The first Android 3.0 tablet arrives to challenge the iPad 2
The
Motorola Xoom is the first Android 3.0 tablet to hit the market. That
makes it the first Android tablet to ship with an OS that's designed
especially for big screens, and that's why it's so exciting.
Every
tech gadget must be judged solely on what it provides, its purpose in
life, and whether it will help you accomplish tasks and enjoy your
media.
With the Motorola Xoom, it's too easy to make constant iPad (and iPad 2) comparisons. Can you purchase movies as easily? Does the screen get as grimy? Does it cost more?
Yet,
the Xoom is the first Android 3.0 tablet, the first really powerful
tablet with a dual-core processor, and a sleek, 10.1-inch slate that is
easy on the eyes.
You can check out our Android Tablet round-up to see how this slate measures up against three of its rivals below:
There's no question the Xoom is a brilliant tablet, one that is incredibly flexible in terms of media you can put on the device. With
a 5-megapixel front camera and a 2-megapixel rear-facing camera, 32GB
of local storage (plus a potential for more SD storage after the next
software update), 1GB of RAM, 4G support once the LTE roll-out starts
and after a software upgrade, and 10-hours of battery life, the Xoom has
the hardware specifications to make you sit up and take notice. Plus, the new Android 3.0 tablet interface lives and breathes in the open source world.
Frankly,
the Motorola Xoom blows the Samsung Galaxy Tab out of the water, and
that is saying something. We'll keep our iPad comparisons to a minimum
(hey, if you wanted one of those you would have bought one by now,
right?) and ratchet down our comparisons to the iPad 2 which ships in
the UK on 25 March.
The Xoom is the best Android tablet around and a device that is well worth serious consideration.
However,
before we go any further, we need to address pricing - the Motorola
Xoom is currently available for pre-order for £499. The 3G version is
set to cost £100 more at £599.
The next-best Android tablet, the
Samsung Galaxy Tab, costs £399.00 without a contract, which is quite a
bit lower than the Xoom. And, the Apple iPad 2 will start at £429.00 for
the Wi-Fi-only version, so the Xoom is expensive. Yet,
our overall impression testing the device is that it is a notable
upgrade from every other Android model, including the Dell Streak
series. The heart and soul of this tablet is the new Android 3.0
(Honeycomb) OS, which ran lightning fast in our tests on the Nvidia
Tegra 2 dual-core processor.
And we mean fast: finger swipes registered quickly and accurately, and the few games available ran smoothly. Android
3.0 is a brilliant interface for tablets – much more flexible than iOS
in that you can drop widgets all over your homescreens, and more
responsive and even better suited for reading books and playing games. The Xoom even touts this fact in the Google Books app: there's a cool page flipping animation.
The
Xoom has a decidedly PC-like UI in that you can press a button to see
all open apps (unfortunately, you can't selectively close them from here
but you can close apps through a memory manager under the settings
screen), click the clock to see notifications and access settings, and
move objects around the screen easier.
Features
At
first glance, the Motorola Xoom looks smaller than the Apple iPad. In
truth, they both have a 10.1-inch screen, but the Xoom has a thinner
bezel.
At 249.1mm x 167.8mm x 12.9mm, the Xoom is a bit longer
than it is wide, and that caused a few minor issues when grabbing the
device with one hand. It's also wider than the Galaxy Tab, which is
easier to grab with one hand. Another
first impression is that the device feels heavy. In reality, at 730g,
it is only 50 grams heavier than the iPad. By contrast, the Galaxy Tab
is 599g, making it a bit more mobile.
Part of the reason for the extra weight in the Xoom is that there are beefier internal components.
The
Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, running at 1GHz per core, is capable of
handling some tougher tablet computing chores. In our tests, games like Angry Birds ran without the typical pausing and hiccups of other Android tablets. Motorola
said the dual-core processor also helps with browsing, presumably
because of memory management and dolling out computing chores to each
core. Wonder
of wonders, you can load up the Xoom browser with multiple tabs, as on
your desktop. The 1GB of RAM is up to the task, and we had
TechRadar.com, YouTube.com, GamesRadar.com, and several other sites all
running at the same time without any trouble (by contract, the Motorola
Atrix we just reviewed, which runs in a unique webtop mode, has memory
trouble with too many tabs open). With
the 32GB of internal storage, we decided to load up our review unit
with as much media (photos, music, and videos), Word documents and Excel
spreadsheets, and extra fluff as possible, including some accounting
files we knew wouldn't even work. No USB charging
The
Xoom has one strange 'gotcha' in that, when you connect to your PC to
add files, the device does not charge. Instead, the Xoom only charges
using the power adapter, which is a bit limiting (In truth, the iPad
only trickle charges over USB anyway and does not charge as fast as it
does normally). The
Xoom has up and down volume buttons on the left side. The spongy case
that Motorola included with our review kit covers those two buttons in a
way that makes it hard to control volume (Motorola offers a full
wrap-around case as well). The
power button is on the back of the device by the camera, which makes it
hard to find, especially for tablet newcomers. There are two ports
under the device, one for HDMI-out (used for mirroring to your HDTV) and
one for USB. YouTube : youtubeurlThe
10.1 screen can play 1080p content and looks bright and crisp.
