Motorola Xoom
Reviewer Rating: 
Review Summary:
The Xoom hardware is outstanding, but it lacks decent apps support. It’s still a good tablet with great promise.
Pros
- Honeycomb OS lives up to hype
- Amazing display
- Great Tegra 2 performance
Cons
- Android tablet apps still limited
- Basic on-screen keyboard
- Awkward app management in Honeycomb
Motorola Xoom Full Review
Editor's Note: This review was updated on 5/24/11 to reflect the Honeycomb 3.1 updateCan the Motorola Xoom possibly live up to the hype? It was dubbed an iPad killer before anyone got his or her hands on it. It was priced $800 at launch, making it more expensive than a comparable iPad. The folks behind the Droid smartphone make it, and the Droid was arguably the first Android handset to rival the iPhone. It is also the first tablet to feature an operating system developed by Google specifically for tablets.
TabletPCReview gave high marks to the other Android-powered iPad-killer, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, even though it lacked polish and a true tablet OS. The Motorola Xoom has at least one of those qualities in the form of Honeycomb, but is that enough? Should the 15 million plus iPad owners ditch Apple's offering and ignore the iPad 2, zoom over to Verizon or Best Buy, and pick up a Xoom? And perhaps, more importantly, does the Xoom make a compelling case for those undecided about tablets?Motorola Xoom specs:
- Android Honeycomb (3.0)
- 10.1-inch diagonal capacitive touchscreen (1280 x 800, 16:10)
- NVIDIA T20, dual core
- 1GB LP DDR2
- 32GB internal memory, MicroSD expandable
- Front-facing 2.0 megapixel webcam, rear 5.0 megapixel camera with flash
- Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz & 5GHz 802.11 b/g/n, 3G (CDMA EV-DO Rev A), 4G Upgradable (LTE)
- Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR + HID
- USB port, HDMI input, 3.5mm input
- 9.80 x 6.61 x 0.51 inches
- 1.61 pounds
- Price at Launch: $799.99 w/o contract, $599.99 with two-year agreement
There is very little tablet makers can do to distinguish their devices from the rest of the heap, but Motorola does its best to stick out, with slight design tweaks that work both for and against it.
The Xoom is an all-black tablet with rounded edges and a slightly textured and rubberized back that splits about a quarter of the way down from the top. The upper portion is slightly smoother and more “rubbery” than the bottom portion. We found the Xoom back preferable to the all-plastic back of the Samsung Galaxy Tab base model (not the Verizon Tab, which had small rubber bullets) and Apple iPad. Compared to the available competition, the Xoom is just easier to hold, and the back shrugs off fingerprints well.
As with other tablets, all the ports are found around the edges. The mini-USB and mini-HDMI ports are on the bottom next to a docking input and charger port, and the 3.5MM headphone jack is on the top next to a notch hiding the MicroSD slot and SIM card slot.
There are two volume buttons on the left side, while the right side has nothing.i
The power/lock button is on the back of the device, sitting to the right of the two on-board speakers. The rear camera lens and camera flash sit between them.
In contrast with many Android handsets, there are no buttons on the front of the Xoom. There is just the 10.1-inch display and front-facing camera. I expected this to be an issue, but I quickly adjusted, and the lack of buttons gives the Xoom a much more modern feel than rival tablets.
Due to its size, the Xoom is very much a two-handed tablet. It's too large and heavy for prolonged one-handed use, unlike the 7-inch Galaxy Tab. But it also feels more sturdy than Samsung's Android tablet, and even the first-generation iPad.
If there is a design flaw, it's in the rear camera lens placement, and its unfortunately not uncommon with tablets. The lens is only slightly recessed from the body, leaving it vulnerable to fingerprints and scratches. Users that value on-board cameras will want to invest in a folio or be especially careful when laying the tablet down on a surface.
Screen and Speakers
The familiar four-button Android setup has been replaced with screen icons tucked in the lower-left corner of the display, which include recent-app/multi-tasking, home, and back commands. A notification panel featuring the battery gauge, data connection, clock, and access to the quick settings sits on the right-hand corner.An apps shortcut, home screen customization shortcut sits atop the right corner of the display, and two search icons sit on the top left corner… one for text search and the other for voice commands.
The display is extremely glossy and reflective, and image quality is stunning and highly detailed. Viewing angles are limited only by the gloss, but are more than acceptable as the Xoom maintains color and detail even at sharp angles. Viewing head on, colors look superb and the HD video is some of the best we've seen on a portable device. Even standard video compares favorably with iPad and Galaxy Tab output.
