Product Listing

Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi - Zooming Past the Competition

By Sidney Wong - 25 May 2011
Launch SRP: S$888

Conclusion

The Race has Just Begun

To be frank, we enjoyed ourselves during our time reviewing the Motorola Xoom. As the world's first Honeycomb tablet, it definitely lives up to the hype and it delivered a smoother experience than on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 with its own user interface layer. We certainly welcome the new Android interface with its tablet-friendly apps and widgets. There is little cause to doubt that Android is catching up fast with iOS. The Honeycomb OS is more polished, allowing for a smoother and more fluid touch screen experience. Pinch-to-zoom is flawless on the large screen, which gives us so much more room to work with. Motorola has consistently produced mobile devices with superior build quality and the Xoom is no exception. While it may be a tad heavy, the Xoom compensates with its solid build and smooth finish.

The Motorola Xoom has set a high benchmark for all other Honeycomb based tablets following suit. While we doubt there will be a lot of differentiation, it remains to be seen if Motorola's Xoom can maintain its composure and still deliver the subtle edge in the face of competition just like its successful first Milestone Android phone.

Nonetheless, there are areas that Motorola can improve on. We would have liked to see better camera performance and battery life to boost the Xoom's standing as a true multimedia tablet. To be fair, we do not expect tablets to replace our digital cameras and neither do not want the Xoom to get any heavier due to a higher capacity battery. We also hope Google and Motorola can collaborate further to refine power management aspects of both software and hardware, which  while it's already decent, there's potential for it to be better. Another area which the Motorola Xoom lost points is its inability to charge the device via the microUSB port. Other smartphones and tablets can do this, yet Motorola overlooks this functional aspect and requires users to have yet another charging cable.

Despite some niggling aspects, the Motorola Xoom in many ways, seems to be one of the best Android tablets in the market at the moment. At the recommended retail price of S$888, the Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi costs significantly more than Apple's iPad 2 32GB Wi-Fi (S$798) and the Acer Iconia Tab A500 (S$799). This puts the Xoom slightly above the price bracket of its competitors despite them having similar build quality and features. Other manufacturers are also releasing tablets models of comparable specifications at competitive pricings. There is a need for Motorola, and other manufacturers adopting the Android OS, to differentiate themselves.

The rate of Android development also casts doubts over the shelf life of the Honeycomb tablets. Even before other Honeycomb tablets hit our shores, Google has announced the next Android OS (codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich) for tablets and smartphones. It is scheduled for release in Q4 of 2011. For now, we can only look forward to the Android 3.1 update to see what else it can bring to the the tablet scene. Until then, the rest of competition needs some luck in matching up to the high benchmarks set by the Motorola Xoom.

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8.0
The Good
Solid build quality
High resolution and large screen
Smooth user experience
The Bad
Hefty weight
Display is too reflective
Unable to charge via microUSB port
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