MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - iRex DR1000S Unboxing and First Impressions

Adam B. · 10-20-2008, 04:37 PM

iRex has been gracious enough to provide me a DR1000S review unit. I'm not sure how long they'll let me keep it, but I can already tell that it's going to be difficult to give back.

I plan on doing a full review after a few days of real world usage, but now I'll give my impressions after about 45 minutes of playing with the device.

First of all, the screen is big! I've been using the iLiad for about 2 years, and it's amazing to see how documents look on a big screen like this. It also seems to have much better contrast than my iLiad. But eink screens tend to loose a little contrast over time, so was expected. But the overall whiteness and larger screen makes documents an absolute joy to read.

There are a few things I'm going to have to get used to. For one, I've had a few problems accidentally pressing the buttons. The way I held my iLiad, I could grab the device by the side and just press the page bar. Now, when I hold the DR, it starts to skip pages. I have to retrain my self to grab the device below the page bar. Also, I've had problems getting the DR to actually lock the keys when I press the lock button. I'm not sure w

Reading full page PDF's is an absolute joy. The PDF's in the screenshots are 8.5x11" pages from a technical manual. They are readable on the iLiad, however the text is very small. On the DR, I have my documents set to automatically crop the margins. It's amazing to open a PDF, have no margins, and read pages the way they were meant to be on paper.

The DR is very menu intensive. To do anything but change a page, you have to bring up a menu. While this isn't too bad with the stylus, I can see users without the wacom enabled model finding this very annoying. It's an extra step from the way things were done on the iLiad with the menu bar.

Speaking of the stylus, drawing on the DR is very similar to drawing on the iLiad. There's still a slight delay when writing on the screen, but it's no better or worse than writing on the iLiad. It's nice, however, that the DR is able to write with a second stylus (I use a Wacom Executive Pen) while the included one is in it's holder. On the iLiad, you would have to remove and risk loosing the factory stylus whenever you'd want to write with my more comfortable style.

Screen refreshes are slightly faster than on the iLiad. I've uploaded a video onto Youtube comparing the two. There are times that you see the "Please Wait" screen when flipping quickly from one page to another, or when moving forward 5 pages. Luckily, using thumbnail view and search diminishes the need to quickly flip through pages while trying to find a specific page.

I look forward to continuing to use the DR1000S and providing a more in depth review. Based on my first impressions, I'd happily replace my iLiad with the device.

Click here to view an album full of unboxing pictures

A few highlights:

Youtube video comparing refreshes.

10-20-2008, 04:37 PM	#1
Adam B. Addicted to Porting Posts: 1,697 Karma: 7194 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Indianapolis, IN Device: iRex iLiad, Nokia 770, Samsung i760	iRex DR1000S Unboxing and First Impressions iRex has been gracious enough to provide me a DR1000S review unit. I'm not sure how long they'll let me keep it, but I can already tell that it's going to be difficult to give back. I plan on doing a full review after a few days of real world usage, but now I'll give my impressions after about 45 minutes of playing with the device. First of all, the screen is big! I've been using the iLiad for about 2 years, and it's amazing to see how documents look on a big screen like this. It also seems to have much better contrast than my iLiad. But eink screens tend to loose a little contrast over time, so was expected. But the overall whiteness and larger screen makes documents an absolute joy to read. There are a few things I'm going to have to get used to. For one, I've had a few problems accidentally pressing the buttons. The way I held my iLiad, I could grab the device by the side and just press the page bar. Now, when I hold the DR, it starts to skip pages. I have to retrain my self to grab the device below the page bar. Also, I've had problems getting the DR to actually lock the keys when I press the lock button. I'm not sure w Reading full page PDF's is an absolute joy. The PDF's in the screenshots are 8.5x11" pages from a technical manual. They are readable on the iLiad, however the text is very small. On the DR, I have my documents set to automatically crop the margins. It's amazing to open a PDF, have no margins, and read pages the way they were meant to be on paper. The DR is very menu intensive. To do anything but change a page, you have to bring up a menu. While this isn't too bad with the stylus, I can see users without the wacom enabled model finding this very annoying. It's an extra step from the way things were done on the iLiad with the menu bar. Speaking of the stylus, drawing on the DR is very similar to drawing on the iLiad. There's still a slight delay when writing on the screen, but it's no better or worse than writing on the iLiad. It's nice, however, that the DR is able to write with a second stylus (I use a Wacom Executive Pen) while the included one is in it's holder. On the iLiad, you would have to remove and risk loosing the factory stylus whenever you'd want to write with my more comfortable style. Screen refreshes are slightly faster than on the iLiad. I've uploaded a video onto Youtube comparing the two. There are times that you see the "Please Wait" screen when flipping quickly from one page to another, or when moving forward 5 pages. Luckily, using thumbnail view and search diminishes the need to quickly flip through pages while trying to find a specific page. I look forward to continuing to use the DR1000S and providing a more in depth review. Based on my first impressions, I'd happily replace my iLiad with the device. Click here to view an album full of unboxing pictures A few highlights: Youtube video comparing refreshes.