Overview
The Motorola Xoom is the first tablet to come with Google's new tablet-specific operating system, Android 3.1 Honeycomb. There are 3G/4G wireless options available for the Xoom through AT&T and Verizon, and there is a WiFi-only model as well. There's also word of a less expensive 16GB model in the works.
Features and Hardware
Like most new Honeycomb tablets, the Xoom runs on a 1GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor. Simply put, that means it's fast. 3D games, 1080p HD video, scrolling, jumping between multiple apps are all very smooth, with just an occasional lag in certain instances. For memory it has 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and a microSD card slot for cards up to 32GB, although not active at launch.The Motorola Xoom features a 10.1" display with a resolution of 1280 x 800. It comes with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and optional 3G wireless that will be upgradable to 4G with Verizon.
It has a front-facing 2 megapixel camera for video chat and a 5 megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash for photos and capturing 720p video.
Other features include two built-in speakers on the back, headphone jack, mini-USB port and mini-HDMI port, Adobe Flash support, built-in gyroscope, barometer, e-compass, and accelerometer. Battery life is about 8-10 hours per charge. The device weighs in at approximately 25 ounces and measures 9.8 x 6.6 x 0.5 inches.
The Motorola Xoom as an eReader
While a high-end tablet like the Motorola Xoom makes an expensive ereader, it is one of the most advanced electronic readers given the dozens of reading apps, news apps, RSS readers, PDF applications, comic viewers, web browsers, and email clients available from the Android Market.Screen
With an aspect ration of 16:10, the Motorola Xoom is more suited for landscape mode, but portrait mode is just wide enough to be useful as well, at about 1/2" wider than the Notion Ink Adam's screen and 3/8" less than the iPad's.Overall the screen quality is really good, colors are bright and text is nicely defined with the higher resolution. The capacitive multi-touch screen responds superbly, although prone to fingerprints and glare. Compared to the iPad, text is crisper and less pixelated because of the greater pixel density, but the screen and colors aren't quite as bright, and the iPad's touchscreen responsiveness is slightly better.
Reading Outside in Bright Light
The Motorola Xoom has a highly-reflective LCD screen, which makes reading outside in bright light not very pleasant. It's really not different than any other LCD screen. Fingerprints, reflections, and screen washout are much more of a problem in bright lighting conditions. I've found the Xoom's screen looks fine in a car or sitting on a porch, just as long as the screen isn't in direct sunlight.Ergonomics
Personally, I find the Motorola Xoom surprisingly comfortable to hold in both portrait and landscape orientation, more comfortable than the iPad 2, despite weighing more. Something about the weight distribution and how the edges are rounded really make the Xoom fit comfortably in my hands. I have very large hands, however, so I don't know how that will affect your experience. I don't have any issues with fatigue holding the Xoom for extended periods of time. One-handed is tiring after awhile but is doable.Google eBooks
The Google eBooks app comes pre-installed on the Motorola Xoom. There aren't any periodical subscriptions available through Google yet, but there are 3rd party news apps and other e-reading apps with subscriptions.With the Google eBooks app you can read ePub and PDF ebooks purchased through Google, as well as free ebooks. The main crux with the app, however, is that it doesn't allow you to import your own ebooks to it, so it only works for ebooks from Google, even though Google's ebooks work on pretty much any e-reading device.
Feature-wise, the app has 3 font sizes and 3 line-height settings. There are six different font choices: Droid Sans, Droid Serif, Merriweather, Sorts Mill Goudy, and Vollkorn.
There's a table of contents, brightness adjuster, option to save the ebook to read offline, and an option to view the scanned copy if available. You can read in portrait and landscape modes, landscape view uses two columns. It uses animated page turns and double-tap or pinch to zoom. No dictionary, highlighting, or notes unfortunately.
