Thinking of the Kindle Fire but there are a couple of features it has to have:
It will be used in a car. Just assume that books on CDs won’t work or that I want a reader for visual and aural presentation. This means sound quality needs to be good without headphones.
A wide variety of audiobooks available. I like Audible because it has Tracks by Robyn Davidson and learning foreign languages.
Again car. Needs to be chargable with a car 12v adapter so probably a USB mini charging port.
Cannot be one of those Kindles where the company can go in later and prevent your access or erase the books you bought. Didn’t some company do that a few years ago?
So is it a Kindle Fire or something else that I want?
That’s a tough request. The company that deleted the book after people bought it was Amazon. Amazon owns Audible. Amazon also owns the Kindle line.
If you buy an audiobook by Audible, it’s possible that Amazon might pull it for copyright infringement. I haven’t heard about them doing that after that first time with an Amazon ebook.
I’ve had an Audible account for years. I stopped my subscription years ago, and I can still access all my audiobooks from my Audible account. I also have all the books downloaded to an audiobook player, and that works fine for me.
Disclaimer: I just looked up the rest of this stuff. I don’t have experience with it, so I don’t know if it actually works. The link on the word Whispersync gives a lot more information on it.
If you still want to buy Audible audiobooks, you might want to check out the Audible app and look for books that offer Whispersync. If you already have a smartphone or tablet, my understanding is that you can download the Audible app for it and buy the Whispersync for voice version of the book. Or you might want to check it out on your computer before you buy a device. I’m understanding you want to read the book as an ebook and listen to the audio at the same time, right? If not, you can just get the Audible app and get any audiobook from Audible to play on any device that the app plays on.
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4) Cannot be one of those Kindles where the company can go in later and prevent your access or erase the books you bought. Didn’t some company do that a few years ago?
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This is just silly. Amazon pulled a book that had been uploaded by someone who didn’t own the rights to it. So they yanked it and refunded everyone’s money. Consumers could have instantly re-downloaded the book from the true rights holder. Copyright, it’s a good thing.
It’s not clear to me that you need a Kindle Fire at all, unless that turns out to be the cheapest device. Audible is an app that is available on all platforms. It’s not tied to a device. You could get all of your wish list from an iPod or a Galaxy Note or just about any device that’s not a Jitterbug.
A smartphone can do all of that, but I guess if you were interested in a smartphone you would have mentioned it. Getting one used might be a cheap options to do all you want and more, though.
I listen to audiobooks in my car from my Galaxy S3 (which is ancient in smartphone years). I had a stereo installed in my car with bluetooth, so I can play them through my car’s speakers.
I have used the Audible app, but lately I use an app called Smart Audiobook Player for books I download in .mp3 format. When I’m not listening to audiobooks on my commute, I listen to podcasts.
You don’t even need a device that can download apps. When I had my Audible account I put my stuff on an iPod Mini. You could get a Shuffle or a Nano or whatever these days. Don’t need a Kindle Fire.
Yeah, unless you want a tablet for something else, just get a cheap old smartphone. I had this one and used it for Audible and Kindle books more than anything else. You don’t need a phone plan, just use WiFi or a USB cable and download.
Do you mean that you’re going to connect it to your car’s stereo, or that it has to have its own speakers? If the latter, you may have trouble with just about any portable device playing loudly enough to be heard over the road noise, depending on how noisy your car is.
Any device ought to be chargeable in a car with the correct adapter.
I agree with others that a Fire is one possibility, but not the only one. (By the way, Amazon has stopped using the name “Kindle” for its Fire tablets; it’s only calling its e-readers Kindles.)
I convert all my Audible books to MP3s and cut them into 10 minute tracks. I then load them onto CDs for in the car or one of my MP3 players for other times/places.
I do use the Audible app on both a phone and a tablet but find the 10 minute numbered tracks more useful when out and about a lot.
There are devices that will take input from a device’s headphone jack and broadcast it on an FM channel, but I cannot recommend them. I tried at least two of these, and never got good results. But maybe you might have better luck.
For audiobooks on devices that support them, including iPod, try saving as .m4a and then renaming to .m4b. Then you get all the benefits like remembering your position.
Whose?
If you get one of these, you want one with a continuous frequency selections. A cheap one might have a few discrete settings, and nothing is saying that there isn’t a local FM station overlapping it.
But these devices shouldn’t be necessary if you have a car that’s may fewer than 15 years old. Audio in might also come through the back.
I doubt you will get good sound quality directly out of a device, but a powered speaker (which can be powered by vehicle power) could do this, some are pocket sized and run on batteries and help a lot especially if you are considering using Netflix.
On occasion I was able to use my iPhone in the visor and that was just loud enough to work for audiobooks, but barely.
If you have a car that has a cassette player there is a adapter that looks like a cassette but has a cord with a head phone jack on it. Works better then the FM adapter.
Car radios are generally not hard to replace, youtube her car, radio replacement. It may be much easier then you expect and everything is pretty much is now direct plug in to your car’s wiring connectors (no cutting wires), though you do need to buy the kit for the car.