@Lightlyseared No, only the ones who actually care in the internet comes crashing down under it’s own weight. And if style and money trump sustainability, survivability, performance, etcetera then maybe we need to take a good, long look at ourselves and figure out how shallow we truly are.
@Buttonstc I find that CR often weights things differently than I would and gives reviews for things that I may not. For instance, I wouldn’t knock rating points off a car for not having enough cupholders, but I would take points off for lacking enough side bolsters in the seats to keep hold you in place while turning.
In other words, what is good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander. I place a bit more faith in a magazine that specializes in technology, and whose tastes in products are more in-line with mine; Maximum PC Here is their deathmatch between the Motorola Xoom and the iPad 2, but for those who don’t follow links:
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Apple iPad 2 vs. Motorola Xoom: How the Mainstream Media Got It Wrong
Can an Apple tablet survive on its App Store alone?
If you relied on the “experts” at the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USA Today for all your mobile tech advice, your purchasing decisions would be guided primarily by what’s cheap, what’s idiot-proof, and what’s light enough to spare your feeble hands from stress. We would allow these journalists their curmudgeonly, anti-technology biases, if not for the fact that their opinions spread virus-like across the infoscape, and influence people who might actually be affluent enough, techie enough, and physically able enough to enjoy more feature-rich, high-performing wares.
Viewed head-on, the iPad 2 looks almost exactly like its iPappy. Indeed, iPad junior is very similar to iPad senior, and therein lies the rub.
Excerpts from Walt Mossberg’s Wall Street Journal column sum up the mainstream media position in a nutshell: “For most average, nontechie users, I would recommend it over the handful of tablet competitors I’ve tested so far… As of now, I can comfortably recommend it as the best tablet for average consumers.” Mossberg also likes the iPad 2’s weight reduction: “While the 1.33-pound weight isn’t that much less than the original’s, I found the difference noticeable when carrying the device.”
David Pogue of the New York Times is even more gaga for the iPad 2’s weight and waist line reductions: “The iPad 2 is now 0.34 inches thick. Next to it, the brand-new Motorola Xoom — the best Android competitor so far—looks obese. Yet somehow, the new iPad still gets 10 hours of battery life on a charge.” And with respect to the iPad 2 update overall, Pogue writes the “improvement in thinness, weight and speed transforms the experience.”
Really, Pogueberg? The new formfactor is really that big a deal? It is transformative? Ed Baig of USA today—you might have read his column during your last overnight stay at a Best Western or Holiday Inn—traveled even farther into iPad 2 apologism when he wrote, “The iPad 2 doesn’t deliver everything on your tablet wish list. But when it comes to the ever-evolving state of the art, iPad 2 is second to none.”
Second to none? Really? Based on what? It’s negligible weight loss and formfactor improvements? A faster processor that only reaches parity with existing tablet and smartphone processors? Cameras that are actually far from tablet state-of-the-art? Do these journalists really use tablets every day? Do they use them the way hardcore mobilistas—and an increasing number of regular folks—do?
It’s time to set the record straight. The iPad 2 isn’t nearly as fantastic as the mainstream tech writers describe it. Nor is the Motorola Xoom an also-ran, cowering in the iPad’s shadow. In fact, feature for feature, the Xoom emerges as the better tablet. Here’s why.
Industrial Design
Much has been made about the iPad 2’s slimmed-down mass — Apple’s new tablet is about four ounces lighter than the original iPad’s weight of 1 lb, 6 oz. Is the weight loss appreciated? Sure, yes. We’ll never turn down a lighter, slimmer mobile device. But c’mon, we’re talking about a quarter of a pound! In real-world use, the decrease just isn’t that noticeable. The Xoom weighs exactly the same as the original iPad, and we feel “heaviness” is a non-issue for all three tablets (and if you feel differently, then you really should be investing in an e-reader, not a powerful, multi-purpose tablet). The iPad 2 has a sleeker, more futuristic chassis than the Xoom, but the Xoom boasts a thinner and more modern-looking black border (aka bezel) around its screen than either iPad model—0.5-inch for the Xoom, 0.75-inch for the two iPads. Surely your remember all the gripes about Apple’s ugly-wide bezel, right? Yeah. The Xoom’s screen doesn’t have that problem.
