Having reads of 400-500 base pairs length is sufficient to determine the species or strain of the organism where the DNA comes from, provided its genome is already known, by using for example a k-mer based taxonomic classifier software. With millions of reads from next generation sequencing of an environmental sample, it is possible to get a complete overview of any complex microbiome with thousands of species, like the gut flora. Advantages over 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing are: not being limited to bacteria; strain-level classification where amplicon sequencing only gets the genus; and the possibility to extract whole genes and specify their function as part of the metagenome.
The sensitivity of metagenomic sequencing makes it an attractive choice for clinical use.
It however emphasizes the problem of contamination of the sample or the sequencing pipeline.