Do you ave more than 1,000 choices in your dropdown list? If so then you will be forced to use that pop up record picker search box.
But you are right, there is not a feature to dynamically offer choices when you have more than 1,000 records.
The only other off the wall idea if you prefer the drop down list, but have more than 1,000 choices is to contrive a way to limit the drop down to under 1,000 records via a conditional drop down. if you had any interest in that, i can describe further. With a drop down if you type quickly enough, it will position you to the, for example
az's if you type az , so you would be dynamically positioned to closer to your choice depending on how many characters you type..
