Difference Between Vizio Tablet and Motorola Xoom

Vizio Tablet vs Motorola Xoom

Vizio Tablet is a more affordable entrant to the tablet market during the second quarter of August while Motorola Xoom was released by Motorola during the first quarter of 2011. Following is a review on the similarities and differences of the two devices.

Vizio Tablet

The 8 inch Vizio tablet is available in stores from August 2011. The tablet is produced by Vizio, a company famous for selling affordable TV’s. Vizio comes with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) installed. However, the user interface is highly customized with the help of Vizio Internet Apps Plus (VIA Plus). Though, newer versions of Android are available it seems Vizio tablet opts to stay with a more mature version of Android.

VV comes with an 8 inch capacitive touch screen display with 1024 x 768 resolution. The screen has an aspect ratio of 4:3. While text and graphics look crisp, pixels in images can be seen sometimes. The device comes with 1 GHz single core processor with 512 MB memory. Vizio tablet comes with 2 GB of default storage capacity. However, internal storage is extensible up to 32 GB via microSD card. A micro USB port is available both for data transfer and charging the device. The screen may not be as responsive as many of its competitors. The device also has an accelerometer and a proximity sensor. A stand out feature in the Vizio tablet is the 3 stereo speakers. The speakers auto adjust the sound as the tablet rotates, so that, the user always gets left and right sound. The Vizio Tablet is using a customized version of swift key, a very good multi-language virtual keyboard. Additionally, it is important to notice that the affordable tablet doesn’t have a rear facing camera, but only a front facing camera more suitable for video chat.

Vizio has designed the home screen of Vizio tablet in a completely different way to its contemporaries. The screen is mainly divided into two sections. The first sections show applications of a particular category, while the second section shows all applications installed. A small rectangular shape in the right hand corner brings down a drop down box with all application categories. When clicked on a specific category in the drop down box the top part of the screen will change to the specific category and applications belonging to the category will be displayed in the section. It is evident that Vizio has stressed on applications in their customized user interface for Vizio tablet.

Applications for Vizio tablet can be downloaded from Android marketplace and other third party Android application markets. Since the Vizio Tablet has stayed with a more mature version of Android (2.3) it can make use of the many different applications available in the Android market.

The Universal remote control is an application included in Vizio tablets which is compatible with Vizio televisions as well as other brands. The tablets communicate with televisions and set top boxes on infra-red and rely on a 3rd party database to achieve compatibility with devices from other vendors.

The Vizio Tablet has support for the standard Gmail client on Android as well as Exchange email support. As Vizio is a company known for great entertainment devices, the Vizio Tablet is also trying to win market share by great display, stereo sound, and features geared towards a great affordable entertainment device. Gaming also commended to be satisfactory on Vizio Tablet. Stereo sound and the high resolution display on Vizio Tablet will prove to be best for video and audio playback.

Motorola Xoom

Motorola Xoom is an Android tablet released by Motorola in early 2011. Motorola Xoom tablet was initially released to the market with Honeycomb (Android 3.0) installed. It is also reported that the Wi-Fi version as well as the Verizon branded versions of the tablet support Android 3.1, making Motorola Xoom one of the very first tablets to run Android 3.1.

Motorola Xoom boasts a 10.1 inch light responsive display with 1280 x 800 screen resolution. The Xoom has a multi touch screen and a virtual keypad is available in Portrait and landscape mode. The Xoom is designed more for landscape mode use. However, both landscape and portrait modes are supported. The screen is impressively responsive. Input can be given as voice commands as well. In addition to all above Motorola Xoom includes a compass, a gyroscope (to calculate orientation and proximity), a magnetometer (measure strength and direction of magnetic field), a 3 axis accelerometer, a light sensor and a barometer. Motorola Xoom has a 1 GB RAM and 32 GB internal storage and 1 GHz dual core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor.

With Android 3.0 on board Motorola Xoom provide 5 customizable home screens. All these home screens can be navigated with touch of a finger and shortcuts and widgets can be added and removed. Unlike earlier versions of Android the batter indicator, clock, signal strength indicator and notifications are at the very bottom of the screen. All applications can be accessed using the newly introduced icon at the top right hand corner of the home screen.

Honeycomb in Motorola Xoom also includes productivity applications such as calendar, calculator, clock and etc. many applications can be downloaded from Android market place as well. QuickOffice Viewer also comes installed with Motorola Xoom allowing users to view documents, presentations and spreadsheets.

A completely re-designed Gmail client is available with Motorola Xoom. Many reviews on the device claims that the interface is loaded with many UI components and it’s far from simple. However users can also configure Email accounts based on POP, IMAP. Google talk is available as the instant messaging application for Motorola Xoom. Though the video quality of the Google talk video chat is not of the best quality the traffic is well managed.

Motorola Xoom includes the Music application redesigned for Honeycomb. The interface is aligned with the 3D feel of the android version. Music can be categorized by artist and album. Navigation through albums is easy and very interactive.

Motorola Xoom supports up to 720p video play back. The tablet reports an average 9 hour batter life while looping a video and browsing web. A native YouTube application is also available with Motorola Xoom. A 3D effect with a wall of videos is presented to users. Android Honeycomb finally presents video editing software named “Movie Studio”. Though many are not very impressed with the performance of the software it was a much needed addition to the tablet OS. Motorola Xoom has a 5 mega pixel camera with an LED flash at the back of the device. The camera gives good quality images and video. The front facing 2 mega pixel camera can be used as a web cam and gives standard quality images for its specifications. Adobe Flash player 10 comes installed with Android.

The web browser available with Motorola Xoom is reportedly good in performance. It allows tabbed browsing, chrome bookmark sync and incognito mode. Web pages will be loaded and quickly and efficiently. But there will be occasions the browser will be recognized as an Android Phone.

What is the difference between Vizio Tablet and Motorola Xoom?

While the Motorola Xoom is an Android tablet released during the first quarter of 2011 while Vizio Tablet was available in market from the second quarter of 2011 with no official release. Both devices are Android tablets and applications for both devices can be downloaded from Android Market. Since Vizio Tablet has a more mature version of Android, Vizio Tablet will have a larger collection of applications supporting the device. Motorola Xoom runs on the tablet optimized Android version Android 3.0 and it’s one of the first Tablets to offer a 3.1 upgrade. On the other hand Vizio Tablet runs on a more stable version of Android more optimized for Android smart phones which is Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Motorola Xoom has a 10 inch screen with 1280 x 800 resolution while the Vizio Tablet has an 8 inch display with 1024 x 768 resolution. Motorola Xoom has a 1 GHz dual core processor with 1 GB memory. The Motorola Xoom is available with 32 GB internal storage. On the other hand Vizio Tablet has a 1 GHz single core processor with 512 MB memory. The internal storage available in Vizio Tablet is 2 GB but it’s extendible via micro- SD card up to 32 GB. Motorola Xoom has the standard Android interface provided by Honeycomb with little modifications but Vizio Tablet has a completely customized user interface named Vizio Internet Apps Plus (VIA Plus). The Motorola Xoom has a 5 Mega Pixel rear-facing camera and a 2 Mega Pixel front-facing camera while Vizio Tablet only has a front facing camera. On the outset Motorola Xoom is a tablet more suitable for tech savvy users with a higher budget while Vizio places itself as a more affordable competitor focusing on entertainment while making tablets available for the mass.