11 Best Tablets For Reading in 2021 [Includes E-Readers]

There are a lot of advantages of reading, not only does it help you improve your knowledge, memory, and mental stimulation, but it can help you live longer too.

Many readers prefer printed books because of the feel. However, many people prefer digital versions (eBooks) because they’re cheaper and come with various benefits such as font-flexibility, takes less space (a basic e-reader can store 1000s of books), etc.

Are you looking for a good quality tablet for reading? Whether you read books, comics, PDFs, or browse the internet, the models in our list won’t let you down.

We got in touch with 74 people of different age groups and reading habits and interacted with them. Based on the inputs from the interactions, we researched the various options available in the market and finally handpicked the 11 best options.

Best Tablets For Reading in 2021

If you’re looking for a distraction-free reading session, consider getting a dedicated e-reader. However, if you’re looking forward to performing multiple tasks such as browsing the internet, writing, watching videos, then you shall consider getting a modern tablet with decent specifications.

1. Best E-Reader: Kindle Oasis

OS	Linux based
Size	7-inch diagonal
Weight	188 grams
Storage	8GB/32GB
Connectivity	Bluetooth, Wi-Fi & 4G LTE
Battery life	Up to 6 weeks

This model is the most high-end Kindle yet and is definitely for the super-elite. If you are already well-versed with the Amazon ecosystem, then Kindle Oasis is the best reading option for you.

Design-wise, it is strangely enough, not a flat tablet, which takes some getting used to, but after using it for a while, you’ll realize how ergonomic it is. It is slightly fatter towards one end, which makes it easy to hold and transfers the majority of the weight on that end.

It’s a full touch screen display, with 300 PPI resolution using Kindle’s very own E-ink technology. E-ink gives you the feel of reading a paper-based book on the kindle and works great outdoors, even in direct sunlight. Buttons are placed on the heavier side of the e-reader and fall right below your thumb, as you hold it, for easy navigation.

Kindle Oasis is water-resistant, rated IPX 8 meaning you can easily take it to the beach and not worry about it. It also comes in an LTE model, meaning you can sync your books on the go and do not have to wait for Wi-Fi connectivity. It comes in two storage options 8GB and 32GB which are plenty to store a plethora of books, publications and comics.

It is extremely power efficient, with battery life lasting up to 6 weeks and 28 hours on a single charge at a stretch. If you are on the lookout of a dedicated e-book reader that is efficient, devoid of notifications and distractions and a screen that feels like you’re reading a physical book, the Kindle Oasis is your go-to tablet.

2. Best Waterproof Design: Kindle Paperwhite

OS	Linux based
Size	6-inch diagonal
Weight	182 grams
Storage	8GB/32GB
Connectivity	Bluetooth, Wi-Fi & 4G LTE
Battery life	28 hours (Upto 6 weeks)

The most popular E-reader of all time, the Kindle Paperwhite is a must-have tablet for readers. It’s got everything you need. Ample storage? Check. Great screen? Check. Premium feel? Check. No wonder it’s the most sold Kindle version of all time. So let’s dive into its features.

The Kindle Paperwhite comes in 8GB and 32GB models, enough to store a lifetime of books, comics and periodicals of your choice. It’s got flushed bezels which give a very premium finish and feel to the product. The E-ink display provides crisp texts and makes reading an absolute delight on this tablet.

One of the big advantages of buying a Kindle is that if you’re on the go, you can easily switch to audible and the transition is seamless, which aids when you’re on the move like for example in a crowded metro.

The screen is a shatter and scratch resistant plastic screen and the tablet is IPX8 rated meaning it’s waterproof and can handle the occasional drop in the tub.

If you’re looking for an alternative to the Paperwhite you can check out the which is cheap and has limited features.

3. Best For All-Purpose: Apple iPad Pro

OS	iPad OS
Size	11 inch and 12.9 inch
Weight	468 grams
Storage	64GB/256GB/512GB/1TB
Connectivity	Bluetooth, Wi-Fi & 4G LTE
Battery life	10 hours

Apple is actively trying to replace your laptop and the iPad Pro is its concrete way of doing so. The premium all-screen display with extremely thin display and a light chassis makes it extremely aesthetically pleasing to hold and view content on.

The iPad Pro ditches the home button and comes with the renewed iPad OS which uses intuitive gestures to go home and pull up the multitasking tab.

The addition of the iPad Pencil, which magnetically attaches to the side of the iPad is great for note-taking. The A12x bionic chip means that the iPad Pro can actually compete with your laptop and can handle most things you throw at it.

As a reader the iPad works extremely smoothly thanks to its pro-motion display which changes the screen refresh rate depending on the content on the display. This equates to reading being an absolute pleasure on this device. It can handle almost all formats and can handle all your Kindle content as well, via the Kindle App.

It also comes with a 12MP rear camera and a 7MP front-facing camera with group FaceTime capabilities as well, which adds on to the plethora of advantages it has over other tablets. It’s a power-packed device and can easily last you a day on a single charge, with Apple finally adopting the USB Type C charging for this device.