WINNER: TIE
Display
Tech enthusiasts uttered a collective “gah!” when Apple released the iPad 2 without a new, improved screen. Luckily, the original iPad screen is brilliant and accurate, and on a per-pixel basis, it’s brighter and offers truer colors than the Xoom’s display. Still, we were looking forward to a widescreen, HD update of Apple’s original 9.7-inch, 1024×768, 4:3 aspect ratio screen. Apple didn’t update its tablet screen, thus opting not to advance the state of the art in this particular area.
Cut to the Xoom. Its display is a 10.1-inch, 1280×800 LCD with a 16:10 aspect ratio, and we prefer the higher resolution and more movie-friendly dimensions that the Xoom’s display provides. To wit: On the Xoom, full-frame HD movies consume practically all available screen real estate, resulting in a larger video window than what you’ll get on the iPad 2. Between watching non-letterboxed videos in a larger window, and web-browsing across a width of 1,280 pixels, the Xoom’s screen simply offer more of what really matters.
WINNER: XOOM
Cameras
Until we got our hands on the Xoom, we dismissed the utility of tablet-based cameras. Any good smartphone comes with a camera, and smartphones are small enough to fit in our pockets, which is what you want for your go-everywhere image-capture device. But the Xoom — with its 5-megapixel, dual-flash camera and free, built-in video editing app (Movie Studio) — showed us that a tablet can be used to shoot and edit a relatively polished video, all on a single device.
The iPad 2 can more or less do the same trick with its $4.99 iMovie app, but its rear camera, while spec’d as “HD,” offers pathetic image quality. It’s just plain bad. Raw numbers tell an interesting story: The iPad 2’s still images default to 960×720 and average about 260K in size. The Xoom’s stills (at their best quality settings) are 2592×1944 and average about 1.2MB in size. Can you guess which tablet’s images look better? Numbers aside, the Xoom’s images suffer fewer compression artifacts and less noise. As for front-facing cameras, each tablet’s offering is the requisite “good enough” for video chat.
WINNER: XOOM
Raw Performance
For most tablet apps, we need not be concerned about “raw performance.” After all, we’re not using handhelds to render Pixar-caliber 3D models. That said, we never want to feel that our software experience — be that browsing a web page or playing a 3D game — is being bottlenecked by the tablet’s core hardware. Both the iPad 2 and Xoom boast 1GHz, dual-core processors. Apple shrouds its A5 processor in secrecy, but conventional wisdom says it’s a Cortex A9-based system-on-chip with 512MB of RAM. Motorola, meanwhile, has told the world that the Xoom’s SoC is an A9-based Nvidia Tegra 2 with 1GB of RAM.
Both tablets offer zippy, no-excuses performance in basic tablet functions (e.g., web browsing, movie playback) with no interface lags or jitters. However, in the BrowserMark benchmark, the Xoom demolished the iPad 2 with a score of 93,241 to 69,032. We didn’t run video-rendering tests (as running fully controlled, apple-to-apples comparisons would be impossible), but the Xoom’s extra half-gig of RAM will certainly come into play as more computer-like tasks—like creating movies in iMovie or Movie Studio—are expected of tablets.
WINNER: XOOM
Ease of Use
No surprises here, folks. It’s easier to just jab the power button and begin, um, “doing stuff” on the iPad 2. The Apple tablet’s desktop is cleaner, and leaves little room for “what am I supposed to do?” ambiguity — because it really exposes nothing save for app icons. Just tap an icon and you’re off to the races. Similarly, the iPad 2’s native apps (Safari, Contacts, Calendar, etc.) honor simplicity over features and flexibility, and most users in their golden years will probably more quickly intuit how to use them. The Xoom isn’t “difficult” to use, per se, but its interface is more complex (a function of its emphasis on extended options and features), and Android apps tend to be more clunkily designed in general.
