Motorola Xyboard 8.2 review

The march of the Honeycomb tablets goes on, playing a tune that’s beginning to get just a little muted because of the promise of fresher beats coming from Ice Cream Sandwich. Still, there are many ways for manufacturers to feature their very own little bit of swing to the identical ‘ol song. Motorola, for sure, cleared the path for a lot of these slates with the Xoom . It’s hard to believe that first Honeycomb tablet was released just 10 months ago, but we now have its successor, the Xyboard, here in its 8.2-inch guise.

As a minimum, that is what it’s being called domestically. Elsewhere it is the Xoom 2 (we reviewed the 10.1-inch flavor already), but in America we get a patently unfortunate moniker for a tablet that provides an enticing design at an enchanting size with the interesting bonus of LTE. But, all that mobile bandwidth goes to price you: $430 for the 16GB model or $530 for 32GB in the event you sign up for a two-year data contract. Does the funky design, convenient size and high-rate connectivity make up for the added cost over something just like the class-leading Transformer Prime ? Let’s discover.

Hardware

Slip the Xyboard 8.2 out of its box and, if you’ve used the Xoom that came before, you’ll immediately feel comfortable. Yes, things are slimmer, lighter and overall better to touch, however the overall aesthetic of something that’s dark and industrial has carried over. Accentuated, even, with a metal inset at the back, held in place by six exposed screws. The world around it truly is slightly raised and rubberized, with the mixture of surfaces and depths making this the most pleasant to carry tablets available to buy.

When compared with the pointy edges and cold metallic construction at the Transformer Prime or 0 iPad 2 0 , the Xyboard is something you’ll actually need to hold. It never seems like it’s at risk of slipping from your hand, and people tapered corners, which haven’t seen to be winning over any hearts, do make for a slate that rests against the palm of your hand without cutting into it. That said, it’s a bit thicker than the contest, at 0.35 inches (8.89mm), though at 0.85 pounds (386g) it is a fair amount lighter than the Samsung 1 Galaxy Tab 8.9 1 .

So we love the form, but we are not entirely sure we’re in love with the button placement here.

So we adore the form, but we aren’t entirely sure we’re in love with the button placement here. The Xoom was frequently derided for hiding the ability toggle at the back and the Xyboard does the identical, taking that a step further by shuffling the quantity rocker there too. When you be holding this tablet portrait orientation to your right hand those buttons fall perfectly under your index finger. Another way, though, and this placement is inconvenient, and we found ourselves flipping it over the years and time again to locate that volume rocker. This can, a minimum of, provide you with a couple of moments of entertainment if you hand the object to another person as they fumble about for the hidden power button.

With the buttons at the back, left and right edges of the tablet are kept freed from ports, plugs and protrusions. Sitting square in the course of the pinnacle is an IR blaster, that could see this serving as a universal remote down the line, though Moto provides no software to help there. Just off to the left of that’s the 3.5mm headphone jack and, at the right, the primary of the 2 speakers. The opposite is at the bottom, together with plugs for micro-USB and micro-HDMI in addition to the slot for the LTE micro SIM, hidden behind a flimsy door that, thankfully, you mustn’t must be prying open too frequently.

Up front is the 8.2-inch, 1280 x 800 LCD display that gives great viewing angles and accurate color reproduction, even if you’re gazing from a below ideal vantage point. But, it does look a little flat next to the Super AMOLED Plus panels Samsung is using.

Final details include a five megapixel camera (in a position to recording 720p video) paired with an LED flash at the back, while a 1.3 megapixel unit peers during the bezel at the front. An LED indicator light could also be situated there within the glass, so as to blink plaintively at you when you have a message waiting.

Performance and battery life

The Xyboard still suffers from this kind of annoying stutters and hang-ups while browsing which have plagued seemingly every Honeycomb device known to man.

So the Xyboard 8.2 is certainly a tablet that we love holding, however it wasn’t universally fulfilling in terms of performance. The article absolutely feels a lot more sporty than the Xoom that came before, apps loading quickly and games running smoothly, handling HD video playback without issue and usually trucking along because it should. That said, it still suffers from any such annoying stutters and hang-ups while browsing which have plagued seemingly every Honeycomb device known to man.

Webpages quickly render and seem almost complete, tempting you to engage with them while the last remnants of content are still loading. But, accomplish that and you will experience sluggish response and excessive tiling. You’re best off having a section more patience.

Ignore that annoyance for a moment and look to the benchmarks to locate some quite acceptable scores — and by “quite acceptable” we mean “these would has been fine before the Transformer Prime sauntered into town.” Sadly for Motorola, this device resides in a post-Prime world and it just can’t compete when it comes to sheer number-crunching ability, that’s important when you are planning to do some gaming in your tablet.

