Motorola's Xoom is the first Honeycomb-based tablet; but how does it fare against Apple's iPad 2? There's a lot to go over, from Google's new software platform to Nvidia's Tegra 2. Let's dig a little deeper to see how the tablet world is shaping up.
Intel founder Andy Groove once famously quipped, “Only the paranoid survive.” And if you’re a notebook manufacturer, there’s plenty to be paranoid about. Tablet sales are growing at what other mobile solution providers might consider an alarming rate. From one year to the next, you're looking at nearly doubled sales. Meanwhile, the already-mature notebook market is growing at a much slower pace.
No one saw this coming. Apple jump-started the tablet market by introducing its iPad in 2010 (
check out our iPad 2 review), and it was a total shock to many industry observers. Here was what looked like an oversized smartphone, armed with a standard (4:3) aspect ratio display that sold like hotcakes. Almost incredibly, last quarter, close to 20% of Apple’s total revenue ($13.5 billion) came from iPad sales. So, is it really any wonder why every other company wants to now jump up on the tablet bandwagon?
The problem is that no one has Apple’s experience combining hardware and software. This void is creating some interesting partnerships. For example, Nvidia sees huge potential in selling mobile hardware, which explains all the cash it’s spending to develop Tegra. But it doesn't have any background on the software side. Conversely, Google has a great mobile operating system known as Android, but it doesn't really do anything with hardware. Motorola is good at creating mobile platforms, but it lacks a touchscreen-based OS, and it's also out of touch with designing processors. So, you really need all three working together to design a suitable alternative to Apple's iPad.
This makes the tablet scene a lot more exciting than reviewing desktop PCs, where you might get a couple of different components and some custom paint. When you buy a tablet other than an iPad, you're getting something completely different. That’s why I was excited when a Motorola Xoom turned up on my doorstep. It’s not just a product of Motorola’s engineering. It’s also a reflection on Google and Nvidia, and it promises a completely different experience.
The Xoom is nowhere near as thin or light as the iPad 2, but perhaps that's to be expected from a first-generation Android-based tablet. Apple’s already at work designing its third-generation iPad, so the Xoom’s physical size comes across as a disappointment.
| iPad (3G) | iPad 2 (3G) | Xoom |
|---|
| Length | 9.56" | 9.5" | 9.8" |
|---|
| Width | 7.47" | 7.31" | 6.6" |
|---|
| Height | .5" | .34" | 0.5" |
|---|
| Screen Size | 9.7" | 9.7" | 10.1" |
|---|
| Aspect Ratio | 4:03 | 4:03 | 16:10 |
|---|
| Weight | 1.6 lb. | 1.33 lb. | 1.5 lb. |
|---|
Compared to Apple's hardware design, the most obvious physical difference is Motorola’s use of a wide (16:10) aspect ratio panel, which is naturally narrower than the iPad's 4:3 screen with a 1024x768 resolution. As a result, you’re going to find yourself holding the Xoom mostly in landscape mode.
As its name not-so-subtly suggests, Apple is going for the pad of paper approach, which is why it sticks to a standard (4:3) aspect ratio. It’s possible to use the Xoom in portrait mode, but we find it to be a slightly awkward experience. You lose a lot of horizontal workspace. Think about flipping your widescreen monitor 90 degrees for a sense of what we're talking about.
The physical layout of the Xoom lends itself to use in landscape mode anyway. For example, if you hold the tablet with two hands, you’ll find the volume controls located on the left side. Unfortunately, the buttons are so small that there’s almost no tactile feedback. The benefit is that you don’t have to worry about accidentally increasing (or decreasing volume). But bigger buttons with higher depression resistance would have solved that problem, while still letting you increase the volume without using fingertips.
Motorola has a good eye for aesthetics, but it doesn’t have Apple's industrial design accolades. For the first time though, the Xoom looks and feels like a tablet that I don’t have to coddle. On the back-side, the black portion of the Xoom is made of rubberized plastic, while the grey larger grey portion is made of brushed aluminum. Both areas have excellent finishes. If you drag the Xoom across a table, you don’t hear the noise of particles grinding against its surface. Better yet, I don’t even see a single scratch after a full week of use.
| Camera | iPad 2 | Xoom |
|---|
| Front-Facing | 0.3 MP (640x480) | 2.0 MP (1600 x 1200) |
|---|
| Rear-Facing | 0.7 MP (960x720) | 5.0 MP (2592 x 1944) |
|---|
While the front of the Xoom is equipped with a 2.0 MP camera, the back-side sports a more generous 5.0 MP camera with a dual-LED flash. That’s a substantial benefit compared to the <1.0 MP cameras on the iPad 2 (more on that in a bit). Two stereo speakers next to the rear camera lens are supposed to offer better audio performance than the iPad's mono speaker, but they're weak to be of any practical use other than the generic audio notifications. If you plan to watch a movie or listen to music, use the audio port on top of the tablet to connect a pair of headphones.
The Xoom comes with a microSD slot, but this remains unsupported, even with the new Android 3.1 update. Hopefully, Motorola enables this feature soon. I like the idea of a single tablet model with the option to upgrade capacity later, but the company seems to be dragging its feet supporting expandable memory, even though other Android-based tablets don’t suffer this limitation.
All of the I/O ports are predictably located at the bottom, but cable management is three times more complicated than Apple’s single-connector setup. Motorola makes accessibility easy by sticking to the USB standard. Unfortunately, you can’t charge over USB; you have to use a separate power charger, which makes traveling with the tablet a little less convenient. Now you need to keep track of two cables. Outputting video is easy, since you only need a Mini HDMI-to-HDMI cable. But again, this increases cable complexity if you want to dock, charge, and output video at the same time.
