Motorola Xoom 2 review

Other software additions include an app for controlling the built-in IR emitter, so you can set the Xoom 2 up to control all your AV devices. It worked well, and the app lets you create customise groups of controls for multiple devices, so everything you need is to hand on one screen. You can even set up different profiles for different rooms. There’s also the easy to use MotoCast software, which you can install on any PC and then easily stream music, photos and videos to your tablet, or download them for playing later.

The original Xoom used an Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset, while the new model is built around a Texas instruments OMAP4430 – though in practice there’s little difference except that the OMAP4430 looks to be a little quicker in 3D. The processor speed is a fast 1.2GHz, rather than the 1GHz on most Tegra 2 tablets; thanks to that and the latest version of Honeycomb, rendering in the browser was very speedy – with a score of just 1,864ms in the SunSpider benchmark. Apps launched quickly and games ran smoothly, but as always Honeycomb is less than silky-smooth to navigate.

Battery life was pretty typical for an Android tablet. It lasted for eight hours and 16 minutes in our continuous video playback test, which puts it on a par with similar devices.

The Xoom 2 is a great Android tablet by current standards, but we can’t help but feel that better things are just around the corner. At present, it compares well to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, being ever so slightly smaller and equally thin and light. The key point here, however, is that the Tab 10.1 was launched back in the summer, and the Xoom 2 seems to have made little headway in the intervening months. With the quad-core Asus Transformer Prime announced, it could soon be technically surpassed.

Another reason it feels a little dated on release is that we now have the Android 4.0-powered Samsung Galaxy Nexus on test. The Xoom 2 will be receiving an update to that version of the operating system, but there’s no date on that yet from Motorola. All that said, the Xoom 2 is the best Android tablet you can buy today, but most potential buyers should wait for the Android 4.0 update to come along and then see what else is available come the time.