When I am on a Spring Break vacation, I love taking a bunch of cool tech with me so I will not be bored while traveling, and so I can stay connected. This year I brought a Motorola Xyboard along with me on my trip to Florida. I wanted to see how well the water resistant tablet handled while I was out in the wild.
Overview:
When I first held this device, it felt really wide and thick in comparison to the other Android tablets I’ve held. Motorola seems to have fallen behind as far as dimensions go, because it’s overly thick in comparison to the Galaxy Tab 10.1. It is also much heavier as well. The screen is actually pretty clear and responsive, but like most tablets, does attract smudges. When you use the camera application you instantly remember why normal cameras are not dying out anytime soon. Yes it has a 5MP camera, but the quality of the pictures was best described with a simple “meh.” I simply was not that impressed with the image quality.
The water resistant body was very appreciated. It’s comforting when you’re out and about and it starts to rain. You really don’t need to worry about covering it up since water doesn’t phase it.
I was a bit disappointed that the tablet came with Honeycomb. This is last generation software and it seems like there is no good reason why it could not easily get an Ice Cream Sandwich update, and move up in the world. The tablet froze more often than my Galaxy Tab 10.1. It would even freeze while I was doing simple tasks. It really made me wonder how Motorola missed this since the Xyboard does have a dual-core processor inside. When it was working correctly, it was effortless. The applications launched quickly, and thanks to Verizon’s LTE, pages load super-fast.
One other problem that bothered me was how horrible listening to music on the tablet was. Even with Poweramp or Volume+, the tablet still sounded like I had a lone tiny speaker in a large hallway. Overall, this tablet is okay but it could easily have been much better.
Ratings:
7/10: Speed and Multitasking
6/10: Camera Quality
9/10: Browsing Experience
5/10: Music Playback
10/10: Network
6/10: Pricing
7/10: Overall Rating
Final thoughts:
Would I buy it?
No, I would not buy it. I still think the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a much better buy on Verizon, and the Asus Transformer Prime would be another great alternative if we had it on our network. This tablet just falls behind the pack, like several Motorola devices seem to do these days.
Would I Recommend it?
Maybe. If you lived somewhere that tends to rain a lot, and want a fast 4G tablet that will withstand the weather, then certainly go for this.
Ultimately, Motorola does not seem to be taking the tablet market seriously if they want to compete with Apple and Samsung with a tablet like this. They have the technology to make this much better, but they did not, so let’s hope they try a little harder on their next batch.
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