Motorola Xoom

Review summary

Good points

Bad points

Our verdict

For a tablet that went against the iPad 2, I must say it is still one of the best around and the Android operating system update has only added to the phone’s capabilities.

Full review

The Motorola Xoom was Motorola’s first edition in the tablet market, before they got took over by their operating system, Google. It still impresses us, with its intuitive interface which is fast and capable of working at very dense pushes and a camera that makes most tablets look like gravelly dirt, we would still feel it can keep up with today’s top tablets.

Display

We found that the display was very nice, it has a good array of colour and brightness was fine, going from drowning dark to mellow white if you want. However, we did find that the pixel density was rather off-putting on some applications, making us question whether something went wrong, because the PPI is on level with the iPad 2.

Design

For some reason, we see a lot of the iPad on the Motorola Xoom, the 10-inch slate, even though a touch larger than the iPad, has many features in the design the same as the iPad.

That being said, the black matte colour more than secludes this idea that Motorola have just made a mere copy of the iPad and in some ways we found that the Xoom differed from the iPad.

Overall though, we found the Motorola Xoom to be a comfortable, if sometimes a little too slippery, tablet.

Operating System

It was the first to bare the Honeycomb operating system, and has recently switched to the more ground-breaking Ice Cream Sandwich , adding its Motorola distinctions where it could.

We found that the operating system is smooth and there are lots of good features on the Xoom. That being said, we found the home-screens with the everlasting (or so it seems) widgets count to be quite an off-putting feature.

Apps

Even though the Android Market has got quite larger, with more developers adding their apps to it, we did find that it is still not as large as the iPad’s.

Using Android Market smartphone applications was okay, although I wouldn’t say it was great – obviously, as the tablet market grows, we may not have to use this horrific way of playing games.

Features

The Tegra 2, which was just recently surpassed by the impressive Tegra 3, can handle almost any game, app or internet browse your throw at it. It is true, we do find that the Tegra 2 cannot be compared to its upgraded self, but it still works very well on the Xoom.

32GB’s of expandable storage is a good amount and allows the user to have near to 100GB’s of storage, if they really need that much.

If you enjoy charging via USB, you’ll be hard done by with the Xoom, as it comes without USB charging and doesn’t allow it. It seems this is a pattern many tablets are taking, although I cannot for the life of me understand why.

1080p video playback is still the best quality there is on tablets, and the Xoom seemed to throw this on their tablet earlier than most. They also support flash, so a double win there.

Connectivity

Understandably, I wouldn’t even expect the Xoom to have 4G capabilities, since it came out over a year ago. The 3G connection supplements most needs and the processor works very well when loading.

The Xoom also comes with Wi-Fi only, in case you are scared of taking the tablet outside your house.

Camera

We won’t lie, we still find that no tablet can really be a cutting edge camera – but Xoom’s 5-megapixel rear is possibly the best one we’ve used so far.

Other than images actually coming out well on most of our shots, the interface to take the photos is quite well developed and there is a good amount of editing services.

Battery

The battery life is quite impressive on tablet terms, serving about 10-15 hours depending on how long you use it. The battery doesn’t have any large power outages if you use a certain app or use flash, which I’m quite astonished by – it seems well maintained, as it never seems to dip past 6 hours, even when watching endless videos on YouTube.

Overall

The Xoom seems like a solid choice, good new operating system, stable battery life, decent camera, nice crisp display and a conservative design with a little zest.

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