Touch input is smooth, precise and responsive. In our time with the Xoom, the tablet recognized the intended tap nearly all of the time and errant presses were at a minimum. The Xoom features the standard flick-to-scroll and pinch-to-zoom controls, so those familiar with touchscreens will have no trouble navigating.
The stereo speakers are impressive for a portable device in both fidelity and volume, but their placement on the back of the Xoom is a double-edged sword. Ideally, the speakers would face the front so the user could experience the sound in all its stereo glory, but that would compromise the Xoom and basic tablet design. Instead, the speakers face away from the device and predictably result in slightly muffled sound. Perhaps unintentionally however, this actually works well with two-handed gaming, as the speakers are situated in such a way that the speaker vibration adds a haptic element to the overall gaming experience.
Performance
The Xoom sports a dual-core Tegra 2 processor, and it seems the immediate Honeycomb competition will have one as well when those tablets finally ship. That's probably a good thing since active widgets are central to the Honeycomb experience, and a puny ARM processor might have trouble keeping things fluid.
In fact, we loaded up the Xoom with numerous widgets for multiple email accounts, Twitter feeds, weather, news, and Facebook, and it performed nobly. However, performance took a slight, but still noticeable hit in the form of occasional lag when we had multiple downloads overlapping with widgets and apps. Heavy processing also produced minor amounts of heat.Web browsing is also fast and efficient over Wi-Fi and 3G, and Flash performance is good with Honeycomb 3.1 and Flash Player 10.3. However, users will have to manually download a Flash Player from the Android Market. It is free, but requires Honeycomb 3.1.
In the Sunspider Javascript runtime benchmark, the Xoom was in the same ballpark as other tablets released around the same time, but bested only the BlackBerry PlayBook and HTC Flyer.
| Benchmark (average, lower is better) | |
| ASUS Eee Pad Transformer (3.0) | 1908.23 ms |
| LG G-Slate (3.0) | 2012.2 ms |
| iPad 2 | 2060.37 ms |
| Motorola Xoom (3.1) | 2104.2 ms |
| BlackBerry PlayBook | 2404.23 ms |
| HTC Flyer (2.3) | 2470.2 ms |
| Benchmark (average, higher is better) | |
| LG G-Slate (3.0) | 2240.8 |
| ASUS Eee Pad Transformer (3.0) | 2209.2 |
| HTC Flyer (2.3) | 2099.2 |
| Motorola Xoom (3.1) | 1900.6 |
Video chat over 3G, while possible, is buggy and choppy. Both audio and video cut out and it's near impossible to carry a conversation.
The Xoom took roughly 40 seconds to start up, both loaded up with apps and widgets, and fresh out of the box following a basic set up. Verizon claims the Xoom will last for 10 hours of video streaming. Under reasonable conditions, we can see the Xoom hitting that mark. We squeezed out just over seven hours of constant video streaming over YouTube, but that was with Wi-Fi on and max screen brightness, not to mention multiple widgets and processes running.
Finally, the onboard cameras are both decent, but not outstanding. They are on par with most smartphones, and a step below pocket HD camcorders and point-and-shoot digicams. But the Xoom surpasses the low-end of those devices in terms of picture controls and effects.
Honeycomb
It seems the hype surrounding Honeycomb has rivaled any major Windows release to date. And to its credit, the new version of Android is an extremely serviceable tablet operating system – much more so than previous versions of Android. In fact, it arguably offers more customization and offers a better overall experience than iOS, but it's still not without issues.
Functionally speaking, Honeycomb is not much different from Froyo (Android 2.2). The standard five-homescreens are still present, and a prolonged tap brings up new pages to assign various widgets, app shortcuts, and wallpapers to. Unlike mobile Android, Honeycomb allows users to place the shortcuts on any one of the five homescreens, not just the homescreen on which the user called up from the menu.
As mentioned earlier in the review, there are omnipresent shortcuts/soft keys on the bottom left corner to go back, call up the central homescreen, and see a list of the five most recent or running apps, which can double as an app setting menu. Honeycomb also offers very attractive 3D and scaling effects when navigating through homescreens or opening and closing programs.
If there's an issue with Honeycomb, it's that there is no simple way to manage the widgets and apps. Users have to navigate over to the settings menu to close apps and deactivate widgets. While Android has always been able to effectively manage available memory by nixing low-priority processes when resources become scarce, we'd like to see a little more control in the user's hands.
We also weren't very pleased with the Honeycomb keyboard. There is nothing wrong with it in utility terms, but it is extremely plain, and does not feature any haptic feedback. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has both the key vibration and Swype (swipe to text), and we would have loved to see them on the Xoom. As it stands, users have to peck away at the virtual keyboard to enter text.
