready.
The worst part about the whole updating to the beta wallet is that I am not able to "downgrade" back to the original wallet.