Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi - Zooming Past the Competition

Multimedia and Battery Performance

An Excellent Entertainment Device On-the-Go

There is only one word to describe the feeling of reading and watching videos on the Motorola Xoom - gorgeous. With a generous 10.1-inch display of 1280 x 800 pixels resolution, colors seem to pop out and text appears crisp. However, the only major drawback of the screen is its super reflective coating. We certainly do not like to see our reflection or the surroundings in the display, which seriously irritates us quite a bit. You may want to consider putting a matte screen protector to minimize this issue. A pair of stereo speakers at the back provides decent audio experience, which is a nice complement when watching video clips or blasting music.

The Motorola Xoom comes equipped with a 5-megapixel auto-focus rear camera which is capable of 720p HD video recording. It also has a 2-megapixel front camera which can be used for taking self portraits or indulge in video chats. We put the Xoom's rear camera through the color and resolution tests and see how it fares.

Last but not least, we put the Motorola Xoom through our battery test to determine how long it can last. The battery test involves running a 720p video with the screen brightness and volume at 100%. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections are turned on as well with regular data streaming through email and Twitter. We pit the Xoom against the Acer Iconia Tab A500, Apple's iPad and iPad 2.

As you can see, the Android tablets are no match for Apple's iPads in the battery life test and our Portability Index profiling. Could it be due to the Android tablets having slightly larger screens that draw more power? Maybe, but the difference in screen sizes is relatively insignificant yet the disparity is so wide. As such, we feel it's probably a limitation of the vendors not doing enough optimization of their their device to bring down the power draw. Apple however with just a single device and OS, can fully pour its resources to customize their hardware and OS to the limits and thus keep their edge ahead of the competition for battery life and portability aspects.

Nevertheless, we should give credit to the Motorola Xoom for performing better than the Acer A500 despite having almost similar specifications. Putting the iPads' statistics aside, the Xoom's battery life is actually quite acceptable. What we've shown is a depiction of a fairly stressful usage scenario of playing videos non-stop on the device, but more casual usage could easily see the Xoom last the entire day or more before it requires charge. As advised in all our reviews, the actual battery life depends on how you use the device.