Up until recently, Amazon’s Kindle has been the dominant player in the e-book reader market. When Barnes & Noble entered the game with their own e-book reader, things started to shift. Dubbed Nook, the gadget was released late last year but has already gained recognition from the public as well as well known personalities in the tech world.

The 2009 Crunchies Awards was held last week – a relatively newcomer in its niche. It is held annually by three entities – GigaOm, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch. This year’s awards is only the third. The cool thing about the Crunchies is that the Internet community is involved in deciding who gets to win what award, and this year’s Best Gadget Award went to Nook. Not bad for something that came late in the game!

From the get go, the e-book reader was touted as a Kindle killer. It is Android-based (yeah, looks like Android is the way to go these days) and boasts a 6-inch ink screen as well as a colored touch screen. On top of that, it has Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity as well as the option to expand memory up to 16GB (on top of the 2GB internal memory). I also like the fact that it has mp3 playback capability.

On the downside, its battery only lasts for 10 days (Kindle’s lasts for 14 days) and it weighs 1 ounce more than the Kindle. More so, the Nook does not have a web browser nor does it offer a text-to-speech feature.

Based on the Crunchies, though, it seems that users are finding the Nook a much better deal than a Kindle. So if I were to buy an e-book reader this year, should I go for the Nook?