Motorola Xoom 2

Motorola Xoom 2

Thoughthe original Motorola Xoom stood out as the first big tablet push with backingfrom Google, it didn't turn out quite to be pinnacle of Android tablets.

Itwas soon surpassed by the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 as a straight-upiPad 2 competitor, while the Asus Eee Pad Slider and Asus Eee Pad Transformershowed that Android tablets could really excel when they did somethingdifferent.

Still,there's no doubt the Xoom was a good device in its own right, so Motorola'sbeen tweaking and trimming, and has now released the Xoom 2.

Thoughthere have been some internal changes, it's the outside where the difference ismost notable. Motorola seems determined to take the iPad 2 head-on here,because the Xoom 2 has the same thin profile as the iPad 2 (both measure just8.8mm thick), and at 599g is actually lighter a whole 2g lighter than Apple's tablet.

Inside,the 1GHz dual-core processor of the original has been bumped up to 1.2GHz, allthe better to smoothly run Android 3.2. Sadly, there's no Android 4.0 Ice CreamSandwich here at launch, which inevitably means any Xoom 2 owners will alwaysbe looking over the horizon at the rosy unified future.

Thescreen is the same size and resolution as the original Xoom: 1280 x 800 pixelsin a 10.1-inch display. It's an IPS panel, and so offers excellent viewingangles, which is what we expect from a good tablet.

There's1GB of RAM on offer, to ensure that multitasking runs as smoothly as possible,and there's 16GB of on-board storage.

Surprisingly,this can't be increased with a microSD card, despite there being a flap on theside of the Xoom 2 that you would think would cover a microSD card slot.Instead, it covers… some plastic.

Motorolaseems to think that its included MotoCast software will cover the need for moremedia storage, enabling you to access the media on your computer from yourdevice, anywhere. Well, nearly anywhere – there's no 3G in the Xoom 2, thoughthere is a GPS chip.

There'sa rear-facing camera on the Xoom 2 that can take five-megapixel snaps andrecord video at 720p, while the front-facing camera has a 1.3-megapixel sensor.

Despitethe thickness and weight similarities between the Xoom 2 and the iPad 2, theyend up feeling quite different in the hand because of their different shapes.The Xoom 2 has a 16:10 widescreen display, while the iPad is 4:3.

Thismeans that, in portrait, the Xoom 2 actually feels slightly more comfortable tohold in one hand, because it isn't as wide. Conversely, the iPad 2 is slightlymore comfortable in landscape, because the Xoom 2 stretches further.

Likethe iPad 2, the Xoom 2 has edges that curve and taper back from the screen,hiding the buttons when viewed straight on. Held in landscape, with the cameraat the top, on the right-hand side you've got a Sleep/Wake button and volumecontrols, and on top is the 3.5mm headphone jack.

Onthe bottom is a micro-USB port and micro-HDMI port, along with the mystery flapthat goes nowhere.

Theback of the Xoom 2 features matte plastic around the edge, with a shinier, moremetallic plastic in the middle. The matte plastic is superbly grippy, andreally helps you keep a firm hold on the slender frame, while the metallic looklend a bit of class to proceedings. It's a great balance of looks andergonomics.

Theonly problem is that build quality is a little disappointing. We're not sayingit feels like the Xoom 2 is going to fall apart or anything, but there's givein the middle of the back in particular that really grated on us. You can feelit shifting whenever pressure is applied, including most times you pick it up.

It'snot something that affects operation, and you may not notice it as muchdepending on how you hold it (it's far less noticeable in landscape), but itfeels unpleasant beneath your fingers.

Thescreen is also suspect, not for it's quality, but for being a dirt and greasemagnet – even more so than most tablets. It very quickly starts to feeldifferent, and nasty, under your fingers, and it doesn't have any kind ofeasy-clean oleophobic coating, so you'll want to make sure it gets a properpolish regularly.

Despitethose criticisms, the Xoom 2 is a fairly handsome and mostly well-made tablet.Though it clearly took a few design cues from the iPad, the different shape andmaterials give it a look that's different to Apple's tablet, and most of theother Android tablets out there.

