Top 5 Best Mini Tablets for Reading E-Books | 2026 Edition

There’s many reasons why you would want an Android or Apple tablet instead of a dedicated Ebook reader. With these, you have a full operating system, powerful hardware and support for more apps and digital libraries. But there are also plenty of junk tablets that we’ve tested and would never recommend. So which ones should you avoid and which ones should you buy? 

In this best-of list, we’ll start off with our more premium and expensive recommendations and descend in price. And you’ll be surprised at how many affordable tablets can do the job for you. 

At MyNextTablet, we test almost every new tablet and write detailed reviews for each of them. If one of these tablets interests you, consider purchasing using the link from our website to support independent journalism. 

Best Reading Tablets: An Overview

A quick breakdown of our top recommendations.

• Absolute best reading tablet: Apple iPad Mini 7 (on Amazon*). The best mini tablet with good software and support, excellent hardware and great design. This tablet is perfect for reading but can do a lot more. 
• Best Android iPad Mini alternative for reading: Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 (on Amazon*). Lenovo’s Legion Tab Gen 3 has a nice screen, speakers and makes for a great and fast E-Reader. 
• Best budget reading tablet: Samsung Galaxy Tab A11 (on Amazon*). The Galaxy Tab A11 is a cheaper 8,7’’ tablet that doesn’t sport the best performance. However, the build is sleek and software support is long. 
• Best pick for outdoor reading: Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 5 (on Amazon*). This 8’’ tablet has IP68 dust and water resistance and is perfect for reading outdoors. It also has an excellent display, solid performance and even comes with a stylus built in. 
• Best cheapest reading tablet: Amazon Fire HD 8 Plus (on Amazon*). The Amazon Fire HD 8 Plus has good battery life and costs under $100. It’s not fast, but it’s cheap and works fine.

Best Reading Tablets: All Details

Now we’ll talk about each of these tablets in more detail. Full videos and reviews are also embedded if you would like to know more. 

Absolute Best Reading Tablet: Apple iPad Mini 7

Apple’s iPad Mini 7 is our go-to recommendation for any mini-tablet for good reason. The screen is bright, it will never feel slow and you can even attach an Apple Pen to use it as a notepad or drawing pad.

Released in October 2024, the iPad Mini 7 still holds up as one of the most powerful 8.7’’ tablets. But it also has a super-sharp display with 327 pixels per inch. Performance comes from the modern 3nm A17 Pro chip and 8GB of RAM, and a standard of 128GB storage is provided.

The speakers are surprisingly powerful for its size, which makes the mini more of an all-rounder entertainment device that can also work as an E-Reader. As mentioned, thanks to the excellent performance, even gaming is an absolute breeze here.

There’s a couple things we don’t love about the iPad Mini 7 though; The slow 60HZ refresh rate of the display means that scrolling and animations won’t feel very smooth. But the far bigger issue is actually the price. The iPad Mini costs nearly $500, and if you’re only going to be doing reading on your tablet all that performance goes to waste. So let’s take a look at some alternatives. 

Best Android iPad Mini Alternative For Reading: Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3

This one is a bit of a strange pick. The Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 is actually marketed as a gaming tablet. It’s got the looks and the performance for it. However, we actually consider it a solid alternative to the Apple iPad Mini.

The Legion Tab Gen 3 comes with a minimally larger 8.8’’ display than the iPad Mini thanks to its modern slim bezels. It also absolutely wipes the floor in refresh rate and battery life in comparison. In YouTube playback with max brightness, the Legion Tab Gen 3 gets a good 8.5 hours of runtime. Performance is also similar to the iPad Mini in benchmarks, but the fast 165HZ display makes a world of difference in games but also just in daily use. Additionally, this tablet also supports a Lenovo stylus for notetaking or drawing, just like the iPad. 

Lenovo decided to use the excellent Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and 12GB of base RAM in this tablet, and storage configurations start at 256GB but go up to 512GB with 16GB of RAM. This leaves plenty of storage space for as many PDFs and E-Books as you would like.

