I have used the Sony Reader for over a year and got a Kindle two weeks ago. They are very comparable devices. With that said, here are some differences. In Sony's favor: It is very difficult to handle the Kindle without accidentally hitting the Next or Previous page buttons. The Sony Reader has no such limitation, although, I find the buttons on the Kindle more comfortable to use for an extended period. If the Kindle is in its included cover, it become possible (though still not easy to handle it without turning pages). The Reader has two sets of Next & Previous Page buttons located on either side of the device. For some reason, the Kindle only has a single Previous Page button on the left side of the device -- the right side includes a smaller Back button which performs a different function. The Sony Reader maintains a history of the pages that have been visited within each book. The user can display this list, which includes a snippet of the text from each page. This is particularly useful when you have lost you place in a book, e.g. after having accidentally hit the navigation buttons or when handing the device around for others to check it out. In the Kindle's favor: The wireless connection is a big, big advantage. When I think of the many times I have been stuck in an airport, etc. and could have downloaded a book I wanted to read. I have also been known to spend several days before a trips loading books and documents on the Sony Reader; with the Kindle I can do it enroute. It should be noted that when the wireless is turned on, it draws the battery down much faster (as a previous commentor noted, the screen only uses power when changing the display). However, Amazon thought to include an easily accesible switch that turns the wireless radio off/on. The Reader will eventually exhaust the battery if left unattended for a long period and strongly suspect the same is true of the Kindle. The ability to accept input is also stronly in the Kindle's favor. Aside from web-browsing and purchasing books, it is very helpful in some circumstances to be able to "highlight" sections of text and to make notes. The Reader only has the capability of storing a bookmark, i.e. marking a page as being of interest. The Kindle can also do that and has a superior method of navigating among the bookmarks. Anyone who has typed on a Blackberry will have no difficulty at all typing on the Kindle. It is certainly slower than a laptop, but much easier than a typical cell phone. The one area of input that I have not come around to like yet is the Select Wheel and Cursor. In order to mark or select something on the screen, the Kindle has a thumb-wheel which moves a silvery Cursor up and down its own slot-like display located to the right right of the main display. This would be used to select text for a dictionary lookup or to mark a highlight. I have difficulty determining exactly which line the Cursor is indicating. The Kindle's display seems superior to me. To be fair, it is more than a year younger than my Reader, so perhaps there is some aging involved, and it is possible that the newer version of the Reader that is now available is improved, I don't know. One concrete feature of the Kindle is the 6 text sizes that are available within any book, as compared to the 2 or 3 sizes available on the Reader (depending on whether you are reading something in native format or not). Finally, I have struggled mightily to convert documents in Adobe's PDF format to make them readable on the Sony Reader, generally without success. If the PDF file wasn't originally formatted to be readable in that size and aspect ratio, the odds are that you aren't going to be able to read it. The Kindle does not support the PDF format, however, I have successfully used the PDF-to-Mobi software I got free on the web to convert PDFs. The resultant Mobi-formatted files have been highly readable on the Kindle (not perfect, but certainly readable.