Butwe did find the design somewhat familiar, as will many Nokia fans. With thecurving, cut corners and big widescreen, we have to say the Nokia N8camestrongly to mind.

TheXoom 2 looks set to go on sale for just less than £400, with Clove selling itfor £390. Motorola

Features

Thoughsome Android manufacturers have tweaked the tablet formula with success –notably Asus' Eee Pad Sliderand Eee Pad Transformer – Motorola is sticking withthe classics when it comes to the Xoom 2.

Thisis just a slim, light slate when it comes to hardware, without even a microSDport, so it's down to the software to make it stand out.

Well,almost. There is one unusual hardware feature worth mentioning – Motorola saysthe tablet has a "splash-guard coating" both outside the Xoom 2 andinside, on the circuit boards. It's designed to offer a bit of protectionagainst accidental spills and getting surprised by rain when you're using theXoom outside.

We'renot talking about any serious waterproofing here, but it's clear that Motorolasees the Xoom 2 as a kind of roaming companion device, and giving it an extralayer of protection will no doubt help people to feel more comfortable usingsomewhere like the kitchen.

Thetwo big software additions to Android 3.2 reinforce this idea of a handyportable screen: the Floating Notes app and MotoCast.

TheFloating Notes app sits permanently in the bottom bar, where notifications comeup. You can tap it at any time to bring up the options to create a new FloatingNote, view your notes in a window where you can sort them by date create,title, and so on, or you can open the built-in Evernote app.

TheFloating Notes app itself is a fairly simple drawing and typing app – you canscrawl things down in the main part, adjust the brush size and colour, add sometyped text at the top, and even send a note to the Tasks app so you can actionsomething on it later. You can also share notes by Bluetooth, email, Dropboxand, probably most usefully, Evernote syncing.

There'sa couple of Floating notes widgets to make it easy to get straight into a note,while a notes carousel lets you browse through your notes as a widget, muchlike the Android Honeycomb YouTube app.

MotoCastis the other big software feature for the Xoom 2. It's a media streaming app,essentially, but a custom one designed to make the process as easy as possible.

Youinstall the MotoCast software on your computer, decide which folders to allowit to see, and then open the app on your Xoom to connect to those folders andstream music, videos and movies.

Thereason for having a dedicated server app, and not just using DLNA streamingover a local network, is that it provides a simple way to get remote access toyour media wherever you are – in another room in the house, or hundreds ofmiles away.

Motois so convinced that this is the way forward, as it explained to us, that it'spart of the reason why there's no SD card slot, and only 16GB of storage.

We'lgive our verdict on MotoCast on the next page, but it's definitely a big partof Motorola's plans for the mobile market.

Oneof the Xoom 2's other party tricks, and yet more evidence of Motorola's designson the living room, is the built-in infrared receiver and bundled Dijit app.Essentially, the Xoom 2 can become a universal remote control for your TVsetup. We had no problems getting it to work with our kit just by searching thedatabase for the right models, though it has to be said that the on-screenremotes are a little light on features compared to the real thing.

Don'tassume that it's all play and no work when it comes to the Xoom 2, though.There's a Citrix app included, for you enterprisey types, and Quickoffice HD isalso bundled, with cloud integration for Google Docs, Dropbox, Box, SugarSyncand more.

Performance

TheMotorola Xoom 2's most noticeable upgrade might be in the chassis, but it'salso had an upgrade to a 1.2GHz CPU, along with Android 3.2.

Thishas produced a tablet that's quite snappy overall, though it does still sufferfrom the odd moment where swipes take a moment to register. The only realdisappointment when it comes to performance in the operating system isswitching orientation.

Italmost always takes a couple of seconds to switch, no matter if you're just onthe Home screen or if you're in a resource-intensive app. It doesn't spoil thetablet or anything, but it's an annoyance that most its competitors don't have(save for the HP TouchPad, which was much, much worse).

