J.S.
I have both the 7" kindle fire and the new, bigger version that came out this year. I like using the smaller one for portability and as you already mentioned - it's great. The other tablets out there are more expensive because they are trying to compete with the iPad so you have more memory, bigger processor, etc for some business applications whereas the kindle is made for reading/streaming. Think of tablets as stripped down laptops but more portable and kindles as reading/multimedia players. Good luck.