He's already got a Kindle Fire but says it's too small for anything involving typing.
I bought a faux-leather case+keyboard thingy for the HUDL which has transformed my use of it. Cost about 8.5p delivered from Outer Taiwan (or similar).
(I am too old to type with touch-screens except in dire emergencies).
I'm too stubborn to type more than about 160 characters with a touch screen unless it's a dire emergency.
A physical keyboard (even a fairly nasty one) transforms a fondleslab from a reading/viewing device into a proper communications tool, not least because it doesn't take up half the screen area displaying a keyboard. The downside is that if you're in the habit of using your device in portrait mode for reading ebooks or similar, then you need to be able to get rid of the keyboard easily. Magnetic detachment (or a very easily removed case) seems to work better than folding round the back for me, but YMMV.
(Android's a bit rubbish at making full use of a physical keyboard. Text input is fine, but some of the OS control requires you to fall back to gestures, so unless you also have a mouse you can forget about a smuge-free screen. And there are loads of apps which refuse to draw themselves in landscape format, which is instantly infuriating if you've got a keyboard case attached.)
