Hands on: Motorola Xoom 2 Media Edition

While the new Motorola Xoom 2, launched today, may be bigger, it’s arguable that its baby brother, the clumsily named Motorola Xoom 2 Media Edition will make a bigger splash.

The smaller tablet is based around an 8.2in display, which means its confortable to hold and use one-handed – ideal for watching movies on the commute, for example. It measures just 139x216x8.99m – making it as slender in practical terms as any tablet out there – and weighs just 386g.

Like its bigger brother, it has the same angled corners, echoing the appearance of the sleek new Motorola RAZR. A very pretty threesome the two new tablets and smartphone would make.

Its being released with Android 3.5 Honeycomb, with an upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to come afterwards – no dates yet though. Either way, its dual-core 1.2GHz processor should have plenty of power to keep things smooth. Like the larger Xoom 2, it comes with MotoCast, so you can easily stream content from any PC or laptop to the device.

Coming back to the display itself, it shares the larger tablets 1,280×800 resolution. With all those pixels packed into a smaller screen there’s no problem with details and its bright too, we had to reduce the brightness in the dimly-lit room to get these shots without under-exposing the tablet itself.

Usually we’d sing the praises of the IPS screen technology used in the Xoom 2 Media Edition. However, its main competitor is likely to be the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 with its jaw-dropping 7.7in Super AMOLED display. Motorola had better hope that Samsung’s display choice pushes the Tab 7.7 into a higher price band – no price or release date is yet available.

As for the Motorola Xoom 2 Media Edition, it will be onsale from retailers including Carphone Warehouse and PC World from the middle of november for £329 inc VAT. It’s a solid looking proposition and we wouldn’t run out and buy a different small tablet till we can review this one fully.