Unboxing iRex 800 and first impressions

[eLiNK]

Now why did Irex take out the PDF zoom function?????

Your guess is as good as mine.
One can only speculate it was done to discriminate the DR800 from its bigger brother,
which was in my view, to put it mildly, a pretty unwise decision.
Without the zoom function, you cannot really use all kinds of pdfs.
Which means to me, it is more usefull for reading easily scalable formats like EPUB only.
But then again, you do not need 8" and hence no need to pay the markup in comparision to the 6" devices.

The iREX seems to forget it is not them who decide, what features the "consumer" version (using the description coined by Shaggy) should contain, but the consumers and the market.
As far as PDF handling abilities of the Pocketbook are concerned, they are way more advanced in comparison to DR800 and still they do not position their products as professional devices.

The build quality of the DR800 seems to be better, though.

PS: mgmueller, thanks for your review. It was very informative and useful.
Weiter so.

[professzore]

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

Very informative picture, thanks. You wouldn't happen to have a picture comparing the screen size of the Kindle DX with the Sony prs 900?

These pictures are made for a Hungarian ebook blog. Since Sony PRS-900 is not available here (and possible never will) I didn't waste time to redraw it.
By the way, it's almost the same with as PRS-600 (Touch Edition), but about 1.2 inch taller. Screen size is also comparable: same with with about 1.2 inch more vertically. It's slightly taller than DR800, but width is smaller. A lot.
Screen is smaller (122 mm wide in DR800, 90 mm wide in PRS-900, lenght is almost the same: 163 on iRex and 154 on Sony).

I also made a comparison chart for "whole surface" versus "screen surface" ratio, all based on specs. DR800's screen size is almost 69% of the whole
"face" of the device, meanwhile PRS-900 is close to 54%. (Kindle 2 is almost 40%, Sony PRS-600 51%, Kindle DX nearly 59%.) Of course, the bigger the number means more screen.

[cmdahler]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

I could go on for hours about Apple...

Well, you could, but then you'd get yelled at for posting something about Apple in an iRex forum. Of course, since they're negative comments, I'm sure people here wouldn't mind at all...

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by eLiNK

Your guess is as good as mine.
One can only speculate it was done to discriminate the DR800 from its bigger brother,
which was in my view, to put it mildly, a pretty unwise decision.
Without the zoom function, you cannot really use all kinds of pdfs.
Which means to me, it is more usefull for reading easily scalable formats like EPUB only.
But then again, you do not need 8" and hence no need to pay the markup in comparision to the 6" devices.

The iREX seems to forget it is not them who decide, what features the "consumer" version (using the description coined by Shaggy) should contain, but the consumers and the market.
As far as PDF handling abilities of the Pocketbook are concerned, they are way more advanced in comparison to DR800 and still they do not position their products as professional devices.

The build quality of the DR800 seems to be better, though.

It really confirms my experience with many European companies, they are driven by their engineers. A few people sit around a table and decide what is good for the market, rather than listen to their prospective customers! A DR 800 with WiFi with a browser and PDF zoom capabilities would blow every other reader on the market right out of the water at the US price of $399. Instead Irex is shooting itself in the foot again.

And if they had any sense they would reduce the DR 1000 to $550 or so, who will buy it at almost $900 now?

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by eLiNK

Your guess is as good as mine.
One can only speculate it was done to discriminate the DR800 from its bigger brother,
which was in my view, to put it mildly, a pretty unwise decision.
Without the zoom function, you cannot really use all kinds of pdfs.
Which means to me, it is more usefull for reading easily scalable formats like EPUB only.
But then again, you do not need 8" and hence no need to pay the markup in comparision to the 6" devices.

The iREX seems to forget it is not them who decide, what features the "consumer" version (using the description coined by Shaggy) should contain, but the consumers and the market.
As far as PDF handling abilities of the Pocketbook are concerned, they are way more advanced in comparison to DR800 and still they do not position their products as professional devices.

The build quality of the DR800 seems to be better, though.

PS: mgmueller, thanks for your review. It was very informative and useful.
Weiter so.

As far as I understand, iRex didn't leave anything out. In my understanding, it's an entirely different application. In the past, they've had their own "viewer". Now it's the Adobe SDK. And this seems to be the reason, why it maybe complicated, to integrate the zoom level.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

As far as I understand, iRex didn't leave anything out. In my understanding, it's an entirely different application. In the past, they've had their own "viewer". Now it's the Adobe SDK. And this seems to be the reason, why it maybe complicated, to integrate the zoom level.

Then why can Sony and others do it?

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

As far as I understand, iRex didn't leave anything out. In my understanding, it's an entirely different application. In the past, they've had their own "viewer". Now it's the Adobe SDK. And this seems to be the reason, why it maybe complicated, to integrate the zoom level.

Not accoriding to Matthijs:

GUI features are enabled/disabled inside UDS itself, not inside the plugin. The Adobe plugin also supports zooming, etc.

This is good news for the DR1000S, which won't have most of its PDF functionality removed with the switch to Adobe Digital Editions, but makes it very plain that this is a marketing, not technical, decision.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by badbob001

Someone posted a video of the dr800s. Bit of a snore. The entire face of the device does look to be of the same uniform color.

Just an idea: A single color for the entire housing, which is very similar to the background of the screen, may be less intrusive and may increase contrast. Some nook users for example wrote, the color touchscreen (when active, which you can manage in settings) would distract them a bit. No problem for me with nook, but it really may be an issue.
In another thread someone for example wrote, his next reader won't be black again but white.
But I agree, it's not a "looker".

