Battery Life

Motorola specs the Xoom at up to 10 hours of battery life, very similar to what Apple suggests the iPad can manage. Motorola sampled reviewers with the Xoom just two days ago and thus I haven’t had a tremendous amount of time to run through our entire suite of battery life tests, what I do have for you are two numbers that generally support Motorola’s rating.

The first is the Xoom running through the same 3G web browsing test we put all of our smartphones through:

3G Web Browsing Battery Life

At 9.5 hours, the Xoom will easily last you throughout a workday even if you’re browsing the web the entire time and not actually doing work.

The second test is actually a test I put together for our original iPad review. Take our web browsing battery life test, add music playback and email downloading in the background and you’ve got a heavier workload on WiFi:

WiFi Web Browsing Battery Life

The number is almost identical - about 9.5 hours for the Xoom on WiFi with some additional tasks running in the background. I’m going to be running some more battery life tests on the Xoom but based on these results I’d say despite the performance advantage, you don’t sacrifice any battery life vs the iPad.

Wireless Performance: Cellular & WiFi Final Words
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  • mrdeez - Monday, February 28, 2011 - link

    I was gona wait for the wifi version but now, I am really thinking of just getting a new lappy for 350...I can still tether to phone and it is cheaper and no stupid data contracts. I am sure we wont see these wifi versions for awhile. It's almost starting to look like google is greedier than apple and thats very scary!
  • IBM650 - Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - link

    Mossburg ran a movie loop, IPAD was about 11 hours, Xoom about 7. So a big difference
  • prtech - Thursday, March 3, 2011 - link

    AS per my understanding 'ADAM' is already out and hoping you got one. Can you give us Benchmarks and in depth review like you did for other products.
  • mmullany - Friday, March 4, 2011 - link

    Iin order to pass ACID, the 100/100 has to match the reference image and the animation has to be smoooth. The Xoom fails in three ways - it has a rendering artifact in the top right, the animation isn't smooth and the colors don't match exactly. In addition, many of the HTML5 features that the Xoom self-reports as having, do not actually operate correctly.
  • AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, March 5, 2011 - link

    Great to see some timed tests! Real-world loading time is directly understandable and relevant. Now please do the same in your SSD reviews :)
  • JefTek - Sunday, March 6, 2011 - link

    I ran the Sunspider tests multiple times on my Xoom and never seem to have received a number higher than 2100.

    Without doing a full on average, my results were closer to the 2050ms mark.

    http://jeftek.com/1942/motorola-xoom-sunspider-res...

    I wonder what was different?
  • Hrel - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link

    I'd really like to see a 24" 1080p touch screen with smartphone innards. Instead of using desktop or even laptop parts just cause it'd cost WAY less. Or better yet have a 24" 1080p touch screen with an empty slot so you can just insert your tablet/smartphone (would require a universal port or cable) and have that power the display. The display should also incorperate a hdd bay or two. Cause really, who wants to go around buying a tablet for each room in the house?

    I just think it'd be really nice to have a much larger touch screen in the kitchen on the stand where you can stream music, watch a youtube video, look at recipes while cooking. Or out on the deck grilling. 6-10" screens are great if you want something larger than a smartphone/archos tablet to carry around with you and get great battery life where you can basically just surf the web. But for in home use, anywhere a stationary device can be placed, a larger screen is almost always better.
  • turbobutton - Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - link

    Apparently "Corning Glass" is one part of that equation that can make it happen, although clearly more technology needs to be developed for this to be feasible. You will really enjoy this video:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38
  • Hrel - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link

    "Google lets you "blank" if you want". That whole idea, giving YOU the choice of how you want it to work. I don't just want that, I NEED it. If Apple will never open up and give configuration options to users, then I will never use Apple anything. I will never recommend it and I will always fight their market penetration.
  • Hrel - Sunday, March 13, 2011 - link

    Wow, I was hoping for 400 bucks. I was thinking they'd probably jew us out and charge 500 though. 800?! That's just stupid, Archos it is then.

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