As a child I had a cassette tape player. I could choose the music and stories I wanted to listen to alone in my room without my parents worrying about me accessing the internet.

My son loves listening to Audible stories on an old iPhone. I have blocked certain features but he keeps finding things to do that I haven’t blocked. I want a device that can download a lot of Audible stories so he can choose what to listen to, but without all the other temptations of an old phone or the risk of him going online. Amber

This is the age of the internet, and the trend is for every device to be online all the time. This started with PCs and then smartphones, followed by TV sets, games consoles and digital video recorders. Now we’re getting connected cameras, fridges, doorbells and smart speakers, and the choice of products that can’t connect to the internet is rapidly diminishing.

You can still turn back the clock to a time when people used cables to transfer files – including ripped CDs and DVDs – from PCs to handheld devices such as PDAs, phones and MP3 players. Many of us still do this. However, the trend is towards synchronising devices with the cloud, and streaming content from online services such as Spotify and – yes – Audible.

Amazon, which bought Audible in 2008, runs the world’s largest cloud in the form of AWS (Amazon Web Services), but you can still download Audible files for offline use.

I guess you are supposed to protect children via a mixture of the UK’s sometimes heavily censored internet, services like OpenDNS’s FamilyShield, blocking specific IP addresses on your router, and device-level parental controls. But none of these stopped a flood of evil videos from being shown to young children on YouTube, for example, and even good content can have bad effects if used unwisely or to excess.

Unfortunately, removing internet access completely would now eliminate all the products that Audible lists on its “how to listen” page, which nowadays doesn’t even mention MP3 players.

Buying an MP3 player

Audible may have lost interest in old-school MP3 players – ones without wifi – but they are still an option. The main points to look for are compatibility with Audible’s copyright-protected file format, and the ability to bookmark files such as MP3 audiobooks and podcasts. (Remember there are many other sources of audiobooks, such as LibriVox and OverDrive, and your local library may have some.) A diminishing number of MP3 players meet these needs, and you are most likely to find them in SanDisk and Creative ranges.

Most MP3 players can, of course, handle several audio formats including MP3, Microsoft’s WMA (Windows Media Audio) and AAC. However, if you bought one of these, you’d have to convert Audible files to MP3 or whatever, to remove the DRM (digital rights management), which would be an extra job. You would also lose the special features built into Audible files, though some converters can at least split files into chapters or segments of a chosen length.

Either way, a player must be able to resume the audio where you stopped listening. Otherwise, trying to find your place in a five- or 50-hour book can be a nightmare. (Ideally, an MP3 player should also remember the bookmark’s place in a playlist, though this is harder to tell from the sales pitches.)

The 8GB SanDisk Clip Jam is a basic option at £24.37. The user manual (pdf) says it can handle “MP3, WMA (no DRM), AAC, WAV and Audible (DRM only)” files, and it also offers FM radio. However, comments suggest it’s not as good for audiobooks as the discontinued SanDisk Sansa Clip+ version, which can fetch up to £75 on eBay, in mint condition. (Most go for less.)

Audible has some tips on getting a Sansa Clip or Sansa Fuze to work with its audiobooks.

You can also play Audible audiobooks on iPods, if you use Apple’s iTunes software to transfer the files. Some iPod users have had problems that may be solved by re-downloading books in Audible’s Enhanced format (.aax) instead of Format 4 (.aa).

Kindles are compatible

You can also listen to Audible audiobooks on many of Amazon’s Kindle e-readers. The cheapest option is this year’s all-new Kindle (9th Generation) at £69.99. Alternatives include the 8th generation Kindle and Kindle Oasis (from £229.99), and the 10th generation Kindle Paperwhite (from £119.99). Some older models are also compatible, including the Kindle Keyboard and the Kindle Touch, but Audible no longer supports them.

The quoted prices include “special offers and sponsored screensavers”, AKA adverts. Prices are £10 higher without them.

The main drawback with the all-new Kindle is the limited amount of memory: it’s nominally 4GB but only about 2.7GB is available for books. The solution is to use the free cloud service to store extra books instead of keeping everything on the device.

All these Kindle e-readers have wifi connections to download books and essential software updates, plus Bluetooth for connecting to headphones and loudspeakers. However, I don’t think the wifi is much of a problem, because Kindle browsing is very slow, and because you can use the parental controls to block access to the browser.

So are some smart speakers

Amazon and Sonos Alexa-powered smart speakers can also play Audible audiobooks. Amazon currently sells five different Echo smart speakers. These range from the Echo Dot (£49.99 but currently discounted to £29.99) to the Echo Show (£219.99), which has a 10in screen that can play Amazon Prime videos. The standard Echo (£89.99) does a decent job of playing music so audiobooks should sound good. One point to watch is that Echos don’t recognise Audible account names, so you have to merge that with your Amazon account.

Echo devices can do lots of useful things for children. These include playing music from Amazon Music, Spotify, TuneIn and other services, playing live radio stations, setting reminders, timers and alarms, predicting the weather and making Skype calls. You can add various educational skills, such as learning foreign languages. Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, can also answer some homework queries, usually by quoting from Wikipedia.

There are two bonus features. First, Amazon Storytime provides free stories for children aged five to 12. Second, Alexa will read ordinary Kindle books aloud, though this text-to-speech rendering is nothing like as good as a human narrator.

There’s an Audible help page with a list of the voice commands used for listening on Alexa devices, starting with “Alexa, read my book”. A quick scan should help you to decide whether it’s worth pursuing this route rather than buying an MP3 player or a Kindle.

Have you got a question? Email it to Ask.Jack@theguardian.com