WINNER: iPAD 2
Flexibility & Customization
Oftentimes, the flipside of “easy” is “feature-rich and powerful.” Indeed, for every slightly non-intuitive interface element that the Xoom’s Honeycomb OS presents, you’re rewarded with more customization and power-user options than you’ll find in Apple’s iOS. Where the iPad 2 buries various software options in its Settings app, the Xoom makes them more readily available within each app’s individual software interface. And the Xoom’s option settings aren’t just more easily accessed — there are more of them, too. Honeycomb also supports Google Voice commands throughout various apps, and lets you place interactive widgets directly on your desktop, giving you real-time updates of Twitter, the weather, email, and anything else that a widget designer might fancy. Google’s OS also supports Adobe Flash (iOS doesn’t and never will), and you can download Android apps from a variety of third-party app stores (which developers can submit to freely, without needing permission from Google or anyone else).
WINNER: XOOM
App Ecosystem
In arguably the most important of all our deathmatch categories, the iPad 2 demolishes the Xoom. Estimates vary, but analysts believe about 300,000 apps are floating around the Android ecosystem, while Apple’s App Store beats that by at least another 50,000. That’s a competitive margin of just about 16 percent, but most Android apps are crapware, while a higher percentage of iOS apps tend to be useful, polished, and robust — if only because of Apple’s more controlled, restrictive approval process. What’s more, many of the world’s truly awesome tablet apps — from Pinball HD (awesome game!) to Brushes (awesome drawing program!) to Star Walk (awesome astronomy tool!) — are only available for iOS. The fact that so many iOS apps have been optimized for the iPad’s larger display dimensions, while so many Android apps have not, only seals the deal in favor of iPad 2 for this particular category.
WINNER: iPAD 2
The Xoom (left) is thicker and heavier than the iPad 2, but we don’t find either tablet’s avoirdupois to be a problem.
And the Winner is…
We gave the original iPad an 8 verdict, and while the iPad 2 comes with a slimmer chassis and faster processor, it’s a disappointing update in toto. The iPad 2’s weight loss is negligible, and its processor bump allows Apple to reach effective parity with the latest Android devices, but nothing more. So this second iPad remains a solid 8 out of 10.
Now, of course, a tablet isn’t worth squidly unless it’s packed with great third-party apps, and Apple’s two iPads handily trump all Android-based devices in this arena. Nonetheless, we do find that the built-in apps that come free with the Xoom offer more features and flexibility than those that come stock on the iPad 2. Besides the free Movie Studio video-editing app, the Xoom offers email, calendaring, web browsing, and (no surprise) Google searching apps that trump what comes stock on the iPad 2. All this, plus the Xoom desktop supports interactive widgets. Interactive widgets, people! Between desktop widgets and Flash support alone, we’re confused why mainstream journalists continue to call the Xoom a second-ran to the iPad 2.
Hardware-wise, the Xoom’s better screen, camera and raw system power seal the deal in Motorola’s favor — and so we award the Xoom a 9 verdict, and crown it the winner of this battle. Don’t get us wrong. Both iPads are fantastic tablets, and the best third-party iOS apps beat the best third-party Android apps any day. But at Maximum Tech, we’re particularly interested in state-of-the-art hardware, and we also not so interested in “easy.” We’re tech-enthusiast power users, and we want the most advanced, forward-thinking hardware that money can buy.
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Most reviewers only look at ease of use and the size (though often not the quality) of the app store and give a nod to Industrial Design. Many consumers do too, so the iPad looks better than I would rate it. But if you value the same things that I do then the CR review doesn’t mean much here; they aren’t looking at the stuff I care about, like the ability to view any web site, flexibility, or customization.
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