Motorola Xoom Review: The First Honeycomb Tablet Arrives
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 23, 2011 11:57 PM ESTA PC-like Tablet Browser
When I reviewed the iPad I wrote that web browsing was the killer app for the device. Today, with a healthy number of pretty impressive apps I don’t believe the iPad has to exclusively rely on web browsing to sell itself but it remains an important part of the tablet experience.
As such, Google focused very heavily on the browsing experience on Honeycomb and I can honestly say it’s better than what you get with the iPad today. There’s the performance first and foremost, the Honeycomb browser is unbelievably fast and it’s running on the fastest SoC shipping today: NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 (T20).
We’ve put together a new suite of web page loading tests that I’d like to debut in this article. The pages are served from a machine on the local network (the device never has to talk to the public internet) and thus this is a best case scenario for web page loading performance. The pages are automatically timed as they load. The browser cache is cleared before the first load and then each page is loaded another 7 times. I repeat the process on a total of 6 web pages and present an average of all of the times. The web pages tested are the front pages of AnandTech, Amazon, CNN, Engadget, Reddit and NY Times.
Simply put: the Xoom puts the iPad to shame. The combination of an ultra fast javascript engine with a pair of 1GHz Cortex A9s makes the Xoom feel less like a tablet and more like a PC when browsing the web. Particularly over WiFi the web browsing experience is just awesome. It’s like using a netbook, which in this case isn’t meant as a knock but rather a compliment.
It’s not all about performance though, functionally the Honeycomb Browser is a huge improvement over anything else out there: it supports tabbed browsing. I can’t stress how much better this makes browsing on a tablet. Switching between tabs is just as easy as it is on your PC or Mac, you just use your finger instead of a mouse or keyboard combination.
Google also allows an optional experimental UI that does away with the conventional controls altogether and gives you a popup dial that only appears when you swipe your thumb in either the left or right margins of the screen.
There’s full support for incognito mode and Find on Page, just like you’d find in Chrome on the desktop.
In terms of standards compliance, the Honeycomb Browser passes the Acid3 test but only manages a score of 195 (+3 bonus points) in the HTML5 test.
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This is the future of tablet apps. As tablet hardware becomes more powerful we’ll end up running full desktop applications on these devices. This is only the beginning and Google clearly gets where it’s headed.
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Impulses - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Wow, it loads pages three to eight times faster than the iPad? I didn't realize Tegra 2 was THAT much faster. Did you run that same page load test during the Atrix review? I must've glossed over it.Impulses - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Preview rather.dcollins - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
It's a combination of Tegra 2 and Chrome being much faster than Safari. I would assume Chrome for Android 3.0 was optimized even more heavily than Chrome for Windows, which remains the performance leader on the desktop.samirsshah - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
make that your SD Card reader SDXC rather than SDHC and just like that utility of Zoom increase twofold because you can store more media. Rumor has it that Apple is going SDXC in their new MacBooks.Impulses - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
SDHC should be good for most people's needs, they go up to at least 64GB no? I mean, even 32GB is a lot of music... Judging by MP3 player sales most people don't care to bring their entire collection of music with them, and if you're at home there's plenty of streaming solutions (or even if you aren't).Impulses - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
I like the intro... I also feel that at these prices tablets are a little bit too much of a luxury item for anyone that has or needs a laptop. For those of us, the tablet's still a third or fourth device (behind phone, laptop/netbook, and possibly a desktop); and at $800 I simply can't justify it. I'd rather upgrade one of my other devices. For people with just a desktop or a heavy desktop replacement laptop I imagine that tablets hold a higher appel, particularly if the don't need a portable system for work/study.Impulses - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Honeycomb is certainly an impressive release tho, given how quickly after Gingerbread it arrived (had obviously been in the works way earlier)... I'm excited to see where future wifi only models fall. If they sold it at $500 or under with 16gb or even 8gb and no 3g radio they'd fly off the shelves... But just like when the iPad first arrived, I think Moto is well aware they have a superior product so they can charge whatever they want for now.Enormously Hatworthy - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
There's a wifi only 16GB version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 on the way. Pricing for the 16GB 3G version looks to be around €699 so that could come down to €599 without the 3G radio.Plus it'll have Samsung's screen tech and it weighs a quarter of a pound less than the iPad.
Sounds like a winner to me.
Enormously Hatworthy - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link
Oh and if you have the pleasure of owning one of Samsung's newer wifi enabled TVs, you'll be able to stream live tv to your Tablet.Unfortunately I don't have the pleasure :(
mcnabney - Saturday, February 26, 2011 - link
And by purchasing Samsung, you can forget about getting updated to 3.1 or 3.2.