

Wired's Review of the Motorola Xoom - ssclafani
http://www.wired.com/reviews/2011/02/motorola-xoom/

======
ekidd
I had a chance to experiment with a display model tonight, after a week of
testing Honeycomb programs with the emulator.

It's definitely a slick piece of hardware, and it's very fast. Video looks
good. Without a Google account or a network connection, I could only test a
few applications. The first-party Google apps looked great. The third-party
apps looked promising but immature, though I expect them to improve rapidly.
The glass seemed to hold a few more fingerprints than the iPad, or perhaps
they're just more noticable against the dark holographic theme of the desktop.

As consumer, I'd be drooling over the hardware but holding off for a month or
two. As a developer, I'm buying one tomorrow—this is a _sweet_ machine to hack
for, and I can live with a few rough edges.

------
Synaesthesia
Loved the Anandtech review of the Xoom:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/4191/motorola-xoom-review-
firs...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/4191/motorola-xoom-review-first-
honeycomb-tablet-arrives)

He always goes into great detail about display quality, performance and geeky
stuff like that. In rendering webpages the Xoom really kicks the iPad's ass.
The must be using the latest JavaScript engine from Chrome, together with the
dual core CPU, it's amazing how much faster it is. iPad 2 will need some
upgraded software and hardware to compete on that front. Altogether a solid
device!

------
JacobAldridge
My personal thoughts, which have been mirrored by a few other commenters, are
that it will be hard to compete with a higher price and lower quality product
(vs the iPad).

There was some discussion here recently, and an article on Slate
(<http://www.slate.com/id/2286005/>) that talked about some of the reasons why
Apple has managed to keep their costs low, and the fact that they had shifted
from the premium end of the market to a mid-range cost point (which is always
easier when you largely create the market).

Does this mean the Motorola Xoom and others to come will be to Apple what
Apple computers were to PCs in the '90s?

If that anaology stacks up, there are lessons that can be applied - if you're
going to cost more, be better, and be WAY cooler. But Apple itself really only
started to grow again when they moved out of that paradigm - the iPod etc
defined a market in the way the Mac never did. (That's why they ran Mac v PC
ads, but never iPod v ???)

Apple learned that competing with a dominant player wasn't going to deliver
the business profits and growth that they wanted. Yet Motorola etc are here,
in the tablet space, giving it a try.

~~~
seabee
What's interesting in this case, compared to Mac vs. PC, is how the roles have
changed - and I don't mean "Apple is on top", either.

On the desktop, the OS that ran on commodity hardware was the dominant force,
even though there was no 'dominant' hardware supplier. And this made sense,
since the desktop is very 'general-purpose'.

With tablets, the hardware is inextricably linked to the OS. The experience
between different Android tablets is more variable than Windows ever was, as
well as being largely dictated by the manufacturers - both by locking down the
OS and the lack of hardware customisation.

Maybe this will settle down in a few years, but Apple have always been in
better control of their experience, so naturally they're far ahead on this
one.

------
blinkingled
Feels like it was rushed out - LTE upgrade needs that you send the hardware
back to Motorola, the OS seems a bit buggy and there are not many optimized
apps available yet.

On the other hand the hardware is great, the OS is mostly there and apps will
most likely be there before long. The iPad's existence for a year and the
looming 2nd gen makes situation worrying for Motorola - if it wasn't for the
iPad, these would've been the points that would be ignored.

~~~
czhiddy
If they had waited for an optimized Flash implementation and spent more time
fixing the OS bugs, they would have been beaten to market by the iPad 2 by a
couple of months - most likely a death sentence at that point. Rushing it out
is the smartest option, even if it means bizarre stuff like having a non-
functional microSD slot.

~~~
mryall
> Rushing it out is the smartest option ...

Maybe if they just want to sell to early adopters and technical folks. All the
non-techos I know who bought iPads have done so because they see it works
pretty much flawlessly and doesn't have all the annoying problems that plague
PCs. Motorola can't really expect to sell many devices in the consumer market
with serious issues like these. People will just pick the iPad because it's
cheaper _and_ works better.

------
runjake
I wish I could make this comment longer, but it's only the high price stopping
me. It needs to be cheaper than the market leader, the iPad.

~~~
jokermatt999
Judging by the specs, they went for the "more powerful" route rather than the
"cheaper" route. Also, in light of that Slate article (linked elsewhere in the
thread) on Apple's control of hardware supply, it might be very difficult to
make a cheaper tablet with both a good experience and a decent profit.

~~~
runjake
The iPad experience is equally or more powerful in the consumer's eye.

On the technical front, Apple accomplished performance with code elegance as
opposed to throwing hardware at the problem, as the Android team often does.

This is due to generally better code & more elegant, tightly-tied-to-hardware
frameworks. Android will get there, but Honeycomb ain't.

------
ZeroGravitas
Speaking as someone who has no intention of buying a tablet right now and
probably won't buy a Motorola or 3G enabled one anyway, the reviews all sound
pretty good to me. At some point in the future it seems there will be a cheap
Android tablet that meets my needs.

All the downsides seem trivially fixable, but no-one will be able to fully
assess it until after the iPad 2 gets revealed. I'm guessing though that
Google have done enough to bring it down to highly subjective hair-splitting
about "feel" with only a few clear pros and cons on each side.

------
rkalla
1\. Mentioned nothing about battery life or performance. I'll admit
performance is possibly a geeky request but for a mobile device going up
against the battery-life king, that is annoying.

2\. Moto should have started with the WiFi only version first, seen if people
were interested and moved up from there... but entering the market at $800
with no appreciable "big win" over the comparable iPad (that is cheaper)?

Why would you do that.

~~~
blinkingled
Engadget and Walt Mossberg got around 8 hrs battery life which is quite
acceptable.

~~~
dusing
CrunchGear said 18-20 which really sounds like a typo. Or they think the
locked state counts.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I don't think it's a typo, just an estimate. They say they used it normally
(i.e. not a rigourous benchmark like Anandtech) for 10 hours and had 67%
battery left. I guess they just extrapolated from there.

------
dsuriano
I'm curious to see how Flash will effect batter life when the Honeycomb
version is released.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Considering, it's optional, the browser lets you load it on demand, and I
rarely ever have to use Flash, ever, nowadays... I'm guessing not much.

~~~
mryall
Hopefully so. It will also depend on how good the OS is at swapping out any
running Flash processes in the background. If a website with Flash left open
in the background drained your battery quickly without you realising it, it
would be quite irritating.

------
ugh
I like Engadget’s review better: <http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/23/motorola-
xoom-review/>

Summary: Apple’s March 2 announcement better be good.

~~~
MaxGabriel
"Is the Xoom a real competitor to the iPad? Absolutely. In fact, it outclasses
the iPad in many ways. Still, the end user experience isn't nearly where it
needs to be, and until Google paints its tablet strategy and software picture
more clearly, we'd suggest a wait-and-see approach. Honeycomb and the Xoom are
spectacular -- unfortunately they're a spectacular work in progress."

Given their closing words, and the high price of the Xoom, I think they
wouldn't have as strong words as you