If you’re more of an Android fan anyways, and still need something that feels fast and responsive, the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 is a much better pick than the iPad Mini. The only shame is that the Android support will end with Android 17 (so in under 2 years) while the iPad is expected to receive at least another 6 years of support. 

Best Budget Reading Tablet: Samsung Galaxy Tab A11

Samsung’s Tab A series is their budget mini-tablet lineup. The newest Galaxy Tab A11 packs the usual 8.7’’ display for a mini tablet and has a pretty sleek design. Honestly, this tablet isn’t particularly fast or impressive, but the pricing can make it worth your while.

The Mediatek Helio G99 chipset and 4GB of RAM means that this tablet is ill-fitted for anything beyond light browsing and reading, which is fine. And it even has a surprisingly good speaker setup. The storage is also expandable via MicroSD card, making the base 64GB more acceptable. The big highlight is the 7 years of software support the Tab A11 is expected to receive, which is better than every other budget Android tablet. 

It’s a shame that Samsung’s OneUI is such a heavy operating system, and just browsing files or streaming music with the A11 can sometimes get laggy. There’s also no pen-digitizer on the display, so buying an S-Pen to use this as a pen-tablet isn’t possible. We would only recommend the Galaxy Tab A11 if you can find it for around $100. 

Best Pick For Outdoor Reading: Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 5

At 8’’, the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 5 makes for an excellent reading device, especially if you’re planning on taking it outdoors or on a camping trip. The IP68 dust and water resistance rating and the rugged build makes it suited for an active lifestyle. And the best part? There’s even an IP68 protected Samsung stylus that you can store inside the tablet. Samsung did have to sacrifice some aesthetics to achieve the durability though.

The display is plenty bright at 600 nits and smooth with a 120HZ refresh rate. It’s got a FHD resolution so everything looks sharp. Performance is fast enough for usual tasks like browsing, and the base 6GB RAM and 128GB storage are plenty. And if you run out of space, you can always use a Micro-SD card to expand the storage as well. 

There are a couple downsides to this unique tablet. The biggest one is the active software support. Since it was released in January 2024 with 5 years of security patches promised, it’s already halfway through its lifespan. Another issue is that the Tab Active 5 is just too expensive for what it offers, costing the same as an iPad Mini even so long after release. 

Despite the weaknesses, if you like your tech to be on the durable side, the Galaxy Tab Active5 is one of your only choices from a major brand.

Read: Best Tablets With Stylus Pen For Drawing & Writing

Best Cheapest Reading Tablet: Amazon Fire HD 8 Plus

The Amazon Fire HD 8 Plus is one of those tablets that get steep discounts on prime day. This 2022 tablet runs Amazon’s own version of Android, which doesn’t come with the Google Play store preinstalled, but you can install it by yourself so it’s not an issue. The build is all plastic, and there’s a big Amazon logo on the back.

There are 2 models of this tablet: one with and one without lockscreen ads. Yes. Lockscreen ads. So make sure to check which one you’re getting if you decide to buy it. 

The HD 8 Plus’ display is fine for the price. It’s an 8’’ LCD panel with less than FHD resolution, so this won’t look the most sharp when you’re looking at it from close up. The pixel density is just 189 pixels per inch. The refresh rate is 60HZ and peak brightness is about 500 nits, that’s very OK. 

Performance, storage and the general speed of the device won’t drop your jaw. The tablet ships with the Mediatek MT8169A chipset, which is a 6 core, 12nm chip, far from what the modern competition is offering. You can pretty much forget about playing demanding games here, but we managed to get PUBG:Mobile and League of Legends: Wild Rift to run.

A base 3GB RAM and 32GB storage gets the job done, and you can even add a Micro-SD card up to 64GB for additional space. If you’re just trying to buy a tablet that works and can read E-Books, then the Amazon Fire series are solid picks. Or you could go for an E-Reader like the Amazon Kindle at this price point for the e-ink screen.