OK -- I've signed up for Feedly, Newsblur premium, FeedDemon and The Old Reader in the last 48 hours. Here are my thoughts.
Feedly - nice aesthetically, but slow for my tastes and the iPad version has the annoying inability to put things in list view
Newsblur - hard to say, their servers are swamped. Interface looks ok, but not as intuitive as Google Reader
FeedDemon (PC download) -- fastest option so far with ability to get through many headlines. Lacks some of the intuitive features of Google Reader and annoyed by inability to make subfolders. Obvious downside is that feeds exist on your desktop and inability to mirror on phones/tablets
The Old Reader -- this may be where I end up. Most like Google Reader, and the site seems to perform well on my iPad (no App, just Safari). There is a backlog for importing your feeds, but from what has been imported so far, looks good.