iPad 1 vs iPad 2 vs Xoom

[AgDon]

This may change your choice the 32g Xoom Wi-Fi only will be sold at Sam's Club for $539, with flash coming soon, SD storage, etc... All the other goodies!
Link: http://www.bgr.com/2011/03/03/sams-club-to-sell-wi-fi-xoom-for-539/#

 

[AgDon]

Just so you know the 32g WiFi only Xoom will be $599 or you can get it at Sam's Club soon for $539, definately beats iPads entry 16g wifi @ 499.
Link: http://www.bgr.com/2011/03/03/sams-club-to-sell-wi-fi-xoom-for-539/#
I'm probably still going iPad, but just because all my media is iTunes.

 

[fertilized-egg]

they know that the cheapest iPad is 499 and they can walk out paying just that, although most people will end up paying more because of upselling from the salespeople. .

You speak the truth. But Apple has always done that. While the cheap Mini actually sells well, it's main function is to get price conscious people into the store.

Sounds plausible but far from "the truth," and plainly wrong since the cheapest iPad is easily the best selling model as we've seen in demand for the cheapest model as well as the average sales price.

 

[rtztgue]

Thanks for the info. I stopped by best buy today and took a look at them side by side. I went the same sites, played with features, etc. I found the xoom to be over all sluggish compared to the ipad (and thats the ipad 1) .. the websites did not boot up as fast even being on the same wi-fi. The internet browsing was more difficult on the xoom as far as scrolling and magnifying. I went to msn.com with both and the ipad had a nice version of the site, the xoom was forced to go to a much more limited version of the site. Neither played the online videos... annoying,.. but xoom will eventually get flash. I think i would personally hate the system with that much lag, even with flash.

 

[sweetpoh]

I'll tell you why I bought a iPad yesterday instead of a xoom. It was cheaper and it is proven.

I was at a mall the other day and the verizon store didn't have xoom to play with. Too many questions and the rumored sd support doesn't exist. Flash support is non-existent couple that with Motorola's legendary support(sarcasm) pretty much ended my desire to buy a xoom.

good luck with your xoom. I hope you enjoy it and it meets your needs.

 

[nooaah]

i fail to see what's so funny. Honeycomb just came out....see what the numbers are after a year, just like the iPad had the same situation and developed more apps over year's time.

So get an iPad 2 now and wait to see how the Xoom 2 looks in 2012? Got it.

 

[tdmac]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

This was a great article on this subject on TUAW

http://i.tuaw.com/2011/03/03/deciding-on-a-tablet-by-comparing-specs-youve-missed-the-point/

Sorry for the lack of hyperlink. Doing it from the phone now the computer.

 

[Maziar]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

This was a great article on this subject on TUAW

http://i.tuaw.com/2011/03/03/deciding-on-a-tablet-by-comparing-specs-youve-missed-the-point/

Sorry for the lack of hyperlink. Doing it from the phone now the computer.

Good read.

 

[Apple...]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Funnily enough I watched the video and noticed how the web browser will STILL SLOW.

No that's FAST for that page. That page is a lag-feast on my Android phone.

It's on a severe lag-feast even on my computer.

 

[SirStuey]

In response to your 3rd question, I have an original Moto Droid, and for the most part the apps are decent.

The most popular apps are updated regularly to work with new Android devices, so they'll likely be optimized for Honeycomb quickly.

I tried both the Xoom and Ipad 1 at a Vz Wireless store today. I found that the Xoom was absolutely extremely fluid, and its browser was quicker than I could have imagined. However, zooming and scaling was not as instaneous as I would have liked.

I really didn't like the Xoom's aspect ratio. I prefer to view pages in portrait orientation, and the Xoom seems to be built for landscape viewing.

The Ipad 1 loaded pages much more slowly, but that could have been due to the Xoom's 3G signal vs the Ipad's WiFi. The Ipad was more fluid than the Xoom with respect to zooming and scaling of web pages.

It's a tough choice. Honeycomb may be a bit buggy now, but that won't always be true. It's essentially a v1.0 OS, and it looks to have been rushed to market. V1.1 will no doubt work a lot better. BUT other Android tablets will soon be released, with some of them applying proprietary skins of the Honeycomb UI. What this means is that updates to the OS won't be as quick as with tablets that have have a pure-Android UI.

I wouldn't buy the Xoom right away. If it's what you think you want, give it some time to see if the updates fix the glitchiness or if better tablets come out from Moto's competitors.

 

[bumzo1]

I don't see why the specs matter if the overall experience is better. Apple knows how to integrate software and hardware, something that other manufacturers can't grasp. Apple isn't trying to make the most powerful to satisfy the wants of the geeks they are trying to make the best integrated platform. Apple designs the best product they can for themselves then sells them to the public. If the latest and greatest doesn't have good reliability they aren't going to include it just to say it has the latest and greatest. If you don't like how they do it then don't buy an iPad. There is a reason they are the largest tech company in the world, loosing a few thousand sales because the iPad has half a gig less memory than the xoom is pocket change to Apple.

