Amazon announced its 7th generation Kindle in September. Now, the reviews on the Kindle Voyage -- billed as the company’s most advanced e-reader ever -- are coming in.

Kindle Voyage features an all-new design, complete with a flush glass scratch-resistant front and a magnesium back. It’s 7.6 mm thin and weighs less than 6.4 ounces. The Voyage carries a new Paperwhite display, with the highest-ever resolution, contrast and brightness of any Kindle to hit the market yet. There are 300 pixels per inch.

The price is $199. And that seems to be the sticking point with some of the reviewers. Roger Entner, a principal analyst at Recon Analytics, told us the Voyage is better than the Kindle Paperwhite but comes at a premium price.

“This is an interesting departure from their traditional strategy, which was to make the hardware affordable,” Entner said. “We saw with the Amazon Fire Phone that the premium route is not really working for them. So we’ll see if the new Kindle will actually be a hit.”

Good Device, Wrong Price?

Kindle Voyage does come equipped with PagePress, a new way to turn pages. Just rest your thumb on the bezel and turn the page by lightly pressing. Kindle Voyage is also available with free 3G. Amazon pays for the 3G connection. Still, Entner is not convinced.

“I have the Paperwhite and I absolutely love that device and it was a huge improvement over the traditional one and the Voyage is a nice update,” Entner said. “If it was an $80 or a $100 device you would see people upgrade, but at $200 it’s a very nice premium gift for people who don’t have a Paperwhite. It looks like the upgrades are becoming smaller and the price differential is becoming larger. It’s great that Amazon improved the Kindle but I think they got the pricing wrong.”

Mixed Reviews

New York Times reviewer Farhad Manjoo isn’t bothered by the price. He called the Kindle Voyage a high-end e-reader that beats hardcovers. Still, he said the “only real reason to choose the Voyage over the other Kindles -- the Paperwhite, which goes for $119, and the entry-level reader, which is $69 but doesn’t have a light -- is its high-contrast display.”

For Manjoo, the Voyage’s display justifies the price. If you read often, he said, you’ll want a high-quality screen, and this is one you’ll appreciate every single time you read.

Hayley Tsukayama at the Washington Post disagreed. She admitted the Kindle Voyage is the best e-reader the company has made to date. But, the Voyage also comes with a big problem: its price, she added. “The reader is on the expensive side -- $200, as compared to $119 for the backlit Kindle Paperwhite. That brings it way up over the ‘impulse buy’ line, even for avid readers. That puts it in the same category as the lowest-end tablets,” she said.