News Applications and RSS Feeds
Honeycomb is so new that there isn't a great deal of tablet-specific apps available yet but there are a few. CNN and USA Today both have tablet apps, which include widgets for the Honeycomb homescreen that are quite nice. The CNN app has a nice layout. The USA Today app has potential if not for the giant annoying ad at the bottom of the screen that never goes away.There's also a tablet app for the New York Times that looks like a stretched version of the phone app. What's strange is that the NYT paywall doesn't seem to affect it, all the articles and sections work without a problem whereas the iPad app only lets you read the top news stories. Makes no sense.
Although not optimized for tablets, most of the phone news apps will work fine as well, they will just stretch to the larger tablet's screen.
There are a bunch of RSS news readers, including Google Reader. One of the tablet-specific RSS apps is Pulse. Pulse has a nice layout, widgets, and provides a good reading experience. What's cool is that you can sign into your Google account to import all your feeds from Google Reader.
Other e-Reading Apps
The Android Market is loaded with different kinds of free and paid ebook reader apps. All the major ebook stores have free apps: Kindle, Sony, Nook, Kobo, and Borders. Some of the other popular ereading apps include Aldiko, FBReader, Cool Reader, Moon+Reader, and OverDrive for free library ebooks.Aside from ebook reading apps there are other e-reading apps too. There is an app for offline Wikipedia, numerous Bibles and religious texts, children's books, survival guides, dictionaries, thesauri, etc.
Stay tuned to the app section of The eBook Reader Blog for individual reviews of all the best Android e-reading apps.
PDFs, Comics, and Manga
PDF functionality all depends on the app you are using, but viewing PDFs among them is going to be about the same given the Xoom's screen dimensions. Below are a few pictures of some PDFs in portrait and landscape mode. There's a paid app called RepliGo that seems to be the most popular for advanced PDF use, adding notes, highlights, etc.Given the Motorola Xoom's large screen size, comics and manga look fantastic. The text balloons are easily readable. There are several comic and manga apps, one of the best is Comixology.
Web Browser
The new Honeycomb web browser is a definite step up from previous versions of Android. It is fast, supports Flash, and is reminiscent of Google Chrome. In fact you can sync it with Chrome for bookmarks and other data.
The layout is desktop-like with the tabs and address bar on top. You can have a total of 16 tabs open at one time. Holding down on a link prompts options to open in a new tab, save, send, or copy link. Holding down on text prompts options to copy text, which can be sent directly to a notes program or email, share, select all, and find on page or on the web.
There's a bookmarks menu and history. You can adjust text size and zoom settings, along with various privacy settings. There's an option to use quick controls instead of the top address bar, which slide out from the left and right edges when placing a finger there. Pinch to zoom works as well.
There are two things I don't like about the browser: some sites insist on loading the mobile version instead of the full version, and there's no way to organize bookmarks.
The Gmail app looks and works a lot like Gmail in a web browser. Lists for categories are on the left, you can add labels to emails, delete them, archive them, whatever—the same features apply to the app as in regular Gmail. It's really nice.
There's an email widget for the homescreen that lists your latest emails. You can scroll through them and select different email accounts to view. Tapping an email launches the full app. Overall the new email app works and looks great on Honeycomb. There's a second Email app for other accounts such as Yahoo or Hotmail. Or you can use the web browser too.
Games
Given the dual-core NVIDIA processor, video games are a big part of the Motorola Xoom's repertoire. In fact, it comes with two 3D titles that were developed specifically for Honeycomb, Cordy and Dungeon Defenders. Both games are smooth and fast, with just an occasional lag every now and then. There are hundreds of other games via the Android Market too.
Music and Audio
Honeycomb features a new music player designed to make use of a tablets large screen. Open up the app and you're greeted with a carousel of albums to scroll through. There are several songs included from various artists. You can create playlists, shuffle, all the usual audio player functions.
I personally use Pandora Internet Radio all the time. It plays very smoothly on the Motorola Xoom, without cutting out when jumping between apps or using CPU intensive apps. The only problem is that the version from the Android Market won't currently work. I've been using an older version of Pandora and it works fine. I think I got it from Android Freeware.
