Just one year ago, there wasn’t much to get excited about in the realm of eReaders. They were all around the same size, utilized the same display technology, and came with high price tags. Now the category is heating up, and the latest devices are differentiating themselves with larger display sizes, experimental designs, and new features. The iRex DR800SG distinguishes itself with an 8-inch screen, which offers more room for periodicals than 6-inch eReaders, but is more portable than the 10- to 12-inch models. But while this $399 device may hit the Goldilocks zone in terms of size, its interface needs some work before it can capture the attention of mainstream consumers.
Design
The 7.6 x 5.9 x 0.4-inch iRex balances its larger screen with a sleek chassis; it’s marginally thinner than the Barnes & Noble Nook (0.5 inches) and, at 12.8 ounces, is 1.2 ounces lighter than the Sony Daily Edition. The 8.1-inch electronic paper display (EPD) dominates the device. Due to the lack of keyboard or secondary display, the DR800SG’s shape brings to mind a shrunken pad of paper. Just as with the touch-enabled Sony Daily Edition, the iRex has few buttons. But iRex takes austerity in design to an extreme, with just one long flip bar (used mostly for turning pages) and a menu button on the left edge of the display. A light above the bar indicates when the DR800SG is working, or connected to a computer or wireless 3G.
Though we prefer eReaders to include a button for turning pages on both sides of the screen to avoid repetitive stress, we like that the iRex’s’s bar is long enough to allow users of all hand sizes to hold the reader comfortably. To turn pages, we only had to nudge the bar left or right, which felt natural and didn’t strain our hand.
Unlike most eReaders, you’re meant to use the stylus as a primary means of navigating the iRex. In fact, some functions won’t work without it, such as entering text with the on-screen keyboard. Unfortunately, there’s no port for the stylus within the chassis as there is on Sony’s Readers or the Entourage Edge (an included leather cover provides a place to store it). However, the cover doesn’t fold backwards easily, making it difficult to access the flip bar.
A mini USB port sits on the bottom edge next to the power switch. A microSD Card slot is hidden behind the door of the battery compartment; iRex includes a 2GB card with each unit.
Interface
The iRex’s interface is straightforward, but it ultimately felt half-baked. The home screen features large icons for each function: Books, eBook Mall, Help, Images, News, Personal Documents, Recently Added, Search, Settings, and the most recently read book or document.
Though the stylus is the easiest way to navigate, you can also select an icon by moving the highlight box over it using the flip bar, then pressing down on the bar. However, this becomes tedious when flipping through long lists, because you can’t move up or down through the icons (which are arranged in a grid); you can only move forward, with the selector wrapping to the row below once it comes to the end of the one it’s on.
Working with the stylus proved much faster and, when it worked, the iRex responded swiftly. Still, we were frustrated to find that the device wouldn’t register taps about a third of the time, particularly when we were navigating the eBook Mall and reading newspapers downloaded from PressDisplay.
Other little issues plagued our user experience and left us feeling as though the interface wasn’t as intuitive as it could have been. For instance, scroll bars sometimes appeared on the right or bottom edges of the screen in the eBook Mall’s listing of books or when reading PressDisplay papers. Our inclination was to drag them down as we would on a computer screen, but pages didn’t scroll smoothly and had to refresh to show new content, making it hard to predict how far down a page would scroll.
