iRex DR800SG

I've been staring at the computer screen since I was a child, and frankly my eyes are pretty tired by now. I remember hunting higher refresh rates with CRTs, because less flicker meant less eye stress. Then I spent quite some money on an LCD and ensured it's got DVI. The next thing would be, of course, the electronic paper, like the e-Ink technology. It is truly the digital display device of the future, having no flicker and no light that is blinding you when you read.

So for the last few years I've been longing for one of them electronic reading devices, and the pioneer of those would be iRex Technologies, the Netherlands-based company famous for their Iliad readers equipped with digitizing tablets from another favourite company of mine, Wacom. Unfortunately, Ileads were pretty expensive, and had too much extra features I might have not needed, while the battery life was reported to be depressingly short.

This Summer I finally decided to invest into an electronic reader, and tried to find something cheap and simple for about $200-$300. After settling for Sony PRS-505 available in that price region, I discovered that it was just replaced by a newer model PRS-600 with a touch screen, that goes for $300. Now that put me in front of a dilemma, either hunt down some stock leftovers of an obsolete device, or get a new model with a touch screen... and do I need one? I got a PDA, so I know what a touch screen is like. Not only it reflects light and makes the image blurry, but it's also so easy to activate accidentally. Especially when you use a stylus - you have to hold your hand over the screen when you click, write or draw, otherwise you'd press it in a totally wrong place. It's not like the professional-grade Wacom tablet, that is placed behind the screen, not affecting its quality, and is only reacting to a special stylus. The only reason for a touch screen in a book reader would be an integrated dictionary for reading books in foreign languages. But the Sony reader has only an English dictionary, and it seems like it can't be replaced.

So I got back to hunting, and soon came across an announcement of a new iRex reader, the DR800SG (DR stands for Digital Reader). The first thing about it is the estimated price of $399, which is only $100 more than the retail price of the aforementioned Sony readers PRS-505 and PRS-600, and exactly the same as Sony's brand new PRS-900. Surely I could spare a hundred more, if it's worth it. Here's a presentation video, and there are some more on YouTube if you look for it.

It seems very classy with almost no buttons, big 8.1" screen (Sony PRS-505 has 6"), and you can see the stylus, which is of the normal pen size, and not the toothpick you get with PDA's. The page refresh rate is quite high, comparing to videos of other devices I've seen. The DR800SG supports micro SD cards (2Gb one is included in the package) and has a micro USB port for charging and downloading books from the computer. For wireless access it's got 3G, which I don't have, and don't know much about. Apparently, in the US it will let you buy books from the reader itself and receive newspapers on it, with no extra fees on the wireless access, but in Europe it won't be of any use - until the first half of 2010, when iRex plans to add 3G support for Europe.

I have contacted iRex Technologies from their web site and they were very kind to reply to my questions. I'd like to share this information with you. Firstly, the battery life is reported to be almost one week with normal use, which is quite good. If you google battery life of Sony PRS-600, you'll see people mentioning two weeks usually, but then, Wacom tablet "eats" a lot, and comparing to previous models of Iliad readers, one week is a good result. I wonder how long will it last if you don't use it, though. The foreign language fonts (Russian is my main concern) is supported only with PDF. I'd prefer to have the native support for Cyrillic fonts, frankly, so I could just OCR something or download FB2 or HTML and just read it without messing with PDF. On second thought, with PDF I can use any fonts I like, not just something the device creators left me with, and that's a good thing, isn't it.

Another thing about iRex readers is that they are open to the development community, the SDKs are available and there are many custom made things for Iliads, like a web browser. The new DR800SG is not an exception, the SDKs will be published, so I might play with it myself, since it's got Linux inside.

I hope that the US version I'm going to buy will work in Europe eventually when 3G support arrives there; iRex said they are working on it, but cannot guarantee anything.

So, I'm anxiously waiting for the DR800SG to be available for purchase. It is said to appear in the middle of December at bestbuy.com in the USA. If I get to buy it, I'll post a hands on review here.