Motorola Xoom Tegra2 Tablet PC Showcase & Accessories Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,795 words · ~8 min read
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now I promise you guys more tablet coverage over the next little while so
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the first one that I'm going to be looking at besides my so unpopular iPad
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2 unboxing is the Motorola Zoom now every tablet manufacturer on the Android
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side has to find different ways to differentiate themselves because
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remember it's all running on the same platform Apple has the hardware and the
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software to different differentiate themselves from the rest of the market but these guys actually have to work a
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little harder for it so the Motorola Zoom features the Tegra 2 processor so
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that is a dual core processor with an advanced Graphics chip built in so this
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is an NVIDIA uh an NVIDIA initiative
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that they've worked very hard to bring to market now one of the ways that
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Motorola differentiates themselves actually there's a couple different ways
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one is battery life the zoom actually has exceptional battery life even from
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my personal experience with it
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and the other is the accessories so there's a ton of actual Motorolla
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official accessories you don't have to rely on Cheo third parties to
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necessarily make the accessories that go with it so I'm going to show you guys
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the zoom up close as well as some select
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accessories here including a Bluetooth
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keyboard the protective portfolio case
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the speaker HD dock these are all Motorola accessories as well as the
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regular dock which I have it mounted on right now so let's have a closer look at
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the unit itself it uses a dual core tager 2 as I mentioned before it has a
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10.1 in that is a 1280x 800 resolution
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screen so it is capable of displaying 720p content on it okay let's let's
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check out what we got in terms of physical attributes here so we have our
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power in this is an HDMI output we've
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also got USB okay so moving around that appears to be a microphone on the other
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side pretty much nothing very clean overall look you got a headphone Port as
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well as a Micro SD slot now at the time of doing this video see there's your
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micro SD placeholder the micro SD slot is not yet enabled but there is some
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functionality that's coming very very
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soon so of note is the fact that right
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here on the back we have an 5 megapixel
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as well as HD video camera so that is 5 megapixel still images and 720p video we
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have a flash we also have stereo speakers and there is your power and
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unlock key you got a little Motorola logo there okay on the other side we
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find volume buttons now one of the things to note about this tablet is is
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clearly meant to be used in portrait mode because you can tell this the
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volume buttons are here the camera is here so when you compare that to the
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iPad 2 for example which has the camera here and has your volume control here
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that's meant to be used more in portrait mode because it's widescreen this is
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what's going to deliver the most satisfying overall experience so one of
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the things like I said that really sets the zoom apart is the fact that here
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what's a good example why don't we use uh actually you know what no this one's
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not as impressive let's do uh let's do this one right here we're going to run
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rip tide on the HDMI output so it is as
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simple as plugging this this is actually a Motorola HDMI cable into the although
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it's standard compatible you can just buy one and then you can you can use it
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into any monitor or television
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and you can play games from your tablet
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on the big screen whether it's a monitor or a
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TV so here we are we're getting started uh you want to watch you want to
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watch the screen there so so check this
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out Tigra 2 allows us to play way way
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more graphically intensive games than the uh the than the processor on the
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iPad 2 or iPad 1 especially but even the iPad 2 so you can see here that this is
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running very you know 3D lots of water effects and all that
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good stuff it looks much more impressive actually when you put it up on the
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bigger screen versus on the smaller screen just because you can really see
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the amount of detail that goes into
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it and that's we can cut off that clip
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there so next let's have a quick look at the protective portfolio case which I
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have not actually yet seen so it actually has like a
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rubberized feel to the outside it would be very very difficult to accidentally
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drop it The outsides are a hard plastic so that's going to protect you from a
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small incidental fall but nothing major
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okay how to use your Motorola Zoom portfolio comes with a little uh
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instruction thing so you know what let me uh let me Mount this in and then I'll be back well took me only a couple
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seconds to mount it you basically just snap the unit in and now I have it in
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its carrying case this is actually a little bit smarter than Apple's carrying case now the device does not wake when
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you open it but personally I have no problem pressing a button at the back to
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turn on the device when I'm going to use it so I'm not too worried about that
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particular functionality but it does do a few things that are kind of cool first
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of all you unsnap the bottom half of it
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just like that oh now it turned off okay maybe that would be a handy feature okay
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and then you just go like this so you want to use it flat you fold it on
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itself just like that hook it in there now you are able to use the tablet flat
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you're able to access all of your buttons and you are ready to go okay
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couple other things you want to use a high viewing angle so this would be
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ideal for watching movies for example if you're putting it in front of you on a
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plane on your uh tray in the upright
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position or whatever the case may be sit and watch a movie or if you want to use
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it in a more laptop esque kind of
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environment then what you can do is you can go ahead and you can mount it like
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that now all of a sudden you can type on it using a wireless keyboard and with
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the upcoming firmware update to 3 .1 we are not only going to get that micro SD
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slot enabled but we're also going to get support for not only a keyboard but also
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a mouse at the same
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time did you turn it off yeah are you sure
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oh all right so pairing up the keyboard
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was just a matter of okay well now the device is going to standby but pairing
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up the keyboard was just a matter of turning on Bluetooth and now I can
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navigate around inside the menus I mean if I didn't want to use the touch screen
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which is actually a little easier I mean what the keyboard is actually for is for
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typing so this oh okay well I accidentally hit a key at the beginning
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but this keyboard is actually pretty
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comfortable okay well I'm talking while I type so it makes it uh lots more
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difficult but the responsiveness is good
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the uh the comfort is quite nice it's very very low profile so you can
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actually pack it around with you and it takes standard ablea batteries so you
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don't have to worry about uh recharging it if you run into trouble you can just
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buy some aa's and you are good to go it also has all of the usual Android short
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key shortcut keys so you got your home button you've got chat you've got the
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market you've got your Gmail music internet volume uh play some media
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controls all of that good stuff I actually don't know what this button
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does oh okay so that brings out the uh context menus so when you have the mouse
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functionality that's going to come in the 3.1 update then I think we're going
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to be in a situation where the functionality is dramatically improved
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because now all of a sudden just by carrying a little mouse little Bluetooth
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mouse and this skinny keyboard you can have all of those extra input options so
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the last thing I'm going to look at is the HD speaker dock now our last big
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accessory here is the HD speaker dock
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and what this allows us to do is dock it the same way we would on the normal dock
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which is weighted it powers and charges the device this has all of that
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functionality as well but this one adds external speakers to the zoom which are
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actually quite loud Distortion
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free and definitely make for a satisfying gaming experience okay let's
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also have a look at the other functionality of the HD speaker dock
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though check this out so you got your your speaker here you can see it's
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substantially larger than the regular dock it is also powered by a um an
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inline power brick like this and you
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also have support for the HDMI out whereas the regular dock actually blocks
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the HDMI port you do not have support for HDMI out using that one the HD
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speaker dock is also compatible not only with the zoom by itself but you can also
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take it off and you can switch the mounting piece so that instead it is
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compatible with the zoom in its case so
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it adds a little bit of extra buffer space around the back so you can put it
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in on the carrying case so thank you for checking out my overview of the Motorola
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Zoom don't forget to subscribe to lus techtips for unboxings reviews and other
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computer videos actually this is more of an overview of the zoom accessories I'll
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be looking more in depth at the zoom itself on NCI Tech tips in the near
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future as part of a tablet Roundup