While having a public ledger is useful in many cases but in some cases addresses with non zero balances can become targets for scammers or hackers to relieve users of their funds. Your wallet is the interface used to interact with your private keys on a blockchain.

If you own crypto assets worth more than $200 and you have made the decision to self-custody, you should absolutely own a hardware wallet! Hot wallets are just not good enough!

With Hot Wallets such as a metamask wallet, if the password for the account or email address is compromised, the keys may also be compromised and a bad actor can sign transactions without the owner knowing.

However with cold wallets the keys never leave the wallet and any transaction that need to be signed with the keys in the wallet need the user to physically interact with the wallet.

The two top choices are Trezor or Ledger. Personally, I prefer the Trezor for its simplicity.

Pro Tip: Keep your main stash in the cold wallet and use the hot wallet for day to day interactions or experiments. Also never enter your seed phrase anywhere!