New Amazon Kindle is a Voyage into eReader luxury

Edward C. Baig | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Ed Baig's read on the new Kindle Voyage Personal Technology columnist Ed Baig Kindle goes hands on with the new Kindle Voyage e-reader.

NEW YORK — Ah, the many ways you can immerse yourself in a bestseller nowadays: on tablets, smartphones, and computers.

That's why it's sometimes easy to overlook what remains the best place to consume such a book — notwithstanding its printed form. I'm speaking of the dedicated electronic reader space, long dominated by Amazon's Kindles.

Happily, Amazon is still paying close attention to its bread-and-button Kindles, even as it pushes harder into making broader purpose tablets and phones. The winner is anyone who loves to read.

Exhibit A arrives with the brand new Kindle Voyage, the seventh-generation of the venerable Kindle franchise. It's simply the best dedicated e-reader money can buy, assuming that is that you have lots of money.

Indeed, Kindle Voyage costs $199 (with ads) for a Wi-Fi only model, compared with $119 for what used to be the top-of-the-line Kindle Paperwhite. Add 3G-cellular connectivity and the Voyage price with ads climbs to $269.

Meantime, a new entry level Kindle, which unlike its higher priced siblings doesn't come with a light to let you read in the dark, costs a mere $79. Heck, Voyage is even priced lower than all of the smaller-screen, high-definition multimedia color Fire tablets that Amazon sells.

So, is this luxury eBooks voyage worth taking? Apparently a lot of people think so -- last I checked, Amazon won't have Voyage in stock until late November.

I agree, with the qualifier that I also believe folks will be perfectly satisfied with Paperwhite, still a stud eReader in its own right. The budget $79 Kindle is nothing to scoff at, either.

None of the earlier Kindles though quite match up to the job Voyage does of replicating the real paper experience on an electronic display. In techie terms, Voyage has a 6-inch grayscale 300 ppi or pixels per inch display, and boasts twice the number of pixels than are on the Paperwhite display, which is also very good. The takeaway is this: text on Voyage is dark, crisp and easily readable. The display is glare-free.

Moreover, at 0.3-inches, Voyage is Amazon's thinnest Kindle to date, still a ways to go before it as thin as paper, of course, but edging a bit closer. It weighs 6.3-ounces (6.6-ounces for the Wi-Fi + 3G model), making it about an ounce lighter than Paperwhite. You can comfortably hold it with one hand.

As on other models, you can tap or swipe on the touchscreen to turn pages. But now you can also gently apply pressure against the bezel on either side of the display to turn a page and as it does you detect subtle haptic feedback. You can adjust the level of that haptic response and also the amount of pressure required to turn a page. It's nice to have this added option but it does take getting used to and I just as often changed pages the old way.

One excellent new benefit comes with an adaptive front light that automatically alters the brightness on the display to fit the environment in which you are reading. If you're in the dark, you can enable a feature that will gradually reduce the screen brightness over time, to match the way your eyes works.

In most other ways, the new Kindle is like its lower-priced siblings. The battery can last weeks. It can hold thousands of books. You can shop an online Kindle bookstore with millions of titles, and fetch the books you choose to buy in a minute or less. You can borrow books from the library and lend others, albeit under restrictions. And you can take and share notes.

Among other nice features across the Kindle line is Vocabulary Builder, a list of all the words you look up in the dictionary. Amazon will be adding a "Word Wise" feature that may appeal to young readers or people learning English as a second language. In select books, simple short definitions of challenging words will appear just above those difficult words. For example, in tiny type just above the word "abnormal" is the simple explanation "not normal."

Also in the coming soon category is a family library feature that will let you access Kindle books from your spouse's Amazon account.

If money is no object, Kindle Voyage is a great way to devour a bestseller. But if you're operating under tight financial constraints, a lower priced Kindle can still result in a happy ending.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow @edbaig on Twitter

The bottom line

Amazon Kindle Voyage

www.amazon.com, $199 for Wi-Fi only model; $269 for Wi-Fi + 3G model. Add $20 for ad-free versions.

Pro. Thin, light, high-resolution display with sharp readable text. Adaptive light, excellent battery life, multiple page turning methods.

Con. Big premium over other Kindle models. Currently out of stock.