Kindle Fire

Those are a great little keyboard, and is about exactly what I was using on my 12.9 iPad before I got the Magic keyboard. It will work great, assuming that you are going to leave the ipad always in the case. It is not as hard as some cases are to get the ipad out, but it is not very easy either.
I think that you will like that case.

 

It works pretty well, although I haven't had an occasion to use it often. It is made specifically for the Kindle Fire but it's an after-market item from a third-party manufacturer. The keyboard is a bit smaller than the one on my MacBook Pro but it's a whole lot easier to use than the virtual keyboard.

 

You do not need a charging dock, it can just be charged with a mini usb cord. A large Kindle Fire 10” like Ken uses would be a good workable tablet, and they are durable.
They ARE heavy, compared to an iPad of the same size, but much cheaper.

Both are touchscreen, so you can easily expand anything on the page to see/read it, and if you get an external keyboard case, then it is almost like having a nice little laptop.
The ones with ads are not really an issue.
When you turn the kindle on, an ad will show up, you swipe the screen up to remove it, and that is the end of the ads, so it is not a constant thing.
Mine have all been the ones with ads because they are usually cheaper, and I barely even remember that the ads are there.

Here is a picture of my tablet with the keyboard case, and you can see that it is almost the same as having a laptop; but I can take it out of the case if I don’t need the case, which you can’t do with a laptop.

 

I have 3 iPads, and a Kindle Fire , @Gloria Mitchell , and I enjoy all three of them. The main one is my 12.9” large iPad, which has the keyboard case, and would be the closest to the 10” Kindle fire. I checked the weight, and they are both almost exactly the same weight. The 10” Kindle that i had before was an older one, and maybe weighed more, or just seemed heavier to me.
I use the large iPad for when I am going to be typing, or just want to see the largest size.

The next iPad is my 10.5” iPad, and I use it without a keyboard case, and when I just want to hold it in my hands and surf online, or sometimes just to read or watch videos.
The little one is my iPad Mini, and it is handy when I need to carry it around somewhere, because it is only 7.9”, and is in between the 7”-8” Kindles.
I actually have keyboard cases for all three of them, but don’t use them unless I am traveling and taking along one of the smaller iPads.

My Kindle is the smallest size, the 7”, and I only use it for reading, nothing else, although it is capable of almost everything that my iPad does.
The iPads are just so much simpler for me to use than the Kindle, except for reading; so there is never any need for me to use the Kindle other than that.

I think that the Amazon Kindle is about as good as you can get for its price, and they are almost indestructible . They also have a place for the little memory chips, so you can add a lot more storage memory very easily, which you can’t do with an iPad.
I think that you can have up to a terabyte of storage with an added SD card. To get that with an iPad, you have to purchase one that already has that much storage, which is a lot more expensive.

 

I don’t know what the Amazon easy connect is, Gloria. Mine just connects with my Wifi just like the iPads and desktops do. If I were somewhere else and had the Kindle and needed to connect, I would use the hotspot on my phone to do it, so I have never needed any other kind of connection.

PS I just noticed that you are looking at the HD8 tablet, not the HD10, so it would be smaller than the 10” tablet is, but cheaper.
You can buy them on payments if you have Prime. And there is a nice choice of colors, too.

 

Amazon has a bazillion apps you can use. I think you might be able to use google apps, too; but not sure about that, since I do not use them.
Amazon also has some apps for free every day, if you want to get those. They are like the free books every day, ones that usually cost a little bit, but on sale free for 1-2 days.

 

Another thing that you might want to consider , is a Chromebook, @Gloria Mitchell . They use the google chrome operating system, so you could use all of your same google apps. They are cheap, and work great, and you do not have to buy anything extra, like a keyboard case. We have a thread here for Chromebooks if you are interested in learning more.
They have a trackpad, and also a touchscreen, so the advantages of both a laptop and a tablet. They are lightweight, too.