Unfortunately, there is no extra screen coating on the Xoom display so
it tends to attract thumbprints and other grime.
During our
testing process, we had several other technical users try out the
device, and one common complaint was that the device felt a bit slick,
oddly rectangular, and accumulated too much grime.
Interface
The Xoom uses an interface that should appeal to the technically savvy user.
The
iPad does not support widgets at all, and that is the main
differentiator here: you can drop weather widgets, your daily schedule, a
mini view of your e-mail and a clock pretty much anywhere you want.
This works much more like you'd expect from a tablet. The Galaxy Tab and
Dell Streak are much more limiting. By
default, the Xoom comes with a wide assortment of built-in apps
including an e-mail client, browser, contacts database, calculator,
scheduler, and maps.
The YouTube app is quite impressive, showing a
movie theater look for the most popular videos that you can flip
through from side to side. The Maps app provides a 3D view of major
cities that you can swivel any which way. Google
has added a few of their own extra apps. There's Google Talk for
instant messaging, a voice search app, Latitude for sharing your
location with friends, and Google Sky Map, which works better on the
Xoom than any smartphone because of the larger screen size for
inspecting constellations. The
Gallery app for Android 3.0 is quite useful -- it groups photo albums
automatically by source, such as Picasa Web Albums versus local shots.
The slideshow viewer shows the "Ken Burns" effect that gradually zooms
in.
Motorola Xoom: Android Market and Apps
The Xoom includes the Android Market app, and Android 3.0 apps are separated from the pack.
There
are only about 20 of them, including Fruit Ninja HD, Google Sky Map,
and a game called Dungeon Defense that is short but engaging.
Some
of the apps are just average. The CNN app is just a portal to its web
page, and the Pulse reader, which shows RSS feeds, is overly textual
(even though it has a legion of fans). On
'the big screen' these smartphone apps need to do more than just adjust
the location of data entry fields and provide a more tablet-like
experience. For example, something with better tablet-size nav buttons.
The
best use of the screen real estate is the Movie Studio app, which lets
you edit imported videos quickly through a scrub interface. Oddly, this
is the only app that would pause occasionally, thinking about the video
clips. Also, it is nowhere near as powerful as the multi-track, effects laden iMovie app for iPad 2.
That
said, it is easy to envision a day when there are thousands and
thousands of good, functional Android 3.0 apps. After all. there are
more Android phones in use in the world than iPhones.
Motorola Xoom: Android Market and Apps
The Xoom includes the Android Market app, and Android 3.0 apps are separated from the pack.
There
are only about 20 of them, including Fruit Ninja HD, Google Sky Map,
and a game called Dungeon Defense that is short but engaging.
Some
of the apps are just average. The CNN app is just a portal to its web
page, and the Pulse reader, which shows RSS feeds, is overly textual
(even though it has a legion of fans). On
'the big screen' these smartphone apps need to do more than just adjust
the location of data entry fields and provide a more tablet-like
experience. For example, something with better tablet-size nav buttons.
The
best use of the screen real estate is the Movie Studio app, which lets
you edit imported videos quickly through a scrub interface. Oddly, this
is the only app that would pause occasionally, thinking about the video
clips. Also, it is nowhere near as powerful as the multi-track, effects laden iMovie app for iPad 2.
That
said, it is easy to envision a day when there are thousands and
thousands of good, functional Android 3.0 apps. After all. there are
more Android phones in use in the world than iPhones.
Usability
One
of the most interesting findings with the Motorola Xoom is that, since
it has so few hardware buttons, it is easier to focus almost entirely on
the screen.
There's no hunting around for a home button once you
get used to the fact that the icon is on the lower left (placed right
where you'll find the Start button on a Windows PC).
Interestingly,
we found Xoom to be quite fun to use - it has a bit more complex
usability than the iPad but is easier to use than the Dell and Samsung
tablets because of the improvements in Android 3.0. We
enjoyed learning how the OS works and clicking on notification screens.
