An ebook reader is best for novels. If the content doesn't reflow, or is complex or interactive the eink is quickly useless.
Not all tablets are equal. Some are worse than decent CRTs and some nearly as good as eink for a novel.
There is no eyesight issue with a good quality tablet and correctly dimmed backlight. USA TV CRT were 30 fps / 60 Hz interlaced and refreshed by slowly redrawing half the lines on the screen taking 16.7 ms.
Eink takes longer than that to update the screen and a complete refresh without ghosts and all grey levels takes maybe 100ms, or over 1500 ms on aecp color (used for adverts). Current eink colour are all mono eink with a colour filter, just like LCD (which is mono) and thus need the front light LEDs quite bright.
A good LCD panel can run at 120 fps / 120 Hz and update as fast as 0.3ms. Also even at lower refresh rates there is no flicker with a static image. Some cheap LCD panels (backlight) and eink (frontlight) have flicker from poor design of LED illumination (too slow PWM brightness control).
A shiny surface causes the most eye strain and headaches to due unconscious focusing on the further away reflection rather than the screen. Some of the most expensive tablets are worst for this.
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