OK I've just been looking at the Ephotozine review of the K5iis. To show the performance of the sensor, the reviewer shot the same scene with a variety of common kit lenses (my choice would have been to include at least one quality prime such as the DA35, but hey - that's just me!)
I found the comparison between the 18-55 / 18-135 / 18-270 lenses at 18mm interesting! The 18-55 (bottom images in the crops below) is really bad, which matches my own experience, the 18-135 is a little better (middle image), but the 18-270 (top) is much better, with acceptable edge sharpness at 18mm - something the other two lenses can't deliver. To be honest, this flies in the face of my expectations!
The full review with sample images is here:
http://www.ephotozine.com/article/pentax-k-5-iis-digital-slr-review-21127