With bitcoin, you are your own bank, which means the responsibility of protecting your money. It's not always easy. And how the type of wallet you use really depends on if you plan to hold for the long-term or trade regularly.

Protecting your bitcoin really is dependent on how well you protect your private key. The absolute safest way would be to memorize it and never forget it. Easier said than done, but possible.

The next safest is either a paper wallet or a hardware wallet. Neither is perfect, but both are fairly good.

1) Paper wallet - you can use something like bitaddress.org to create a paper wallet, but these can be somewhat easy to mess up. Another drawback is, it's a piece of paper. I recommend making multiple copies, laminating them and keeping them in separate places.

2) Hardware wallet - as mentioned here, this is basically a USB stick that stores your keys and keeps them safe from malware. Nice thing about these is that you can plug them into your computer and still buy and sell crypto using them. Also, if you set it up, you can restore them if you lose the hardware wallet or it gets destroyed. The 3 most well-known hardware wallets are the Ledger Nano S, Trezor and Keepkey.