They have an undeniably "space age" look, like something from Star
Trek. The
physical size and slightly slippery feel meant the Xoom was just a hair
less usable for daily tasks than other Android tabs. We like how the
Samsung and Dell models are smaller for e-book reading on a whim. That
said, the Xoom feels well-constructed and the larger screen size is a
major bonus.
In fact, the overall dimensions are smaller than the first iPad but the screen is the same size.
Because
Motorola offers a dock for the Xoom, charging was easy and relatively
quick - we found the unit charged up in just two hours and lasted the
full ten. You can't trickle-charge from a USB connection, though. The
Xoom is nearly instant-on from a sleep state. At boot-up, you will
stare at the dual-core processor logo for a few seconds before you see a
honeycomb animation that lasts another few seconds. There's a cool
circle where you move an icon to the edge to unlock.
As we
mentioned, we prefer the smaller Dell and Samsung size for e-books, but
the Xoom is actually a very good e-reader. The Google Books app includes
most major titles, and books look very clean and readable in a
horizontal view. In vertical mode, pages were a bit too long and harder
to read.
Media
As
we mentioned at the outset, one major strength of the Xoom is
flexibility with media. We ripped several unprotected DVD discs,
including some band concerts, and saved the files as MPEG4 videos. When
you connect the Xoom to a PC, you see folders with logical names, like
movies and music. The concert films played back in high-quality 1080p
video on the device without any stuttering. You
can also play H.263 and H.264 video files, and the Xoom doesn't care
where the videos come from -- we copied videos we recorded using a Sony
camcorder, ripped on a Mac using Handbrake, and downloaded over Torrent
feeds and they all played smoothly and accurately.
We had similar
success with music files. The Xoom supports AAC and MP3 files, plus a
few other less common formats. Importantly, playing very high quality
MP3 tracks worked smoothly. Once again, the faster dual-core processor
helps keep audio files clear. The
generic music app included with the Xoom is functional if a bit
limited. You can scan through album covers quickly, but there is no
built-in media store -- to buy albums, you have to switch over to the
Amazon MP3 app. We imagine Android 3.0 apps for music playback, will
make their way onto the Android Market soon.
Speakers on the back
of the Xoom sounded loud and without the typical distortion of other
tablets. We wish they were just a bit more powerful because the Xoom
could have worked well as a kitchen-counter music player. We're sure
there'll be plenty of peripherals for that, though.
The TFT LCD
screen is similar to those used for laptops. At 1280x800 pixels, the
screen is actually higher-res than the Apple iPad, which uses an
in-plane switching (IPS) display that's better for wide viewing angles
but is only 1024x768 pixels.
Of course, the one major mark against
the Xoom is that there is no way to rent or buy TV shows and movies on
the device. At least the Galaxy Tab has the Movie Hub app, which works
pretty well. Unfortunately,
the Xoom does not yet support Flash content in the browser, which means
sites like Hulu.com do not work for watching videos. Unlike the Atrix
phone, the Xoom also does not support DLNA streaming from a computer.
Camera We'll admit that shooting video and snapping photos with a tablet is a bit awkward.
On
the Motorola Xoom, you can get a slightly better grip holding the
device horizontally, and the results for both images and video looked
quite clean.
There are quite a few options for setting effects
(like sepia tone or black and white), setting exposure for specific
scenes (such as night or snow), and choosing white balance options for
sunlight or inside lighting conditions. The
interface for the camera is a high mark -- the settings are all on the
right where you can easily tap them as you hold up the device. You can
also switch between the rear and front cameras. See full-res imageAn advanced menu lets you set picture quality, megapixel size, and even make fine adjustments to the exposure level. See full-res imageAll
of our test shots looked quite crisp, but there is a definite "shaky
cam" feel to videos since it is hard to keep your hands steady. Recorded
video looked crisp in high-def but we are not ready to ditch a real
camcorder anytime soon. Benchmarks
Motorola Xoom benchmarks
How it rates against the rest - higher is better
How we test
TechRadar
aims to produce the most helpful tablet reviews on the web, so that
you are able to make a more informed buying decision.
Part of
this testing process includes benchmarking. It's a good way of
measuring the overall performance of a product's internal hardware
components.
We use Antutu System Benchmark to test tablets. It's a comprehensive Android benchmarking app and produces consistent results.
Antutu
measures an Android device's CPU performance, 2D and 3D graphics
performance, memory speed and internal and external storage read/write
speeds. It combines the results for each test and gives the device a
final score.
We test each device three times and take an average.
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