Day 12 - The competition (Android Only)

One of the things I found when looking at a tablet was that there was a lot of choice when it came to Android devices. I had already decided that Apple wasn't for me as I have an Android phone and I am more than happy with the Google ecosystem and their products. Some of the tablets I must admit to immediately discounting as I feel that anything under 10" is not really a big enough screen to replace any of my existing devices and also anything that wasn't running Android 3.0 as I felt that the other versions of Android were never going to give a good enough user experience. This left me with a choice of:

• Motorola Xoom
• Samsung Galaxy Tab
• Acer Iconia
• Asus EEE Transformer

Now I'm not going to go into a full in depth review of each of the tablets as there are plenty of those out there by much more learned people than me. I'm just going to look at a few of the reasons why I didn't/did consider buying each one. Also I'm not going to specifically look at the Galaxy Tab as I'm sure you can work out from all my blog posts what I think of it.

Motorola Xoom

I had been watching this gadget's release date getting closer and closer and was so excited to see the first proper Android competitor in the tablet market. When I first got my hands on it in Currys I wasn't disappointed by the screen or the Honeycomb 3.0 OS. It was bright and clear and seem to run reasonably well although I did feel that it seemed to stutter a bit when moving between home screens and when loading apps. In fact I nearly bought one and I would have done had it not been for 2 reasons; firstly I felt that it was just too thick and heavy and secondly the price. 

Motorola Xoom

Every time I picked up the tablet I felt that it was just too heavy and couldn't easily be used one handed which I feel is an important test for any tablet device, size as they say and clearly weight is definitely important when purchasing. But all of this has to come at a reasonable price and the Xoom just seemed to be that little bit too expensive. It was at £479 when I was looking but now I think you can pick them up for about £439 during August 2011. Now its roughly comparable with the similar capacity iPad but I just wasn't happy with the price.

Full and complete review here at TechRadar.

Acer Iconia

The Acer, I must confess, took me by surprise and I wasn't even aware that they were bringing out a device. I have always been a bit of a snob when it comes to Acer kit as it always used to be cheap but of reasonable quality. Now it seems that the price has gone up and the quality has gone down. I was, however, pleasantly surprised by their efforts in the field of tablet manufacture with the device feeling reasonably good in the hand and being provided with good connectivity options such as USB and HDMI. I particularly like the brushed aluminium look although I think that after a while it would get a bit slippery in the hand. 

Acer Iconia A500

The only things that really let it down is me being a snob and also the weight again. This was by far the heaviest of any of the tablets that I actually got to see in person. The software, although the standard Honeycomb 3.0, seemed the most "laggy" of any tablet and miles behind the Motorola Xoom so I'm not sure what else they may have installed on it. The other advantage back when I was first looking for tablets was the price. It was fractionally cheaper to start with but soon ended up much cheaper then the Motorola Xoom with the release of a 16Gb Wi-Fi version at around the £360-380 mark depending on where you got it from.

Full and complete review here at Techradar

Asus EEE Transformer

The final one that I considered before the release and eventual purchase of the Galaxy Tab was the dual personality Asus EEE Transformer. I have always been a fan of Asus and their innovation in the technology world. In fact I have bought so many of their motherboards, barebones and even an original 7 inch EEE PC I'm probably a bit of a fan boy!

Asus EEE Transformer

The EEE transformer came out to rave reviews with most websites brandishing it better than the Motorola Xoom. I must admit I never got a chance to try it with the optional keyboard but the table itself was sound and it was a nice interface despite the customisation that Asus had placed on it. The keyboard add-on always seemed a little odd to me as then you had a mouse pointer on the display as well, when the whole point of the Honeycomb OS is that its a touch interface. You do however get the better battery life with the keyboard add-on, up to 16 hrs, but then you might as well buy a laptop. The EEE again had a great price point at £379 without the keyboard and then £479 with the keyboard which brought it up to the same price as the Xoom.

Full and complete review here at Techradar.

This gives you a view of some of the things I considered when making my tablet purchase. The 2 most important were weight and cost and the Samsung Galaxy Tab was the ideal combination of the 2. Coming in the next few months is the new HTC Puccini Tablet which will be Android 3.1 Honeycomb and a 10 inch tablet. The only issue will be the price as the HTC Flyer was very expensive at £579 for a 7 inch tablet.


Picture Credits - All courtesy of Techradar.com