Iīve bought Serif Drawplus 4 and 5 and then returned the v5 for a refund. There isnīt trial versions of Serif products but you can buy and return them if you are not happy with the product as i did.

Regarding the software itself, it isnīt by any means at the same level as Xara. Drawplus specs seems impressive on the paper, with some advanced stuff - gradient meshes, vector painting (brushes), targeted insert, solo mode etc- but in practice they were implemented in a loose way. They lack precision or are very limited - for example the vector painting is based on bitmap brushes that conform to the vector path. Most of the brushes itself arenīt vector and although you can create them as vector they are very limited since you canīt group them, use transparency or any blend effects.

Other features are very basic and donīt even offer a precise way to control them (contour effects for example); The gradient mesh doesnīt conform two the shape itīs applied to. Itīs a simple mesh rectangle placed over the shape that you have to adjust manually. And again doesnīt support transparency or blending effects. Itīa solid mesh if i remember correctly.

Surprisingly they offer full support for opentype fonts (ligatures and all extra stuff) and their PDF import/export is very good (both coming from their experience in Pageplus). Overall itīs not a powerfull vector illustration software. It seems directed more at hobbyists than enthusiasts/professionals. Most of the tools are basic, thereīs a lot of pre-made effects and stuff to drag and use, and too much help boxes for this and that. Their last version as someone already pointed out has lot of bugs. A new version (Drawplus X6) should be out soon.

If itīs vector drawing youīre looking for, Xara is much more powerfull, even without the advanced stuff like the gradient mesh tool or the skeletal brushes.
The implementation of the tools Xara have are more precise, offer more settings to tweak, and the level of interaction between objects, groups, blends, transparency, text and so on give you plenty of power and freedom to create almost anything you want with precision. Itīs a more "mature" software by far.