I was looking forward to Black Friday to purchase a new tablet. I thought I wanted a Samsung Galaxy Tablet due to the overall quality of it. I was looking for the best deal, but the price just wasn't coming down at all. It was a matter of which bundle you want. Toys R Us had a good bundle the Monday before Thanksgiving and CompUSA had the best Black Friday deal that included a bluetooth keyboard and case. Then we received the Thanksgiving paper with all of the ads.
Verizon finally did it! I refused to consider purchasing a tablet from Verizon for more than Best Buy and have to pay for a data plan. Verizon was selling the Motorola Xoom for $199 with a 2 year data plan. Being a business man, I have to look at the financial end of it. After one year, the cost will break even although during the year I will have Internet everywhere with the Xoom. But there is more...
The Samsung Galaxy Tablet has a slightly better screen and is slightly lighter than the other tablets. I considered the Asus Transformer due to the functionality of the keyboard accessory. But when you put it together, it looks like a laptop and weighs like a laptop. Yuck! Sony's tablet did not work the couple of times I looked at it. Acer isn't that close. Toshiba isn't that pretty and was discounted quickly. So let's Xoom on...
The Motorola Xoom is the only tablet comparable to the Samsung Galaxy Tablet. I did a Ben Franklin comparison where I drew a line down a piece of paper with the two tablets on each side. The Xoom has a Micro Sd expansion slot, HDMI output and USB access which the Samsung Galaxy Tablet does not. You have to buy adapters to use USB. Samsung doesn't have a way to output via HDMI and no sd slot available. If you are buying it for business, it needs to work easily.
Another huge factor for me was that Google is purchasing Motorola mobile division. This means when there is an update, Motorola devices are likely to get it first. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich just came out with the release of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and it will be Google's first attempt to unify Android devices with one operating system. The Samsung Galaxy Tablet and the Motorola Xoom are both on the list to get the update, but...
I saw my last Samsung device (Samsung Droid Charge) get updated to Gingerbread last of all of the phones getting the update. It was very frustrating to wait 6 months for the phone to work better and it still didn't use the front facing camera for Google Talk video chat! The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the first to come out with Ice Cream Sandwich, but I would bet it will be the last to be fixed. Not like it is broken, but it has a HD display and the battery suffers for it. The Motorola Razr and Xoom will get updated before the Samsung devices especially since Google has a bigger influence on Motorola.
The Motorola Xoom was the first 10.1 inch tablet and it has not been outdone. And within the next few months the price will come down some as the Xoom 2 will come out in 2012. Less than a half of a pound heavier and slightly less screen quality is a small price to pay for something that is fully equipped. Save your money, get the Xoom for less and spend $20 on a Zagg screen protector and your Xoom won't look ugly with fingerprints like the display at the store.
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