The plain keyboard is most likely a causality of the Xoom being a pure Google device, which thankfully means the tablet is free of any custom skin or bloatware, from both Motorola and Verizon. Given a choice however, we'd accept a few V Cast shortcuts if they meant a Swype keyboard.
Apps Apple still has Android beat when it comes to tablet apps, and it's not even close. While the number of Honeycomb apps increases every day, Apple's lead is measured in tens of thousands. Of course, Android smartphone apps work as well, and developers have been hastily updating them to fit in the full Xoom screen. Still, too many apps we downloaded were limited in some form. They either didn't fill the screen completely (which absolutely crippled them on the large screen), featured tiny icons, or were stuck in portrait mode.
Thankfully, the Gmail and other default apps that ship with the Xoom are much more polished, with Gmail featuring the most drastic update. Those familiar with the old Android Gmail app will be pleased to see the Honeycomb app is much more robust, offering columns that allow users to easily navigate folders, read messages, and drag and drop emails.
Google maps, which is essentially the same as the recently-updated smartphone version, looks superb on the big screen and is also very responsive. The Android Market, YouTube app and Google Books have all received graphical overhauls for the better, and the Movie Studio app is robust for a portable program, giving users basic video editing tools for cutting and splicing footage. The browser sports an extremely clean interface and, assuming it gets Flash support soon, compares favorably with any other mobile offering.
Entertainment is a different story. Netflix and Hulu apps are still MIA in the Android Market, though available for the iPad. Xoom owners can rent movies through the Android Market, which charges $4.99 for popular new releases, and in between $1.99 and $3.99 for everything else. Users have 30 days from the time of rental to watch the movie, but only 24 hours to finish it once started. Also, movies can only be watched once. One cool feature is that they can be purchased and downloaded from a PC through the online Android Market for playback on the Xoom, and they can be played back even when the Xoom is offline, like on a flight. Google reps claim they offer "thousands" of titles, and the selections seem deep enough that you'll find a movie worth renting in a pinch. Still, it doesn't make me miss Netflix any less.
GamingBy Grant Hatchimonji
There are only a few tablet apps and even fewer games, but I was able to spend time with three of them: Gun Bros, PewPew, and Dungeon Defenders: First Wave Deluxe, which came pre-loaded on the Xoom. The first thing that stood out to me is that they are still exceedingly simplistic.
It's difficult to make a case for gaming on tablets when two of the three games I played—Gun Bros and Dungeon Defenders—were basically just tower defense games, while PewPew was just a take on Asteroids. We've seen the peak of tower defense games (Plants vs. Zombies) and now it's time to move on and come up with something new for tablets.Another issue was the control schemes, which are inherently doomed in tablet games given the button-less design of the devices. For example, Dungeon Defenders' choice of having a singular directional “pad” that, by design, forces your character to always move while you frantically try to point him in the right direction like a cruise missile out of control was a poor one.
Simplistic games and crummy control schemes aside, the visuals may have been the biggest disappointment of all. Despite the Xoom's powerful internals, the graphics are akin to those of the Nintendo DS. Textures are bland and character models are blocky in a look that is easily outshined by the PlayStation Portable.
On a more positive note, the game menus are generally sleek, well animated, and work well in the tablet format. And sure, the games ran smoothly and visuals were free of any lag, but I wouldn't expect any less with the way they looked.
Finally, the best part about my gaming experience on the Xoom was the sound. The twin speakers that adorn the back of the device gave the games' sounds a certain level of respectability, making them far richer than anything I've heard on tablets before.
Conclusion
In our original conclusion, we said that it's hard not to think the Xoom was released too soon. It's not that it seemed rushed. On the contrary, the Xoom was and is a darned fine piece of hardware. The dual-core processor keeps things humming along smoothly, and though we tried with widgets and apps, we couldn't overwhelm the Tegra 2.
It's just that this Honeycomb tablet didn't have the app support at launch necessary to proclaim the Xoom a must buy. Close to three months later, that is still the case.What the Xoom and Honeycomb do well, they do exceedingly well. Honeycomb lives up to the hype, touch navigation is superb, the display is gorgeous, and Google Maps, Gmail, video chat with Google Talk, and every tablet app we tested are extremely well realized, Grant's gaming observations notwithstanding.
The recent Honeycomb 3.1 update rounds out some of the Xoom's rough edges, brings stable Flash and movies. Still, we stand by our original assertion that the Xoom is a good tablet with great promise.
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