So, I was at the mall with my wife over the weekend, she had to return some bras and shop for perfumes, I couldn't be bothered so I left it to herself and went to BestBuy to try the new motorola xooooom because I sold my first gen iPad a while ago and wanted a new, better tablet for my entertainment, mostly reading geekhack while taking a dump.
I wasn't very satisfied with the original iPad: no SD expansion, too heavy, and the resolution could be a notch higher. The Xoom looks very promising on paper so I gave it a good 30 minute tryout!
-First impression: The display is god awful. I knew it has a TN panel and didn't expect too much from it but still, it's like starting at my old acer laptop's display, the colors are washed out, viewing angle is terrible, and color vibrance is nonexistent. 1280*800 looks decent on paper but in the real world I could hardly tell the ppi difference between and xoom and the ipad. Moto totally ****ed the display up this time around. 0/10 in that department.
-Build quality is very good! It felt extremely solid in my hands but not too hefty, I did my homework and found that it weighs 730g, 50g more than the wifi iPad, but it felt pretty much as heavy as the iPad, no noticeable difference.
-Overall Hardware design This is where Motorola really ****ed up IMO, i mean the display is bad but they didn't make it so I can't really blame them. When I first bought the iPad, I was baffled as to why Apple is still sticking to that one big iphone/ipod style connector, I mean they got plenty of space to put in separate power jacks, USB connector, video out etc..
Until I played with the xoom. The Xoom has separate USB, HDMI, charging input, audio output.. and... I wish it doesn't. Allow me to explain.
The Xoom has 3.5mm headphone output on the top, USB, HDMI and power connector on the bottom, volume buttons on the left, on/off on the BACK alongside the camera....the whole damn thing has got holes and connectors and buttons all over its body and everyone who has ever owned a tablets knows this: IT MOVES. Therefore it's impossible to find the right thing when you need to, it's seriously worse than an ISO keyboard.
-Overall UI Experience was decent, it was fast enough and no discernible UI lag, Honeycomb is a little more complicated than Android 2.x but every button and option is quite self-explanatory, you have to try it for yourself for the actual UI experience, I think Google did a pretty damn good job with Honeycomb. Good mark there.
Overall, if I were to buy another tablet I'd never buy the Xoom, for $800, some of its designs are unfathomably idiotic and I absolutely cannot see myself living with them day to day.
