Here’s my Motorola Xoom review. I’ve actually had my Xoom for a while and have been comparing it with the Blackberry Playbook and Apple iPad 2 and too a lesser extent a Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Between them I’d say the Xoom feels the least like a mobile phone followed by the Playbook, iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab. The Xoom has by far the highest resolution display and it generally has the most icons and information per page. It feels like it’s made for a larger display where as the iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab feel like large phones. The Playbook also has a brand new OS which also feels tailored for a tablet.
The Xoom runs Android 3.0 Honeycomb which is specifically for tablets. A 3.1 update was recently announced.
You get a 10.1” LCD screen with a resolution of 1366x768 which is 33% higher than the iPad 2’s display (1024x768) and 71% more than the Playbook and Galaxy Tab (1024x600).
In portrait mode the iPad’s display is physically wider but the Xoom’s is longer.
In isolation the screen looks great but the iPad 2 and Playbook’s screens are much nicer. They have more contrast and amazing viewing angles. Just look at the picture.
The iPad 2 and Playbook displays have superior viewing angles whereas the Xoom’s get’s all milky looking. It’s not a bad display but it’s definitely not cutting edge.
On top of the Xoom is a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the left side are volume buttons. The power button is located on the back of the Xoom. On the bottom are the micro HDMI, micro USB, charging port and a docking station connector.
There is 32GB of storage built in along with a micro SDHC card slot that doesn’t work. The slot is supposed to be enabled in a future software update. It took about 40 seconds to copy a 360MB file to the Xoom which translates to roughly 8MB/s. That’s a decent speed.
You get stereo speakers which are located on the back. They sound about as loud as the single speaker you get on the iPad 2. I thought the speaker on the iPad sounded better. It’s more tight and controlled sounding where as the Xoom is a little sloppy sounding. On the other hand the Xoom’s sound surrounds you more whereas you can really tell where the iPad 2’s speaker is located. I wish the Xoom speakers faced forwards like on the Playbook. If you’re by a hard surface you can place the Xoom on it that the sound reflects off of the surface making it sound louder.
Android phones have a notification area at the top of the display which has information like the time, network signal strength, battery life, wifi signal strength. On Honeycomb the notification area is now located to the right at the bottom of the display. The menu buttons are now to the left of the notification area. There are usually 3 menu buttons; back, home plus a multitask button. Sometimes there’s a 4th button which brings up a program specific menu.
The multitask feature is neat because it brings up 5 thumbnails of running programs.
I find Honeycomb’s menu iconography to be ambiguous. You see, when you press the multitask button the list of running programs comes up from the bottom of the screen. The problem is, whenever I see the home button it looks like an up arrow which makes me think that it brings up the list of running programs. So every time I want to multitask I end up going back to the home screen instead. It’s a minor thing but I’m still not used to it so it really annoys me.
As far as app compatibility the Xoom is able to run most Android apps in full screen. There’s none of the iPad’s idiotic 1x or 2x mode where text is all pixelated.
You no longer pull the notification area down, instead you can just tap it.
To bring up the main menu you have to tap the apps button in top right corner. You can customize the home screen with widgets. There are 5 home screens.
There are both landscape and portrait modes. There is also an orientation lock. The Xoom is pretty good about not changing orientation when you don’t want it to.
The Xoom has on screen QWERTY keyboards in both landscape and portrait modes. While the Xoom’s built in keyboards aren’t bad they’re definitely not as good as the ones you get on the iPad or Playbook. I find I can type faster and more accurately with the iPad and Playbook on screen keyboards. One reason may be that when I hold the Xoom in landscape mode, it’s too wide for me to type on.
The YouTube app is different from the one you normally get with Android phones as are the Gallery and Browser. Other apps are also different but I thought I’d mention these 3.
The YouTube app has really makes good use of the extra screen resolution. It has home, browse and your channel tabs. Browse lets you view each YouTube category. My complaint about the channel tab is that it doesn’t take you back to your video list after you’ve watched a video. Another thing I noticed is that playback stutters whenever you’re in full screen high quality mode and there are menu elements showing. Once the menu elements disappear, playback is smooth.
The Gallery handles both video and pictures plus it has Picasa integration (I highly recommend it) and handles both picture and video duties. It has a very slick 3D interface. You can organize your media by folders, time, location or tags. My complaint is that when you sort it by time it sorts the photos by date instead of the folder creation date. When you choose to sort by folder it just sorts them alphabetically. This sorting slightly different from what you get on an Android phone and I found it slightly unintuitive. You can also choose to view just photos or videos.