But,overall, the Xoom 2 is as smooth to use as the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab10.1, and isn't far off the Asus Eee Pad Slider's slick operation at all.

Wefound the keyboard on the Xoom 2 to be one of its weaker points, with lots oftaps going astray. It just doesn't sit as comfortably under the fingers as theiPad 2's or the HP TouchPad's (and obviously the physical keyboard option forthe Asus Eee Pad Slider and Transformer are better), possibly due to thedifference in screen shape.

Thescreen itself is nice and clear, with natural colours that look great forvideo. The 1280 x 800 resolution means that text is nice and clear, too. Thebrightness is our only small concern – it just isn't that bright, and theauto-brightness doesn't help by being really quite aggressive.

Wehad to keep the brightness up at maximum pretty much always, even just inregular household lighting (as opposed to harsh tungsten office lights, forexample). Certainly, the screen is bright enough for almost any use, butthere's really no margin for boosting it further in really bright artificiallight, or sunlight.

Alas,there's another small problem with the screen: the backlight. There are a fewspots where it bleeds through quite noticeably, particularly when on a screenwith a dark background, including the Settings screen. You won't notice it allthe time, but it's disappointing.

Despitethat, we do think the screen on the Xoom 2 is pretty good overall, and it needsto be, because there's no doubt this is a media-focussed tablet. Instead ofdragging and dropping media to it when plugged in over USB, you use MotoCastUSB to bring over things like iTunes playlists, or select media from folders.

LikeWindows Phone Connector, it'll automatically convert videos if they're in aformat the Xoom 2 can't play natively (though Motorola's software is betterthan Microsoft's, because it doesn't insist on also converting the stuff thatwas fine to begin with).

TheMotoCast USB software was a bit hit-and-miss, though; it crashed on us a lot,making it impossible to get anything on the device. But when it worked, itworked fine.

Everything'seasy to access on the device, with music in the Music app and photos and videosin the Gallery app. The Music is a bit slow in landscape when you've got adecent collection, but is faster to flick through in portrait.

1080pvideo plays back smoothly, except not over the HDMI port – everything mirrorssmoothly when you connect to an HDTV, except for all video that plays back inthe main Android player. You just get the controls with a black screen behindthem. Not ideal.

Thewireless MotoCast app works quite well on a local network, except for onesignificant flaw. Though it connects seamlessly to the folders you set it upwith, it often misreported the contents of video folders for us. It listedeverything fine, but when we tapped on what we wanted, it sometimes openedsomething else. It was like a shuffle function for our videos that we couldn'tturn off. Superb.

Actuallystreaming something is the part that works. We had occasional stutters, but itwas mostly fine. Go outside your local network and you'll encounter morestruggles, though.

Becauseit's not actually coming from the cloud, but from your PC, you'll need a reallygood upload speed to get anything out of it. More than that, though, yourcomputer must be up and running for it to work. If it goes on standby, you'llfind that you'll get an 'offline' message when you try to access it.

MotoCastis a nice idea, and could be a great addition to make Motorola's tablet standout, but it needs more work.

Theloudspeakers on the Xoom 2 can go loud enough for most situations, but theymake the whole back of the tablet vibrate when they're loud, and the sound getsmuch more distorted at high volumes than it does on, say, the iPad.

Thebrowser on the Xoom 2 proved to be fairly snappy, though Opera Mobile is alsoincluded, should you want to go that route. Adobe Flash is preinstalled, soconsider that box ticked.

As wesaid, the browser is fairly fast, with pages loading quickly for the most part,but loading Flash content does hold many pages back compared those withoutFlash.

Andthe old spectre of Flash causing the responsiveness of the browser to slow isalso present, but even with a video on the page, zooming and panning is prettygood. And you can pinch to zoom and pan around the page at the same time! (It'ssomething a surprising number of Android devices lack the ability to do.)

Inreal life, we're not looking at the fastest tablet browser around in the Xoom2, but it's fast enough that it won't make much difference day to day.

