Motorola's Xoom tablet computer went on sale in the US on Thursday, amidst positive reviews that labeled the device as the most powerful rival yet to Apple's iPad.
Apple sparked the tablet computer craze last April with the iPad, and has since sold 15 million of the devices. It is expected to launch a second-generation iPad at a media event slated for March 2 in San Francisco.
Though companies like Samsung and Dell have tried to respond with tablets of their own based on Google's Android operating system, the Xoom is the first tablet to feature the latest Android version, Honeycomb, which is optimized for tablets as opposed to smartphones.
The Xoom is roughly the same size as the iPad, and costs about the same for a similarly spec'd version, though buyers who opt for an iPad with limited memory and restricted to wi-fi connections can save hundreds of dollars.
The Xoom has slightly higher screen resolution than the iPad, and boasts front and rear facing cameras for picture-taking and video conferencing. Powering the device is a dual core 1GHZ processed with 1GB of RAM, and battery life is assessed at 10 hours.
"Both Motorola's hardware and Google's new software are impressive and I believe the Xoom beats the first-generation iPad in certain respects, though it lags in others," noted Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal. Engadget's Joshua Topolsky said that the Xoom's ability to multi-task gave it a key advantage over the iPad, but that the device still lacks polish. "Honeycomb and the Xoom are spectacular - unfortunately they're a spectacular work in progress," he noted.
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