I've been thinking of doing such a comparison grid for awhile (not that I'm an expert or anything). I did do a review post about a year ago that is somewhere here in the forums.
For a very general idea here is what some of the modules niche's are (in my opinion):
EF - workflow VERY strong in this area, Dynamic forms - testing & survery's, Xmod - General modules and data display, ListX - full relational web apps, Indoogrid - large data sets, sqlgridselectedview - price & abilities
They also all have their unique downsides:
EF - since workflow was it's initial primary intention everything is sort of set up around this, same with Dynamic forms and surveys, Xmod - stores it's data in XML, ListX - very powerful but difficult to learn and very lite documentation, Indoogrid - pricing & licensing structure, sqlgridselectedview - it's name 
and limited data display abilities.
What's new with each - short & general answer:
EF - ability to databind to different sql databases, ListX - new version will be called Open Web Studio and will be open source, sqlgridselectedview - Paul keeps adding to it new version 5.0 has IMC and several other features, Xmod - you will be seeing something very exciting coming in a month or less.
So maybe to answer your original question in my opinion I think the best answer is to use more than one module. I think Xmod is the best bet for a general module to build lot's of different things. Xmod has tons of pre-built stuff that saves you time, it also has quite a few add-on's available for it. i.e. Fatgeorge's file upload that does ton's of stuff - auto thumbnail creation, resizing, watermarking, etc., Xmod Calendar to tie your forms into a calendar view, Xmod RSS, thickbox lightbox gallery, Xscheduler - to tie into DNN's Scheduler, etc.
If you're entry level and just want to build simple stuff forms Master is the easiest to use. But Xmod is close and is more powerful.