Two of my friends bought the Archos 101 tablets when they were the latest and greatest (2 months ago...) and they had everything they need to be a demon. Snapdragon 1ghz, 1.3 front and 5mp back cameras, 10.1 screen, the list goes on and on. I can honestly say I would rather spend that $300 on horse manure. The screen was HORRIBLE, viewing angles were non existent, even looking straight on the screen was better used as a mirror. The digitizer was slow and glitchy, and I'm pretty sure it has an "Apple sensor" because every time I held it, it froze. Most of the apps are not supported and even when they do, if they are not optimized for tablets (they rarely are) they look disgusting. Don't get me started on the cameras, I've taken better pictures with my free flip phone from 2007. On one of them, the digitizer decided to stop working so now my friend is going to have to pay to mail it back for warranty service, and can expect it in "1-2 weeks" If it were an iPad he would be in and out of the Apple store in less than an hour with a repaired or new iPad. While this isn't the xoom, it was the latest and greatest just two months ago and its already terribly outdated.

So why are we comparing the iPad to a device that when the environment fully supports it will already be outdated? Buy what does what you want to do now, not in 8 months. For me apps are 90% of my usage and thats why I'm buying the iPad.

[/rant]

 

[kdarling]

Two of my friends bought the Archos 101 tablets when they were the latest and greatest (2 months ago...)

The Archos 101 is priced at only $299. At $200 less than a new iPad, it was never meant to be the "latest and greatest".

However, it is probably the least expensive 10" capacitive tablet from a well known company.

I have one. My daughter loves playing games on it. It works well enough for the low feature/price slot it's in.

As for Android tablet-optimized apps, you're right that more is always nice.

 

[MrWillie]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/android-malware/

You tell me which would be a better choice.

Don't forget a year or so ago Google removed two apps. Zapped them off of peoples phones.

http://m.gizmodo.com/5572510/google-remotely-removes-apps-from-android-phones-for-security-reasons

Yea they weren't designed to be used maliciously. (So they say). But still.

 

[Justin Luck]

Smooth, fast touch operation is definitely iPad's strongest selling point that makes me still consider it, even with all of its limitations.

 

[lPHONE]

Zoom doesn't have Garage Band. End of story.

 

[iLunar]

It's not a real tablet OS. iOS was designed for a phone it's UI has never been redesigned..

Don't be simple-minded. A UI is more than a home-screen. The iPad UI has so many differences to the iPhone if you bothered to look beyond the homescreen.

 

[Tmacfan4321]

And the first dual core tablet in mass production would be ? (Remember mass production means large numbers, how many Xooms have rolled off the assembly lines. How many iPad 2s do you think Apple has had made ?) Yea, I think he maybe correct. Not the first one out, but the first to be mass produced.

The slide actually said volume. There were been multiple Tegra 2 tablets and phones released before the iPad 2's launch. The Dell Streak 7 is shipping on T-Mobile, the Xoom just released on Verizon, and the Atrix launched a few weeks ago, in very high volume. I would consider the Xoom and Atrix to have been shipped in "volume."

 

[lilo777]

The slide actually said volume. There were been multiple Tegra 2 tablets and phones released before the iPad 2's launch. The Dell Streak 7 is shipping on T-Mobile, the Xoom just released on Verizon, and the Atrix launched a few weeks ago, in very high volume. I would consider the Xoom and Atrix to have been shipped in "volume."

Yeap. I think this picture clearly says that XOOM was shipped in volume:

 

[petvas]

Yeap. I think this picture clearly says that XOOM was shipped in volume:

Maybe in the US but not internationaly. The Xoom won't be available before April, at least in Europe.

 

[BergerFan]

Competing companies may know how to compete on features, but none of them can compete on the announcement(product, price & launch date), and none of them can compete on just getting the thing shipped.
HP(Palm) are repeating the same mistake with their TouchPad, that they made with the original Pre. They announced in January, and began shipping in June/July.
RIM announced PlayBook back, pre November last year, and still haven't shipped yet.
Big windows of opportunity being missed there.

In short, Apple has #PlannedWell, Jobs has #TigerBlood and they're so #Winning.

 

[fpnc]

You are a bad "fixer" With half the RAM, most likely sub-par GPU performance (not NVIDIA design), sub-par screen and camera resolutions, phone-optimized OS, no 4G how come iPad 2 is equal to XOOM?

The only extensive benchmarks that I've seen on the Tegra 2 graphics suggest that it is only marginally better than the single-core SGX540. However, it is rumored that Apple will use the SGX543 in the iPad 2 (which even with a single core is better than the SGX540). If Apple has used a dual-core SGX543 in the iPad 2 then I think your "sub-par GPU performance" statement is going to look pretty silly…

Yes, pretty silly indeed.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/...rmance-explored-powervr-sgx543mp2-benchmarked