Apple iPad 2 vs Motorola Xoom

The world is abuzz with all things iPad right now, following the official unveiling of the iPad 2 in the US yesterday.

The device, which was launched with all the sheen and professionalism expected of Apple and Steve Jobs, certainly looks a good upgrade, but the market isn't the one horse race it was last year when the original device was announced.

Today the tablet market is awash with devices that feature seriously impressive hardware and if the iPad 2 wants to reach the dizzy heights of the tablet tree it's going to have to surpass these devices

In order to test the new iPad 2 to the limit of its potential and ascertain whether it's capable of hanging on to Apple's commanding tablet market share, we've decided to put it up against a device that packs a pretty big wallop: Motorola's Xoom. But which of these super-slates will emerge victorious? Let's see!

Display
Apple's iPad 2 features a 9.7-inch backlit-LED IPS display with oleophobic coating and scratch and fingerprint resistance. If that sounds mighty familiar that's because it's the self-same screen that debuted on the original iPad nearly a year ago. If we're being subjective we would agree that It's aged well, but a Retina Display it most certainly is not.

Motorola's Xoom features a standard 10.1-inch TFT display which is nice and responsive, and ideal for watching movies and surfing the web, but it does suffer from the odd legibility problem under bright light, and doesn't boast the same kind of viewing angles as Apple's IPS enabled screen, meaning it plays second fiddle to the iPad 2 in this category.

Winner -Apple iPad 2

Internals
As expected Apple opted to fit the new iPad 2 with its own dual-core 1GHz A5 chip, which reportedly offers nearly ten times the graphical performance of its predecessor.

Similarly Motorola's Xoom is imbued with plenty of speed and power, thanks to its 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 CPU, which also allows the device to handle the multi-tasking that its Android 3.0 OS allows it to undertake.

The Xoom also features 1GB RAM, which gives the device a real snappy edge when moving in and out of applications and surfing the web.

There's no word on RAM size for Apple's new device yet, but judging by the speedy interface we'd expect at least 512MB, possibly even more. But we aren't dealing with speculation here so, thanks to its honesty, we're giving this round to the Motorola as we always like to know where we stand when it comes to installed memory.

Winner - Motorola Xoom

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