Irex DR800SG Ereader Update – First Impressions no comments
I love reading books on the DR800SG. The e-ink screen with its 16 grayscales and 768 x 1024 resolution is gorgeous. I also find that I much prefer reading on the 8.1 – inch screen to the usual 5 – 6 inch ereader screens. The larger screen does add a little width to the device though, which may impact portability for some.
I am also a fan of the minimalist design of the DR800SG ereader which does not waste space and which is devoted to and complements the display screen. I hope other designers of new ereaders will take a close look at Irex’s design choices here and maybe stand on Irex’s shoulders, as Steve Jobs would say. The DR800SG definitely has some qualities worth emulating. I would like to see some more ereaders with this screen size format for one thing. That being said however, the DR800SG’s design as executed does lead to some control awkwardness that I think could have been avoided by Irex.
Page turning and menu navigation are accomplished via the flipbar on the left
side of the bezel and the Menu button underneath it. If you hold the flipbar to one side for a longer period it will turn five pages at a time instead of just one.
To use the DR800SG with one hand you will need to hold your ereader in your left hand and use thumb power to turn pages. This works fine, unless you want to shift hands for awhile. This control scheme will also not work if you are left handed and want to hold the ereader in your right hand so you can have your left hand free. Adding a couple of small page turning buttons on the right bezel might have impacted the aesthetics of this ereader, but it would also have greatly increased its functionality.
You can navigate through most menus and make selections without the stylus by using the flipbar and menu button, but sometimes it does feel a bit awkward. Since there is no docking bay for the stylus on the ereader it is good to be able to do as much as possible without it.
Unlike most ereaders that come with a stylus, you cannot turn pages with a swipe or touch of the stylus on the edge of the screen. There are a couple of small arrows at the very bottom of the screen (you can just see them at the bottom of the picture) you can touch with the stylus for page turns, but they are quite small and inconvenient. It feels as though the Wacom digitizer is minimally implemented at best.
There’s Not Enough “There” There
The DR800SG has five four different font sizes to choose from, but only one font style. The
pic shows the largest font size, which is about 3/16 inch height for capital letters. You can also set the page margins from 0 to 1/2 inch.
The search function so far seems to work quite well. You will need to use the stylus for this. It would have been nice if Irex had added a Go To Page function as well.
You are able to sort through your library or documents by Name (title), Author, Date Added or Recently Added. It is also possible to delete content from the ereader itself without connecting to a computer, which is nice.
With its larger screen, Wacom digitizer and $400 price tag you would assume that Irex is targeting users who need to handle a lot of PDF or other documents with this ereader. Judging by what is missing you would be making a wrong assumption. There are no annotation, note taking or even highlighting functions. Bookmarking is as good as it gets. It kind of makes you wonder why Irex bothered to use Wacom technology on the DR800SG at all. At the moment it seems like the digitizer is wasted.
PDF zooming is unavailable on the DR800SG as well. Even viewing a PDF in landscape mode does not seem to achieve any magnification – you just get the same size doc with very wide margins. With PDF’s made up only of text you may be able to enlarge the font as long as there are no graphs, schematics or tables, etc.
So far my take is that the DR800SG is a wonderful ereader for general book reading. But is that enough to justify paying $400 for it – especially in view of all of the soon to be released competition? True, Irex will hopefully have a firmware update soon that will add some of the missing functionality to their new ereader, but I can not recommend buying one based on that expectation/speculation alone.
If there were a dictionary on this ereader it would probably have a picture of the DR800SG next to half-baked.
