Tablet wars are made of these

Motorola has come out with all guns blazing with its Xoom, delivering a power horse of a tablet. All black in the front, the Xoom features no hardware buttons. All actions are done on its 10.1 inch screen that features a resolution of 1,280x800. This is fantastic because many other tablets have had lower resolutions which fall short just a little bit on the experience. Its back features the power button, a camera with flash and dual speakers.

The device has a certain weight to it and feels sturdy. But the weight is a small price to pay for the power the Xoom holds. With a spec sheet running a 1GHz processor coupled with 1GB of RAM, it is capable (at least on paper) of handling just about anything you throw its way. This machine holds three times the computing power that consumer machines did less than a decade ago.

But the power isn't of much use if it isn't utilised well by the operating system. And this seems to be the case here. The Android operating system has been redesigned for tablets. While the version is 3.0, the experience is far from perfect. The neon visuals and futuristic styling make for an exciting interface; but you'll feel the clunk when using it. Everything feels a tad slower than it should on a machine like this. This is not to take away from all the hard work the Android team has put into 3.0, the OS is a considerable improvement for tablets and a remarkably better experience than 2.2/2.3 — which is meant for phones. Moreover, the number of apps is growing and with version 3.1 just announced and being deployed to Xooms globally, it's only upward from here.

The speakers are not very loud but the sound quality is good. The 5MP camera takes great pictures. It gets better with HD video recording, which may seem stuttery on the Xoom but plays flawlessly when copied to a computer. Alternatively, you can connect it to your TV directly via HDMI. There's also a camera in the front for video chat which worked great on Google Talk, unlike that other competing video chat technology we won't name; alternatively it may be used to take MySpace shots if you prefer.

The battery life on the Xoom is by no means a slouch and you can get more than eight hours of real-life usage out of it. By that I mean Wi-Fi on and brightness at an acceptable level. Bring those down and you could squeeze more juice out of this.

The Motorola Xoom, at Dh2,699, is a serious contender in the stable of tablets.

Bhavishya Kanjhan is a digital marketing professional and an early adopter of all things digital. Follow his tweets on @bhavishya