Speaking of videos the Gallery app could really use better video codec support. The Xoom with it’s relatively large display and loud speakers cries out to be used as video player. Right now the best way to make sure a video will work is to transcode it with Handbrake on your computer first before you copy it to the Xoom.
The browser supports tabbed browsing complete with actual tabs that you can tap. I like how you can choose to open new tabs in the background (it’s an option in the browser settings) It also supports icognito mode which is useful if someone else wants to use the Xoom since it won’t remember any of their cookies or logins. It can sync your bookmarks with Google Chrome on your computer. There is support for Adobe Flash. Overall the browser is fast and works well.
You get a 5 megapixel camera on the back and a 2 mp in front. The rear facing camera is decent for a 5 mp camera. It does use really slow shutter speeds so watch out if for camera blur. The front facing camera isn’t very good. The camera app is pleasant to use. You can fit plenty of camera controls on the screen without making it feel too busy with a 10” screen. That said the large screen makes me feel funny when I use it to take pictures in public.
I had a chance to try some of Motorola’s Xoom accessories. Specifically the Portfolio case, Gel case and the HD Speaker dock.
The Porfolio case can hold the xoom up at 2 different angles. It clips on and has cut outs for the camera and speakers.
The Xoom’s connectors are located at the bottom so you can use the case to hold the Xoom up and charge it at the same time.
While I liked the portfolio case at first, it’s classy looking and nice to carry around my problem with it is that it scrapes the paint off the edges of the Xoom which is a big deal.
Another thing is that it doesn’t completely cover the sides - something banged against the Xoom while it was in my bag and some of the rubberized paint scratched off.
The Gel case is a silicon skin for the Xoom. It attracts an insane amount of dust like all silicon skins.
The HD speaker dock has 4 main features: it works with the portfolio or gel cases, it has a 30 watt power adapter, a micro HDMI connector on the back plus it has speakers. One thing the dock is missing is a USB plug in case you want to connect the Xoom to your computer with a wire.
The connector area can work with both cases; there are 2 different parts you can snap in to make them compatible.
The 30 watt power adapter is the same one you get with the ATRIX lapdock accessory. It’s different from the one you plug directly into the XOOM - it’s too big to fit in the XOOM. While they could use more bass the speakers are actually really loud, especially when you consider the size of the dock. They never sound strained.
I didn’t play with the optional Bluetooth keyboard. Presumably you can turn the Xoom into a desktop computer with that along with a dock and a monitor with hdmi.
Since the WiFi Xoom is wifi only and has a huge a battery it seems to last forever on a charge. Sometimes it’s not a bad thing to not have a HSPA modem built in.
While it’s true for almost all devices these days it’s worth mentioning at the Xoom didn’t give me any problems when it came to connecting and staying connected to my wifi hotspots.
Here’s what I liked about the Xoom, the screen is decent, the speakers are great and I really like the built in youtube, gallery and browser apps. The on screen keyboards aren’t great, and the Xoom desperately needs better codec support.
As far as stability goes my Xoom didn’t give me any big problems. It did stop responding as I type this (for me a very rare occurrence) but turning the screen off/on fixed it.
Compared to the iPad 2 I’d take the iPad 2 in a very close contest. While I don’t hate the Xoom’s UI I prefer the iPad’s. Yes it feels like a giant phone but it has a better keyboard and I prefer how you multitask on the iPad. I also like that when you multitask it brings up a list of recently used programs, an orientation lock and screen brightness controls
On the Xoom the multitask button only brings up 5 programs and the orientation lock. While not terribly inconvenient to use it isn't’ as convenient as the iPad’s multitasking. I also prefer how the rest of Xoom’s settings are a little more convenient to reach. I like how the Xoom has a notification area instead of the iPad’s annoying pop up notifications. I’m not a big fan of widgets but it’s worth noting that the Xoom has them and the iPad doesn’t. The Xoom’s browser is slightly better because of the actual browser tabs, the incognito mode the fact that you can open new tabs in the background and of course the Adobe Flash support. The Xoom also has a 5mp camera compared to the low resolution one on the iPad 2.
Between the Xoom and the Playbook I’d have to pick the Xoom. The Playbook has a nicer display, better keyboard, slicker menus and a better form factor but the Playbook is still very much a work in progress.
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