Motorola's Xoom Family Edition Review: Not Just For The Kids

By Andrew Ku
published

Don't let its name fool you. Motorola's Xoom Family Edition is one of the best values in tablets that we've seen up until now. It offers almost everything we want. If you're in the market for an Android-based tablet, this one deserves your attention.

Wireless Performance

We've overhauled the evaluation of Wi-Fi performance. For background information, check out page 10 of Acer Iconia Tab A500: A Tablet With Honeycomb 3.1. If you're not sure how throughput, latency, processing time, and response time all tie together, we go over that on page 10 of Apple's iPad 2 Review: Tom's Goes Down The Tablet Rabbit Hole.

Two scenarios are being tested here:

  • Five feet, line-of-sight: The wireless device is set five feet from the router without any obstructions. 
  • 20 feet, no line-of-sight: The wireless device is set 20 feet from the router and there are three drywall obstructions in our testing environment that reflect the possible degradation you might see in an indoor environment.

All devices idle for two minutes before testing in order to prevent power-saving rules in the operating system from affecting wireless performance.

The Xoom Family Edition's wireless performance is very similar to the original Xoom. It's disappointing that we can't connect to 5 GHz network on this device, though. Those networks appear on the list of detected APs, but Android always reports that they're too far away, even when the tablet is within a few feet of the access point.

Andrew Ku
16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • tanjo
    Nice value. Too bad there's no card reader... Do I hear iPad killer?
    Reply
  • tranfire
    @tanjo it has micro SD
    Reply
  • tanjo
    @transfire: Ooops sorry misssed that :p
    No Bluetooth? :(
    Reply
  • onanonanon
    tranfire@tanjo it has micro SDYeah, but for me, one of the best uses of a tablet would be to view photos from a digital camera and yet very few models support an SD or SDHC card.
    Reply
  • cknobman
    Sorry but regardless of price after seeing just how piss poor the screen is (most notably extreme light bleed) and how long the charge times are I dont think the low price justifies its shortcomings.

    Heck its not uncommon to get a Transformer or A500 for $299-$349 these days which blow this tablet out of the water.
    Reply
  • acku
    9523631 said:
    Sorry but regardless of price after seeing just how piss poor the screen is (most notably extreme light bleed) and how long the charge times are I dont think the low price justifies its shortcomings.

    Heck its not uncommon to get a Transformer or A500 for $299-$349 these days which blow this tablet out of the water.
    1. The Transformer also has light bleed.
    2. The 299 price is because of black Friday, cyber Monday, and holiday sales. It's definitely not "normal"
    Reply
  • pyrrocc
    FYI, on the front-face cam, 1.3MP 640x480... Heck 1200x900 (4:3) = ~1MP
    Reply
  • pyrrocc
    Grrr... can't do standard inequality of angled brackets....

    FYI, on the front-face cam, 1.3MP does not equal 640x480... Heck 1200x900 (4:3) = ~1MP
    Reply
  • slabbo
    A500 can be found in practically every Costco I've been in, and for $319 including a leather case.
    Reply
  • The size specs on the Xoom and Xoom Family are not correct. Xoom Family is longer AND wider, not the other way around.
    Reply