The Fire 7 is only around $50, but in terms of build quality and performance, it is easily comparable with $200+ tablets. The chassis is durable, and it will easily survive a fall to the ground. Apps load fairly quickly; streaming videos and playing games, for the most part, works very well, although it does occasionally feel sluggish.
This tablet has you covered in terms of basic functionality. You can browse the web, read books and articles, and listen to music and audiobooks. It also comes equipped with Amazon's virtual assistant - Alexa. You can ask her to set an alarm, check the weather, jot down a shopping list, and so on.
The Fire 7 deals pretty well with some basic tasks, but it's not the best choice for every-day use. With a quadcore 1.3 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM, it's not going to work for watching films or gaming.
The iPad Mini 4 is very lightweight and compact enough to fit in a pocket of your jacket. It goes without saying that it won't take much space in a bag or a pursue.
The iPad Mini 4 has a 7.9-inch high-resolution display that provides a sharp image. It also has an anti-reflective coating, so you can read under direct sunlight without a problem.
The Ipad Mini 4 has a much better rear camera than the previous Ipads. With an improved sensor, advanced optics, and a cutting‑edge image signal processor, the 8-megapixel camera in iPad mini 4 captures incredibly detailed photos and cinematic 1080p HD videos.
While the Galaxy Tab S3 is not as powerful as a typical laptop with comparable price, it has decent specs, a keyboard (sold separately), and a stylus that make it a quite capable workstation. Of course, it won't be able to replace your normal computer completely, but it will suffice to get some work done in a coffee shop.
The Galaxy Tab S3 has one of the best displays on the market. It's a Super AMOLED screen with a high resolution -
2048 x 1536, that provides a very sharp image even in direct sunlight and works great for watching videos, gaming, and reading. The HDR technology makes it great for watching films because you can see every small detail, even if the action happens in the dark.
The tablet with a stylus will cost you around $550. The price increases to about $620 if you include the cover with a physical keyboard. It's a pretty hefty investment for a tablet since you could get a pretty decent laptop for the same amount.
The Xperia Z4 is perfectly suited for reading in or outdoors. You can clearly see everything on the screen at nearly any angle, even under direct sunlight.
You can submerge the Z4 tablet in 1.5m of water for up to half an hour (fresh water only). You don't have to worry about getting it wet, and it also stops dust in its tracks.
Although the Z4 has a brighter screen than the previous Xperia tablets, its color accuracy and contrast is still not perfect. This doesn't have very much impact on reading, however.
Although the 8-hour battery life is on par with most tablets on the market, you'd expect more from a $600 device. For comparison, the iPad Mini 4 that goes for half the price of Z4 has a 10-hour battery life.
The Sony Xperia Z4 tablet is very powerful: it has 64-bit octa-core processor clocked at 2GHz and 3GB of RAM. You can watch movies, videos and play 3D games without a hint of lag. For extra $400 you can get a Bluetooth keyboard that will turn Z4 into nearly a full-featured laptop.
The Bluetooth keyboard that is available for the Z4 can cost as high as $450, but it feels cheap and flimsy. It's also not very comfortable because the buttons are small and crammed closely together.
At 7.8 inches, this tablet has the largest E Ink display you can get among the current crop of ebook readers. It features 1,872-by-1,404-pixel resolution, which works out to a crisp 300 pixels per inch. Screen brightness and color temperature is automatically adjusted so you can read in bed without blue light affecting your sleep. The screen is easily visible in any types of lighting conditions.
Nexus 10 is an older tablet, it was released in 2012, which means that many of its features are outdated, but also that it has gone down in price quite a lot. If you only need it to read and maybe browse the web, this could be a great deal.
The 2560 x 1600 display is the best feature of the tablet, it's suitable not just for reading but fully enjoying films and video game graphics. The image is crisp and vivid, and the text is sharp and clear.
The chassis of this tablet is made out of plastic with rubber coating. It has both great durability and grip. The screen is made out of scratch-resistant glass.
The tablet's charger clearly lacks power: if you're playing a game it will barely increase the charge at all. It takes long even if you leave it completely idle, so it's a good idea to always plug it in overnight.
The specs of the tablet aren't stellar and it runs the old 4.2 version of Android, but it handles most everyday tasks you throw at it well. You can read books, browse the web, even stream videos and play games with very little lag.
The Paperwhite has a 1Ghz processor and 512MB of RAM (an increase from the second generation's 256MB). It uses 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, or 3G data to download ebooks to its 4GB of internal storage.
The tablet uses a six-inch Carta E Ink touch screen, with a resolution of 1,448 by 1,072 and 300 pixels per inch. The screen is also glare free so you will be able to read in direct sunlight, on the subway or anywhere else you can imagine.