Battery life

Forbattery life, the Xoom 2 made a good account of itself, though it was slightlyup and down. Whereas some Android tablets have problems keeping power use to aminimum on standby, the Xoom 2 was very good, and we're sure it'd be able tolast you for days on end (rather than misplacing a fifth of its batteryovernight, as some do).

Thatsaid, it's surprising just how much power certain aspects of the Xoom 2 use. Atone point, we managed to use 20% of the battery during about an hour ofinternet testing.

Granted,we were loading sites over and over, and testing Flash performance a lot, butit seemed a little much. We did have the screen's brightness turned all the wayup, but it has to be in a well-lit room, or it's a little hard to see whatyou're doing.

But,there have been plenty of other times we've been using the Xoom 2 moresporadically, and the battery use hasn't gone down far at all.

Ultimately,the iPad 2 is still the tablet battery life king, but the Xoom 2 does quitewell for itself. Just mind the Flash content.

Thebuilt-in GPS chip worked quite well for us, narrowing us down quickly. With no3G to stream maps, it's a slightly odd addition, but we can't knock it forfunctionality.

Thecamera on the Xoom 2 is decent enough, capturing accurate colours and crisplines, and letting in a good amount of light even in low light. The detail canbe a little soft, but overall they're good snaps.

Similarly,the 720p HD video is passable, if not spectacular. It's not up to par withbetter dedicated cameras, or the best phones, but you can make out what'shappening easily, though fast motion can become quite blurred.

Verdict

TheMotorola Xoom 2 is an interesting change from the original Motorola Xoom.

Beingthinner and lighter - more like an iPad 2 - but with extra processing power andsome media-focussed features are all good things, but cutting back on thingslike a microSD card slot makes it feel like two steps forward and one stepback.

We liked

TheXoom 2 has a nice design, and we definitely like how thin and light it is. Andthough the screen isn't quite as bright as we'd like, it's got vibrant coloursand excellent viewing angles.

Performanceis good on the Xoom 2, for the most part, and Android 3.2 works fairlysmoothly. We were also quite happy with the battery life, even if it possibleto eat up quicker than you'd think with some intensive web browsing.

Someof the media features are great ideas – the Dijit app may have some basiccontrols, but it's easy as you like to set up, and worked perfectly for us, andMotoCast could grow to be a very useful service. We really like thesplashproofing, too.

We disliked

Theway the Xoom 2 rattles when the loudspeaker is high and the bit of give in theback are both unfortunate, as is the fact that screen is a horrendousfingerprint/grease magnet.

Theyall conspire to make the unit feel slightly less well-made than it actually is,on balance.

Thekeyboard is a weak spot, and the slow response to changing the orientationserves to make the operating system feel as though it needs a little morepolish on this device.

Andwe said, the MotoCast could grow to be a useful service, but at the moment it'sfundamentally flawed. It requires your computer to be on all the time, yourinternet connection to have vast upload speeds if you're using it remotely, andit frequently opened the wrong video when we tried to select something.

Andthe lack of microSD card is perplexing given the flakiness of the MotoCast service,and the lack of any larger storage option. Yes, 16GB will be enough for manypeople, but those who need simply won't be able to buy the Xoom 2.

Theprice is a sticking point, too. It's close enough to the iPad 2 as makes noodds, and it doesn't come off well in that comparison, let alone against otherAndroid tablets that are cheaper. You can get the Asus Eee Pad Transformerfor agood chunk less. In fact, for only £100 more, you'll be able to get the AsusEee Pad Transformer Prime, with double the storage, a keyboard dock, aquad-core processor and it's actually thinner and lighter than the Xoom 2.

Takenin isolation, the Xoom 2 isn't a bad tablet by any means. It's thin and light,it runs fairly smoothly and has decent battery life. But it's really hamperedby the lack of storage options, and that inflexibility is its downfall when youconsider the price.

Itdoesn't quite match the best Android tablets or the iPad for quality, and manygood Android tablets have it beaten for price. The Xoom 2 is an improvementover the original Xoom, but not over the competition.