Not sure where you got that from... I got the W (2009-) version, the gears are reasonably evenly spaced, and is not a nuisance to use at all. Mine came with a simple barend style thumb control lever, very simple to use. The only small criticism I have is that the lowest gear does not feel smooth, there is a small amount of brrrrr feeling as the little gears mesh. The other gears are not like that. Mine has the Brompton spline, so the bikes are 10-speed.
I have found that works very well indeed, mostly the standard Brompton shifter is used to switch between 2 gears, when tackling steep uphills, the additional 5-speed lower gears are used, or when going fast downhill, the highest 5-speed gear is used. For most normal riding, the 2 extreme gears are never selected. My wife has not ever mentioned that she finds the combined gear selection complex.
Perhaps yours is an older version?
The problem with the 5 speed on this bike is the first 3 gears are nicely spaced, and the last 2 feel almost identical. And they're just not correctly divided. There's other users of this bike/hub who agree. The 5 speed is the one to avoid. The 8 speed is good though, as I'm deciding if I should use it on my Dahon Speed P8 INSTEAD of the Shimano Nexus hub. The Sturmey-Archer is said to be quite reliable. The Nexus,...seems to depend on the user.