Google Play Books review

The Android app supports bookmarks, but it doesn’t allow you to add notes, and it also doesn’t support the quick bookmark, note and chapter navigation found on the iPad. Fortunately the page slider displays page and chapter information as it moves, so you can navigate by chapter after a fashion. We weren’t impressed with the Read aloud option, which occasionally spelled out common words – we couldn’t fathom why.

The reading view is clear but plain

The Play Books store sells protected, ePub-formatted books, so you can transfer the titles you purchase to a compatible eReader if you have one. The reader app doesn’t support other file formats, however, so it can’t be used to read PDF files on a smartphone or tablet – a bit of an oversight compared to Apple iBooks and the Kobo eReading App.

This isn’t a bad reading app, but it’s not as slick or fully-featured as some of the competition and so it’s only any use if you plan to buy or download free books from Google. We’d recommend the Kobo eReading App, which can handle content bought from stores other than Kobo’s own.