I've had one for 3 months and love it. Reading outside is easy and fine. The kindle screen isn't backlit so the brighter your surroundings the better. Normally the price to download books is cheaper, sometimes about the same, but very rarely more than buying physical. Your best bet is to go to Amazon and type in the books you are interested in and they have a box that shows the price for the kindle edition, hardcover, and paperback. The last 4 books I downloaded cost 15, 10, 5, and 3 to download. It also give a sweet feature of letting you sample most books for free which pretty much means they give you the first couple of chapters with no obligation to buy.
It took me about 2 hours of tinkering around with my kindle before I felt like I had the hang of it so it's very easy and intuitive. I don't have a strong vocabulary so I'm always using the function of moving the cursor over a word I don't know, and it brings up an instant definition without having to leave the page. The device itself is very light and not uncomfortable at all to hold.
I highly recommend