Motorola Xoom review

Web browsing has had an overhaul and the browser now has tabs. It can even sync bookmarks with the desktop edition of Chrome, but not yet passwords or forms. It’s slicker than the smartphone edition and we noticed some improvements when we had Flash installed: on some websites on the smartphone edition, we found that some menus would disappear behind flash objects; with the tablet edition, this doesn’t happen and pages are formatted correctly.

However, while most sites are fast to load and quick to scroll around and zoom into, some aren’t coped with as well. Fire up a complex page, such as the BBC homepage and scrolling around just isn’t as smooth. Disabling Flash, so that it only loads on demand does improve the situation, but sites with a lot of elements on them still aren’t quite as quick.

There’s a 5-megapixel webcam with an LED flash. It does a reasonable job of taking shots, but the white balance is often way off and shots start to get noisy in low-light. It can shoot 720p video, but again this can look noisy, while detail tends to be soft. We also found that the screen update while shooting was jerky, although the final videos are smooth.

The Film Studio app lets you trim clips, so you can edit them without a PC. It’s annoying that you can’t share clips from this application, but have the save them, then use the Gallery app if you want to upload the results to YouTube or email them.

It’s good to see that the Wi-Fi only edition of the Xoom has GPS built in, although you’ll need to use Wi-Fi or USB to tether the tablet to your mobile phone if you want to use location-aware applications, such as Google Maps, when you’re out and about.

Price is a bit of an issue with this product, as it costs the same as the equivalent iPad edition (£480 for the Wi-Fi edition and £580 for the 3G and Wi-Fi edition); however, there’s no 16GB version, so you can actually get an iPad 2 for around £100 less than the Xoom.

Given that the iPad 2 is the slicker and lighter of the two tablets, for most people it remains the best choice. That said, if you have an aversion to Apple’s products, the Xoom is the best Android tablet that we’ve seen. With Android 3.0 a massive improvement over the smartphone edition on devices this size.

That said, we urge some caution before rushing out to buy the Xoom, as there’s a whole range of Android 3.0 tablets due to be released soon, some of which are a good deal cheaper. Our advice is to wait for some of these to be released before making a decision.