Define "better"? Some are better suited to certain types of experiments than others, but otherwise, they are just different and not necessarily better or worse than each other. Just as there is an abundance of different microarray platforms and reaction kits, there are a lot of different NGS platforms and sequencing kits.

Its big business, and that money drives innovation but also intense competition as different vendors vie for the same pot(s) of money.

I'd say the clear evidence there is no single winner is the fact that many companies are competing successfully in the same market.

Define "better"? Some are better suited to certain types of experiments than others, but otherwise, they are just different and not necessarily better or worse than each other. Just as there is an abundance of different microarray platforms and reaction kits, there are a lot of different NGS platforms and sequencing kits.

Its big business, and that money drives innovation but also intense competition as different vendors vie for the same pot(s) of money.

I'd say the clear evidence there is no single winner is the fact that many companies are competing successfully in the same market.

I agree with Michael Black.

And I would like to share something. It is the nanopore tech in sequencing DNA, RNA, Proteins... Please the follow link to get some more information.

https://www.nanoporetech.com/news/movies

Please let me know your opinion about it.

Thanks

No best, but illumina HiSeq and Ion Torrent/Proton are the most popular techniques.

As many have already stated, the best technology depends on your application. I've used several types of sequencers and prefer Illumina Miseq. I disagree with Rohan as I think the sample prep for illumina is quite easy - much easier than 454 - but other platforms like Solid do almost all the prep on instrument rather than by the user. What type of sequencing do you intend to do? Whole genome, targeted amplicons, etc?

Hi there Deepak. I would be a little less diplomatic than others. Nowadays, Illumina more or less killed most other technologies. Illumina HiSeq gives you the highest throughput per dollar you can get. If you are more concerned with read length than with throughput then use MiSeq (up to 2x 300 bp, which beats 454 and solid). If you are interested in VERY long reads, you can consider PacBio, but the error rate is pretty high and the methods is not as well established as others. Of course considerations like availability of machines and waiting times for results can complicate things as well.

I would agree with Yehu that Illumina killed off most of the competition, but recently they are being challenged quite successfully. Read length is an important issue - with all short read technology you end up with a jigsaw puzzle and your conclusions are heavily relying on your assembly, which has scalded many a researcher. Our paper comparing PacBio and Illumina seqencing (http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/14/670) has been viewed more than 8800 times since its publication in October - which tells me that people are eager to see longer read technology at work. Error rate is actually not a problem of PacBio - namely sequencing errors are introduced randomly into the reads (which is not the case with Illumina) and are thus largely non-context specific and have minimal effect on the final assembled sequence if you have enough depth of coverage and perform error-correction prior to assembly. We discussed this at length in the paper. Illumina is however cheaper and I don't know if that is likely to change.

Last year there was a marketing news report (I cannot remember the publication, but it was a European business journal) that put Illumina's market share of the NGS market at something like about 55%. So while perhaps the majority player, I would not characterize them as having killed off anything or anyone. Every single major competitor they've ever faced is still in the NGS market, including Roche.

In a market that is projected to exceed $3 billion within the next couple or few years, 40+% of the market is still a big chunk of money.

I agree with the other people; it all depends on your interests. We have good experiences with Illumina technology; robust, good quality and relatively affordable.