Thread: Motorola Xoom

Early Android tablets have been promising but ultimately no match for the iPad. Google's Honeycomb OS, optimised for tablets, is meant to change that. and its first champion is this: the Xoom. First impressions are great. The Tron-esque Honeycomb UI creates a fresh, fast. functional and accessible experience. Most actions are easy and intuitive. Powered by an Nvidia the Xoom is also exceptionally quick.

Its sheer speed makes surfing the web a breeze, with tabbed browsing letting you swap quickly between windows and pages qpening and rendering in the background - it's one area where it clearly beats the iPad. The generous bright and colourfullO.1-inch screen is excellent for video, and an HDMI out lets you view your video on the big screen. We got ten hours of life out of the Xoom, with plenty of browsing over 3G and eight hours of non-stop video with brightness at 65 per cent and Wi-Fi and 3G on - that's comparable to the iPad, certainly. Where the Xoom loses out.




as ever with Android to date, is with the lack of apps and the absence of an iTunes Store-style source of music and movies to download. Apps built for the big screen such as Google Maps are excellent. but Android Market currently only has 16 of those, and some Android phone apps don't work properly or crash.

The Xoom is an enticing device that glows with promise. We love the interface and the web browser, and it's solid in every other respect. We also love the tablet-specific apps and games ... but it needs more of them. What developers needed was a stable platform worthy of their talents. With Honeycomb, Google has built it; they will come. For now, this is not an iPad 2 beater, but as apps appear that situation could shift. It's certainly a balls-out. powerful bit of kit.