Motorola Xoom 3G

 Motorola Xoom 3G - Currently, the cheapest 3G tablet with 32 GB storage in the market.

For: Good value, Honeycomb 3.1, dual core, HDMI, Good camera.


Against: Average battery life, no customization for Motorola’s end, not
very slim .

Motorola’s Xoom was the first commercially available tablet to rock Google’s Honeycomb OS. The Xoom comes with Android 3.1, which is lot faster and smoother than the 3.0. An aluminium frame makes up most of the body which is smooth and does not attract finger prints. The 10.1-inch screen sports a 1280x800 pixel resolution and the Xoom is powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 CPU which runs at 1 GHz. The internal memory is 32 GB and is the same for both, the Wi-Fi and 3G models. The video player only supports MP4 and WMV file formats along with codecs like H.264 and H.263. 1080p videos play just fine provided they are in MP4 format. The music player is very basic too, with no equalizer presets or enhancement options. The supported file formats include MP3, WAV, WMA and AAC+. Sound quality is once again just average so if you’re serious about music, look elsewhere. 

                               

                                           The 3G version supports quad-band GSM and HSDPA, HSUPA, dual-band Wi-Fi n and Bluetooth v2.1. The 3G SIM can only be used for data since the Xoom does not have any telephony functions. The default WebKit browser is good enough for casual surfing as it supports tabs, full Flash 10.1 support, etc. Also, once connected, the Xoom does not show up as a removable drive, but as a ‘Media Device’. The 5 megapixel auto-focus camera on the Motorola Xoom 3G is capable of 720p video recording at 30 fps. The picture quality is strictly average for indoor shots while it fares slightly better outdoors. The dual-LED flash is powerful and easily illuminates the subject in a pitch dark room provided you maintain a distance of 5-6 feet. The captured image is clear, with good amount of detail. 720p video recording is smooth for most part, but while panning, slight jerks are present. Motorola didn’t mention what capacity battery they’ve used in the Xoom, only that it will deliver up to 10 hours of video playback. In our video drain test, the tablet managed 7 hours 15 mins, where as our loop tests lasted close to 10 hours. At a street price of roughly Rs 34,999, the Xoom’s only other competitor is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 750. Both are almost equally powerful and have similar feature sets, except for the fact that the Tab 750 has only 16 GB of internal memory as opposed to 32 GB on the Xoom. We can’t say for certain which is better until we’ve tested the Tab 750. Motorola hasn’t done any customizations of their own, so out of the box, the Xoom’s feature set is pretty limited until you install apps. This is where Samsung’s TouchWiz UI may turn the tables in their favor. If it’s anything like their mobile version, then we can expect wider video and audio format support out of the box, DLNA, etc.