	Motorola Xyboard 8.2	Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9	ASUS Transformer Prime	T-Mobile Springboard
Quadrant	1,663	2,341	3,023	1,871
Linpack Single-thread (MFLOPS)	45.25	26.85	43.35	28.38
Linpack Multi-thread (MFLOPS)	69.79	N/A	67.05	55.36
Nenamark 1 (fps)	28.87	38.1	60.07	57
Nenamark 2 (fps)	19.27	18.1	46.07	24.5
Vellamo	1,018.5	51.77	953	1,057
SunSpider 9.1 (ms, lower scores are better)	1,926.9	2,295	1,861	N/A

They Xyboard falls behind the Prime in the case of battery life in addition, clocking in at five hours and 25 minutes in our standard battery rundown test, which entails a looping video with the display set at a hard and fast brightness. Note that this was with CDMA enabled but LTE disabled, in order that score would surely go up must you be silent running with this, but surely down in case you raise the LTE periscope.

The Xyboard had no problem making and keeping a high-quality LTE connection on Verizon’s network and, once locked on, put down some connection speeds that warmed our jaded hearts.

And that, obviously, is the single area where the Prime can’t compete with the Xyboard 8.2. The Xyboard had no problem making and keeping a fantastic LTE connection on Verizon’s network and, once locked on, put down some connection speeds that warmed our jaded hearts. Now, your mileage will definitely vary here counting on local network conditions, but testing near Palo Alto, California saw average downloads of around 18Mbps and uploads at about 16Mbps — almost synchronous.

In comparison against an LTE phone on the same location the Xyboard uploads were consistently a little quicker, while downloads were in regards to the same. With pings under 50ms this may be a refreshing new thanks to host a Counter Strike server wherever you happen to be.

Software

There isn’t loads so as to add here to what we said in regards to the 8 Xoom 2 8 . What you’ve got here’s a virtually unmolested version of Android 3.2 Honeycomb that, in case you squint, can be mistaken for Ice Cream Sandwich — which won’t actually hit this tablet until sometime in 2012. Motorola has thrown a number of choice apps on here, like MotoCast for streaming media and Quickoffice HD for attempts at productivity, while Verizon has added some of its own, like My Verizon Mobile and its own little Apps store. The offending apps are few and, thankfully, far between.

Camera

We cannot spend a number of time here going over the camera performance as these are, so far as we are able to tell, an analogous camera units present in the ten.1 inch model we’ve 9 so recently reviewed 9 . The five megapixel shooter at the back produces acceptable images with the intention to certainly capture whatever you are looking at but won’t exactly achieve this in a very endearing way, with muted colors and soft imaging. The inability of tap-to-focus is usually a bit a trouble, leaving you hoping the tablet chooses to elucidate what you want it to. When it does focus it does so a piece slowly, but that’s still a gigantic, big improvement over the slow shooter Moto installed the 0 Droid Bionic 0 . The 720p30 footage is in a similar way adequate, as long as you are not attempting to track any fast-moving objects.

That’s worth a mention, however, that the camera placement at the back-left was a continuing bother for us. Hold the tablet in landscape orientation, as you’re prone to do when taking an image, and and it’s incredibly easy to position your left hand right on top of the lens. Actually it’s incredibly difficult not to put it there. That’s a undeniable annoyance.

Wrap-up

We’ve been having a difficult time realizing why anybody would select the Xoom 2 / Xyboard 10.1 over the Transformer Prime — a tool that is the same price or cheaper and considerably faster — however the 8.2-inch version makes slightly more sense. a ten.1-inch tablet simply is not the right size for everyone and, among those slates that fit in somewhere below, the 8.2 hits plenty of marks. It’s light, comfortable to hold and to take advantage of, and fairly quick. And, the integrated wireless connectivity makes it far more useful should you are often at the go.

Just prepare to pay dearly for that extra usability. The $430 or $530 up-front costs for the 16 and 32GB versions aren’t bad, but add on two years of information service and things suddenly look a little less practical — especially since you’re paying that much for a tablet that’s already slower than the contest. Burst off-contract and costs are $600 and $700 for the 2 capacities, that’s even harder to swallow. This, then, is a great choice exclusively for somebody wanting a sub-10-inch tablet with a knowledge contract and a goofy name. In the event you can live with only WiFi, save a bit money and opt for the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus or 8.9 — or even hold out somewhat longer for that mythical 7.7.

Dana Wollman contributed to this review.

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This post is tagged: 10 months, interesting design, metallic construction, sharp edges, unfortunate moniker