I have a 2nd generation kindle fire and love it. I read on it surf, check email, watch hbo, netflix and stuff on it so it suites my needs. I want the larger screen HDX when money permits. Storage is not an issue for me since all your books and apps you purchase from amazon are stored in your amazon account so I can delete and load as needed as long as I have a wifi connection or I use the mobile hotspot from my cell phone if need be. I also have an older e-ink keyboard kindle but I don't read on it as much anymore as I just prefer to read on the fire but it depends on what your eyes like. If you are not going to be using it for much why not get the 7 inch HD kindle for $119 since it's cheaper. I have used my friends HD and it's nice. Mary

just keep in mind that android tablets let you install the kindle app and the nook app so you can have all of those on one device. It really depends on your needs and wants as to what you get. the tablet with the best sound that I have owned was the vizio it had 3 speakers so no matter which direction you held it in you had stereo and the sound was fantastic. Wish more manufacturers would be more interested in the sound quality and take a lesson and put at least 3 or 4 speakers on them. I often struggle hearing with the one small speaker especially on my phone. I love love love my new Asus transformer tf300 10" tablet with dock but it too could use some improvement in the sound and speaker department. My husband still absolutely loves his lookbook in fact he now has his and mine and I am trying to make him transition over to my Vizio tablet so he has more options and can do other things on it. He is fighting me he wants to stick with his lookbook he is not a fan of the touch screen he keeps touching things by accident then I hear swearing lol. He is not a good student is all I have to say LOL That lookbook is extremely light weight you will not likely find any tablet that is that light.

The battery on my Kindle Fire lasts a good eight hours with Wi-Fi turned on, more with the Wi-Fi off. But I pretty much always leave the Wi-Fi on because we have a wireless network here at home, and there's wireless at work, too. Tami, once you've downloaded a book to your Fire, you should be able to read the entire book with the wireless turned off. Go to the home screen on the Fire. You should see the Carousel, the Favorites shelf, and near the top, from left to right you should see the words "Newstand," "Books," "Music," "Video," "Docs," "Apps," and "Web." Touch on the word "Books." Centered near the top, just under where the time is displayed, you will see the words "Cloud," and "Device." Directly below them, also centered, you will see the words, "By Author," "By Recent," and "By Title." Whichever words are shown in orange are active. So, if the words "Cloud" and "By Author" are orange, it means that you are looking at all of your books that are in the Amazon cloud, and they are arranged by the authors' names. Also, if you're looking at the "cloud view," any books that have a small dark grey circle with a white downward-pointing arrow in the lower right-hand corner are only in the cloud. Any books that don't have that circle/arrow showing have been downloaded to your device. So, in the Books view, touch on "Device." Doesn't matter how they're sorted -- you just want at this point to see which books are on your device. If no books are showing in the Device view, it means you haven't really downloaded any books to the Fire itself. If you DO see books in the Device view, then turn off the wireless. You should still see those same books in the Device view. And you should be able to touch any one of them to open it and begin reading. You wrote, above, "I can not read with out wi-fi. I am supposed to be able to, but can not make it do it. I have not contacted amazon yet as I want to be home with no distractions when I do so. I have done everything that's been suggested otherwise, ans still can't read with out it, unless I just let it go to sleep instead of shutting it down." It's that last phrase that has me puzzled. You say you can't read without the wireless being on unless you let it go to sleep. When the device is in sleep mode, it's sort of the same as being powered off, except that you can bring it back more quickly. When the device is in sleep mode, it's not using the battery, but you can't do anything with/on it because it's asleep. So... if you look at the books on your Device, and it shows books, but you cannot read them without wireless, it means there is something wrong with your particular Kindle Fire, and you need to contact Amazon.

Some tablets you can download books to your computer then just put them onto a memory card and insert card into tablet and read them from the memory card so in that case you would not need wifi. For a tablet to download right to the tablet you will need wifi to get the actual download then you can just have it on the tablet in memory and read it anytime. Some of the early Kindles you did not need wifi it had it's own built in that would connect only to the Amazon book store. I am not sure which ones still do that. My brother in law had one of the first Kindles and his was that way so he did not need wifi to get books. To do the memory card thing you must have a tablet that is able to use a memory card so has the slot for one. All of mine which are Android tablets do have memory card slots. I actually prefer to save the downloads to my pc and put them on memory cards so I have a back up copy. Now for the kindle books I get I download those from Amazon directly to my tablet and read using my Kindle app. So to answer your question it all depends on what you are getting and what features it has.