A shootout between the Kindle 3G and its competitors in the market if inevitable as consumers would want the real score spending their hard earned money, especially at this time of economic uncertainties. There's just a few brands out there with any stake in the eBook reading market. You have the Nook from Amazon's competitor Barnes and Noble, the Sony Reader and the Apple iPad.
Let's start with the iPad to say that it is really way above the market for mere eBook reading as it has richer features to make it a multimedia gadget short of being a laptop. It's a bona fide tablet computing device that does more than being confined to the more focused functional practicality of the Kindle. People who would buy an iPad 3G would not buy it for its eBook reading feature, which is just another subset of its multimedia prowess.
7 Lcd Touchscreen
No, people will buy it more for its movie watching, image viewing and internet surfing prowess. While the Kindle3 now had 3G and WiFi models the same way the iPad has, the latter does a more delightful job at browsing with all the colors of whatever site you're visiting, along with PDF reading of full color pages you won't get on the Amazon e-reader. If you're into reading novellas pure and simple, the Apple electronic ebook reader is overkill. Apart from being more expensive, it's also heavier to tire your wrist holding it when reading and doesn't really lend itself well to reading under direct sunlight. For purely reading fun, the Kindle3G is the better and more practical option.
So what is left in the shootout that's really on the same keel is the Sony Reader and the Nook from Barnes & Noble. Let's look at the latter. Released almost two years later and positioned as a direct rival to the Amazon bestseller, the Android-based Nook3G has the same 6-inch e-paper display with a 3.5inch color LCD touchscreen under for navigation and offered features the 2nd generation Kindle didn't have such as 3G and WiFi connectivity back in 2009. The current Kindle-3G is obviously a direct answer to the Nook's increasing popularity with these wireless connectivity features.
Just don't expect it to have text-to-speech capability nor as fast in turning pages. But at a lower 9 price tag and more than 2 million books at the B&N shop online, it can't be beat. The new Color Nook with full color 7 inch multitouch touchscreen released in October has a larger 8GB internal storage and support for a 32GB microSD slot. (But this is now a full tablet computer that is more positioned against the iPad than the Kindles.)
The Sony Reader comes in various models with the Sony Reader Touch Edition PRS600/650 as being a direct rival with the same 6-inch e-paper display. With a highly reflective touchscreen and no wireless data connectivity options, it is no wonder it's not selling as well as the others and suffers in comparison feature for feature. You can forget about this one for now and reserve your money for either of the Nook or the Kindle 3.