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Mgmueller, could you post photo with the Sony 505 and the DR 800 so that we have a size comparison? Thank you!

Here you go.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Then why can Sony and others do it?

Just an example: In Adobe Digital Editions, most of the readers only show internal memory, but not the memory card(s). I've asked Bookeen for example about that, as Opus doesn't show the SD card. Bookeen stated, Sony would be using a proprietary driver to solve this, that's why they show internal memory AND both memory cards.
About half of the posts in my thread stated, they don't like proprietary solutions, but would like to see the very same result for every reader.
I'm one of the other half: I don't care how they do it. It's working and I prefer their solution.
Same would apply here. I'd like to see zoom, whether it's "standard" or needs development.
But many users seem to disagree...Kind of philosophical question, I guess...

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

And if they had any sense they would reduce the DR 1000 to $550 or so, who will buy it at almost $900 now?

But is this possible for them?
If Mercedes would reduce their prices by, let's say 40%, their market share certainly would triple.
But their profitability?
I don't think, these are engineer driven decisions. I guess it's more about competition, target price, margin expectations, manufacturing workflow, ...

[badbob001]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Just an idea: A single color for the entire housing, which is very similar to the background of the screen, may be less intrusive and may increase contrast. Some nook users for example wrote, the color touchscreen (when active, which you can manage in settings) would distract them a bit. No problem for me with nook, but it really may be an issue.
In another thread someone for example wrote, his next reader won't be black again but white.
But I agree, it's not a "looker".

I agree with this. For devices like the kindle or nook, I think the apple-esk super-white frame around the gray-ish e-ink display makes the screen "appear" even more gray. When you're trying to convince people the wonders of e-paper and how it's like paper, you don't want it to look like an old un-backlit LCD display. Other devices like Sonys use darker color frames and there are always skins one can apply to the frame. I like having the frame being the same color as the screen as it allows you to display documents with zero margins (except for *cough* pdfs) and have the frame be a non-distracting physical margin.

[badbob001]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

But is this possible for them?
If Mercedes would reduce their prices by, let's say 40%, their market share certainly would triple. But their profitability?

They may need to for competitive reasons.

I know they are a small company and can't survive with smaller margins like larger companies like Amazon but they need to find a way to compete. If they want to compete price-wise, then they need to match or better the competitors' pricing. Their manufacturing costs may be higher due to reasons such as lower volume, an inept product manager with bad breath, hand assembled devices by super models... whatever, it's not relevant to the consumer, who will generally not pay more due to loyalty or pity.

They can compete also on features, but IREX has problems on that front as well. The Iliad came out with so many features such as wifi, ethernet, multiple memory card slots, and sophisticated document viewing and management features. But with the newer products, they can't maintain their startup energy and had to cut back features so the core functions can be working fully.

If a reader had these values:

1. cheap
2. featured
3. reliable

and you could only choose two, which would they be?

[Fjaril]

I would go for 2. and 3.
If the reader can do what I want (2.) and does it always correctly (3.) then I do not need to have another one; hence the price is not that much of an issue (within margins )
So far the 800 seems to be great in 3. and for 2. there is some hope left for the zoom in pdfs and maybe even annotation (am I too optimistic?)
Anyway, for reading it is great - that's anyway the main purpose no?

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by badbob001

They may need to for competitive reasons.

I know they are a small company and can't survive with smaller margins like larger companies like Amazon but they need to find a way to compete. If they want to compete price-wise, then they need to match or better the competitors' pricing. Their manufacturing costs may be higher due to reasons such as lower volume, an inept product manager with bad breath, hand assembled devices by super models... whatever, it's not relevant to the consumer, who will generally not pay more due to loyalty or pity.

They can compete also on features, but IREX has problems on that front as well. The Iliad came out with so many features such as wifi, ethernet, multiple memory card slots, and sophisticated document viewing and management features. But with the newer products, they can't maintain their startup energy and had to cut back features so the core functions can be working fully.

If a reader had these values:

1. cheap
2. featured
3. reliable

and you could only choose two, which would they be?

If I check the number of posts in this thread, interest in iRex 800 seems to be huge. And my gut feeling says, positive feedback seems to outweigh the negative one.
On the negative side, it's mainly about features they've had before. Not about features all the others have.
I guess, their concept is quite simple:
- "How many former iLiad or 1000S users may be disappointed because of lacking some features from former models" vs. "cost savings by sticking to the market level".
- Would they sell at least 3 times as many units when reducing the price by the 40% you suggested?
- How big is their niche of "high end" products and what does their competition offer in that range?
Some "exotic" readers actually seem to offer more for less. But I've had this before with Hanlin/BeBook: Phantastic features, but no "charm".
I guess in comparison to Sony or Amazon, which certainly are the big ones to consider, they've found their niche.
In comparison to Sony 900, the European price for iRex 800 seems high. But Sony 900 so far isn't available in Europe and I guess the number of people importing them from the US is relatively small. So, within their European "home market", there's not much of competition for touchscreen units. As long as this situation remains that way, they may be able to stick to that price level.
And in the US they seem to offer for a significantly lower price.
From a distance, their business model kind of makes sense.

BTW: I really don't understand, why most of the manufacturers don't offer WiFi. I really enjoy it on nook and that's the main reason why I rank it that high.
But as the clear majority of manufacturers doesn't offer WiFi, there seems to be a valid reason...