Site-loading speed battle: Motorola Xoom vs. Apple iPad

The tablet wars will be in full swing in the next couple weeks. Last week, we witnessed the opening salvo with the release of Motorola's Xoom. The Xoom is arguably the first legitimate competitor to the first-generationApple iPad, so naturally we'd want to conduct as many tests directly comparing them as possible.

Testing
While we'll be running a number of Xoom and iPad tests over the next few weeks, we wanted to provide you with some quick, easy, but still useful tests right away. One of the simplest things to test is site-loading speed, a test many users can immediately relate to, especially if you're reading this sentence. I'm a much greater fan of real-world tests like this one, as opposed to synthetic benchmarks.

We used three different Web sites for the tests: CNET.com, CBSnews.com, and GiantBomb.com. Each tablet was connected to the same closed network with no other devices on it with the router about 5 feet away. We considered the beginning of the test to be the moment we pressed Enter to the time the blue progress bar on each tablet disappeared. We used the latest version of iOS for the iPad and the Xoom is, of course, of using Honeycomb, or Android OS 3.0.

Although, in the video you'll only see one iteration for each test, we actually ran each test several times; over those runs we got results consistent with what you'll see here. Also, we cleared each tablet's browser cache before each iteration of the tests were run.

Now, as much as we'd love for these tests to be completely relatable to everyone in every situation, that's nearly impossible. We tested these tablets under specific conditions in a "free" environment. The network was closed, but we can't account for noise from other networks interfering. This is a snapshot of performance in our testing environment and because of that, your results may vary.


The video
You'll notice in the video that CBSnews.com hangs for both tablets. This was something we saw consistently over several runs. To ensure accuracy, we timed each tablet individually. You can even time it yourself using the video if you'd like to make sure.

3D graphics

We used Dungeon Defender to test the performance of each tablet's 3D graphics. The Xoom has a native resolution of 1,280x800 pixels, whereas the iPad has a lower resolution at 1,024x768 pixels. This is likely the main reason for the difference in 3D game performance you'll see in the video.

We put the camera close to really illustrate the difference in quality between the two. Also in the video, we feature only one character, but we found that aliasing was a consistent problem for the iPad in this game; however, it's not something we likely would have been put off by if it wasn't sitting right next to the Xoom.

Although the Xoom delivered smoother characters, its colors were not as deep and rich as on the iPad.

Conclusion
Based on the results we got with the aforementioned caveats, the Motorola will likely have faster Wi-Fi surfing speed than the iPad. While not all tests showed a huge difference, the Xoom was consistently the faster tablet.

With Dungeon Defender, the Xoom's higher resolution shows that it has the potential to have smoother, less jaggy games; however, the washed-out color could be a problem for some.

We'll be posting more test results from this and (hopefully) other, as yet unreleased, tablets soon.

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