I use Microsoft Edge exclusively for its read aloud function -- it doesn't require reader mode to be activated and has integration with Microsoft's 'natural voice' which is almost indistinguishable from regular speech. Also it will instantly start reading from whatever word you click on which helps with backtracking. The downside, of course, is having to use Edge.
+1 for Edge. Use it on my Macbook and love how it highlights the sentence it is currently reading and scrolls the page down automatically. It is not as good as Google Assistant on android. Google Assistant on android knows to skip past image captions and ads, and it knows when it has reached the end of an article; Edge simply reads everything it sees.
I guess those parts are where Edge cannot use the same services Google uses anyway (since they're not allowed to). And if they have to provide their own TTS anyway, they can just as well improve over Chrome at that point.
open a page you want to be read in Chrome, active google assistant and say 'Read It'. It also works with other Chromium based browsers (Brave and Edge).