It is quite popular among college students, kids (for playing games)

4. Best For Overdrive Users: Kobo Clara HD

OS	Kobo firmware
Size	6 inch
Weight	166 grams
Storage	8GB
Connectivity	Wi-Fi
Battery life	3 – 4 weeks

If you notice Kobo is actually an anagram of “book” and that’s the inspiration behind naming the company what it is. The Kobo Clara HD comes with the new comfort light pro-technology which tries to mimic the feel of reading a paper-based book. It’s equipped with a 6-inch screen and comes with a 300 PPI resolution.

The Clara HD supports most e-book and comic formats. It has a very simple UI that is easy to get accustomed to. It’s one of the rare ebooks readers which comes with a pin lock for added security purposes. It comes with preloaded dictionaries, which is a plus, and has a huge e-book store wherein you can browse the books you want to purchase.

Kobo has its own “My article” which is a pocket extension that can be added to your Chrome or any other web browser which then syncs it to the app and you can read it on your tablet as a book and not having to scroll on your laptop or mobile phone.

One of the reasons why we love this e-reader is because it allows you to connect over overdrive account thereby you can borrow a book without performing any extra steps (This is where it beats Kindle!)

It comes with a unique auto lighting feature which, with the help of Wi-Fi changes the brightness based on the time in your particular location. It comes with 8GB of storage but unfortunately it is not water-resistant.

Another alternative to the Clara HD, is the Kobo Aura One, which serves as a great tablet to read your books on as well.

5. Best with Alexa: Fire HD 10

OS	Customized Android 5.1, Fire 5.3
Size	10.1 inch
Weight	504 grams
Storage	32GB/64GB
Connectivity	Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Battery life	10 hours

If you’re someone who is used to the Amazon ecosystem, then the Fire HD 10 is the tablet for you. Modeled on Android Lollipop, running on Fire 5.3, the Fire HD 10 is a 10.1-inch tablet that is powerful enough to run most things in life and comes with Amazon’s well-acclaimed voice assistant Alexa on board.

It has a 1080 HD display with 224 PPI resolution, Quad-core 1.8 GHz cores and storage that can expand up to 256GB with the aid of a micro SD card. When it comes to reading, the Fire OS comes with a customizable setting.

To make reading easier on the eye, Fire HD 10 comes with Blue shade technology, this auto-adjusts the backlight of the screen depending on whether you’re using it in direct sunlight or in the darkness of your room at night, for a more pleasurable reading experience.

Additionally, it comes with access to the Kindle store, with Amazon giving you payment options for unlimited access to the Kindle store based on a monthly subscription fee.

It comes with a set of front and rear cameras that aid in video calling and just about get the job done. Amazon recently also launched a kid-friendly Fire HD 8 kids edition that you can help you get children interested in reading ebooks.

6. Barnes & Noble Nook Glowlight 3

OS	Proprietary OS
Size	6.9 inch
Weight	190 grams
Storage	8GB
Connectivity	Wi-Fi
Battery life	3 weeks

With the advent of e-book, Barnes & Noble, a major American bookseller, also stepped into this direction with their own versions of e-readers, with the new Nook Glowlight 3. This 6.9-inch tablet with a 300 PPI screen comes with a 1GHz processor, 8GB storage and customizable physical buttons.

The buttons can be customized to your needs, but out of the box, they come with set functions. On double-pressing you can go to the next or previous chapter. Long pressing them makes you fast forward the book, but their functionality can be changed in settings. It comes with a physical home button that takes you to all your books and you can sort them by aphetically, author or date of purchase.

It has a rubbery back which provides a good grip to hold the tablet. The proprietary OS comes with the Barnes and Noble Readouts. Readouts offer its own insights onto books, interviews with authors and other publications. The tablet though does lack support for a web browser and is not water-resistant.

7. Best Value For Money: Apple iPad Mini

OS	iOS 12
Size	7.9 inch
Weight	301 grams
Storage	64GB/256GB
Connectivity	Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi + Cellular
Battery life	10 hours

The Apple iPad Mini is an extremely versatile device and often the first device people today buy, before completely diving into the Apple environment. Housing a 7.9-inch screen Retina display with True tone and wide color, everything is extremely crisp on the iPad Mini screen.

It comes with the famous Touch ID for security and locking purposes, the A12 Bionic chip, the same used in the iPhones and runs on iOS 12. 8MP rear camera while a 7MP FaceTime HD camera taking care of all your selfies and video calling needs.

The iPad Mini is nifty in size and makes for a great reading option as well. You have the iOS Books app, that seamlessly transitions between reading and listening to books, coming with its own store. As well as the Kindle App if you have all your books on a kindle but are carrying your iPad instead. The true tone technology auto-adjusts brightness as well as the warmth on your screen for day time and night time reading. 

8. Best Android Tablet For Reading: Samsung Galaxy Tab A

OS	Android 9.0, One UI
Size	10.1 inch
Weight	469 grams
Storage	32GB/64GB/128GB
Connectivity	Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi + Cellular
Battery life	13 hours

The Android v/s iOS battle will go on forever, and luckily for us, we will keep getting great products out of this. The Galaxy Tab A is just that. A 10.1-inch stunning display, with thin bezels, expandable memory, immersive Dolby Atmos surround sound and all-day battery life, this is one Android tablet that ticks all the right boxes.