As far as sound quality, there are two speakers on the back, one on each side, giving good stereo sound. The speakers are fairly loud and have pretty good sound quality. The only problem with the speakers on the back of the device is that sound quality is greatly affected by how the Xoom is situated. Obviously if it's sitting flat or is up against something the sound is muffled.
The volume buttons are rather difficult to use; they are very small and inset. Once you tap one, it pops up an on-screen slider that you can use in lieu of the buttons. There's also a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Camera and Camcorder
The Motorola Xoom's rear-facing 5MP camera takes surprisingly good pictures, and it is accompanied with an LED flash for low-light situations. There are several options to adjust photo settings. There are 12 scene modes, 6 color effects, white balance settings, flash settings, and picture quality, size, and exposure settings. It can zoom in up to 8x.
The 720p video recording is pretty good but isn't great. It doesn't have any zooming capabilities. There are 3 quality settings, 6 color effects, white balance settings, and flash. The videos come out looking a little pixelated at times, with some artifacting. The Xoom also comes with a Movie Studio app to edit your movies.
YouTube and Movies
The Youtube app has been completely revamped for Honeycomb and it looks great. It takes advantage of the added screen size, essentially creating a wall of videos that you can scroll through. Once you select a video, the page breaks down into different panes for related videos, comments, and video description. You can share and comment on the videos as usual.
The Xoom's built-in video player is basic but plays HD videos very smoothly. It supports MPEG4 and H.264/H.263 formats; there are other video players via the Android market for other formats. The Xoom also has a mini-HDMI port for connecting to a TV.
Motorola Xoom Review Conclusion
The Motorola Xoom is the first legitimate competitor to the Apple iPad. It can do many of the same things the iPad can do, and a few things the iPad can't. The Xoom doesn't yet have nearly as many apps—high-quality, polished apps especially—that Apple's platform offers, but it is more open and accessible, allows for more customization, and is more user friendly for tasks like transferring ebook, PDF, and other files, although more advanced to learn initially.
No one is going to buy the Motorola Xoom as just an ereader, but when it comes to e-reading, the Xoom does a really good job as far as LCD-based tablets go. The text is sharp and defined, there are dozens of ereading and news apps available, and the battery life will last a good 10 hours for reading, more with the brightness turned down and wireless off.
Playing games, watching video, browsing the web, quickly switching between apps, the widgets, and the general Honeycomb experience are all what make the Xoom really standout. Honeycomb is still a little buggy and suffers from frequent "force closes" for some apps, but overall it is extremely versatile and fun to use.
After testing both the Motorola Xoom and iPad 2, I'm astonished that the Xoom isn't more popular than it is. I think the high price is the main thing holding it back. In all honesty I'd choose the Xoom over the iPad 2 any day of the week, mainly because of the Honeycomb OS, the fact that it's so much easier to transfer files to and from it, the better web browsing experience with full Flash support, and the fact that all my purchased apps will work on a whole plethora of Android devices, not just one specific brand. But there are a lot of factors to consider.
Motorola Xoom Specs
- Screen: 10.1" LCD (1280 x 800)
- 1 GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor
- Storage: 32GB, plus microSD card slot
- 1 GB of DDR2 RAM memory
- Wireless: WiFi, Bluetooth V2.1+EDR support, 3G/4G LTE optional
- Android 3.1 Honeycomb operating system
- 2MP front-facing camera
- 5MP high-definition rear-facing camera with dual-LED flash, auto-focus, 720p video capture
- Stereo speakers, microphone, headphone jack
- 1080p HDMI output via mini HDMI port
- Sensors: G-sensor, Light Sensor, Gyroscope, E-Compass, GPS
- Battery life: 8-10 hours typical use
- Dimensions: 9.8" x 6.6" x 0.5"
- Weight: 25 ounces
- Price: $599-$799
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