16M color capacitive touchscreen makes viewing anything a pleasure, texts are crisp and videos play with extreme fluidity. It comes with a nano-sim tray for the cellular version as well as a micro SDXC card slot to increase storage up to 512GB. Stereo speakers as well as a 3.5mm jack taking care of your music and multimedia needs.

To view books, you can view them in PDF format, or download the Kindle app and download multiple books from there. Viewing angles are excellent and reading in direct sunlight is also not an issue. The tablet does lack an AMOLED display which Samsung is well known for, which would’ve made the texts sharper.

You can also check out our list of Best Samsung tablets (if you want different specs)

9. Best 2-in-1: Lenovo Yoga Book

OS	Android 6.0 Marshmallow
Size	10.1 inch
Weight	689 grams
Storage	64GB
Connectivity	Wi-Fi
Battery life	15 hours

Easily one of the coolest and most innovative tablets to come out in the last decade was the Lenovo Yoga Book. The Yoga series started with the 2 in 1 tablet laptops by Lenovo, but what makes this unique is that it has two editions.

One edition comes with Windows OS while the other runs Android Marshmallow, which, given the hardware, thanks to the Intel Atom processor and the 4GB DDR3 RAM, makes it extremely zippy.

It is essentially a 2-in-1 tablet which means on one end you have the screen and on the other you have a capacitive keyboard instead of a physical one making the tablet extremely thin. But the most exciting part of this tablet is note-taking.

You can disable the capacitive keyboard and use the pen to make notes, sketch and just about anything you’d want to do on a piece of paper. Lenovo also gives you 3 different nibs as options and the pen comes included.

From a reading point of view, this can handle PDFs, Kindle books, audio-files and everything. It comes with a 3.5 mm jack as well, so if you’re on the go, just plug in your earphones and you can listen to your book.

Given its acetometers, the screen switches from portrait to landscape extremely smoothly because of the high-end specs to run Android but does so on the Windows edition as well. The Halo capacitive keyboard and the included Real Pen make this for a very quirky device which will attract a lot of eye-balls from onlookers when you use it.

10. BOOX Max3

OS	Android 9
Size	13.3 inch
Weight	490 grams
Storage	64GB
Connectivity	Wi-Fi
Battery life	2 – 4 weeks

The is one of, if not the best, note-taking and reading device out there in the market. With its 13.3-inch display, it’s bigger than most E-reader if you’re looking for just that, but note-taking capabilities add into the form factor and the usage of the pen is so smooth, you easily get addicted to it.

It runs on Android 9, which means it has access to Play store as well as its own store to download and use apps. It uses the E-ink display which gives you the paper-like feel that does not cause strain on your eyes like LCD displays do. It comes with 64GB on board which can be increased as it comes with OTG capabilities.

The screen is big, which means you can view two pages at once. It also lets you multi task with the split screen options which means you can be reading and making notes on the notes app simultaneously. The notes app has improved tremendously, with different backgrounds, templates and pen features.

Another great feature is that it can actively translate your text, thanks to Google translate, almost instantly which means you can read books in different languages. It comes with the home button which can be used to go back and has a built-in fingerprint scanner for added functionality.

The navigation ball is customizable for you to carry out various functions as well, like going to the home page, previous book, open last app, etc. It comes with a great set of speakers and two microphones and given its thin size it’s easy to carry around as well.

11. Best Large Screen eReader: BOOX Max2

Size	13.3 inch
Weight	550 grams
Storage	32GB
Connectivity	Wi-Fi
Battery life	10 – 14 days
OS	Android 6.0

The BOOX Max2 came with a major update of having a capacitive screen as well as the physical Android buttons. This means that you would no longer be so heavily reliant on the stylus.

The screen is 13.3 inches, which means you can use it to view just about anything, it runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow which means you have access to the Google Play store and can download apps like Evernote, Chrome, etc.

Coming to reading, the screen uses E-ink which means it causes almost no strain on the eyes. It also lets you use the e-reader in A2 mode which means the display will use lower resolution so that the resources are better optimized.

One of the unique features on the Max2 is the scan for metadata feature, which means, it scans all your books on the system and it searching for missing information, such as album art, author info over the internet and updates your books accordingly.

The battery life is around 10 to 14 days based on usage. It does come with audio recording and does have built-in speakers as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack to listen to book in audible.

Also read: Best Large Screen Tablets

The FAQs

Conclusion

When it comes to reading, you’d be better suited to purchasing an e-reader given the added battery life that you get and the absence of notifications and therefore the distractions.

But adding an extra device can seem like a hassle and therefore now we have a lot of tablets that come with varying display qualities to reduce that strain on your eyes ergo leaving the option up to, whether you are okay with an extra device or will just use some software setting to optimize reading on a tablet.

Do let us know your thoughts on the same!