Wired’s Mike Isaac recently compared some of the front-runners in the tablet market: HP TouchPad, Motorola Xoom, Apple iPad, Apple iPad 2, RIM BlackBerry PlayBook and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Here’s a synopsis of his summary broken down by categories.
Body. The lightest 10-incher to date is the Galaxy Tab 10.1. At roughly the size of a paperback, the 7-inch PlayBook scores points with consumers who like a smaller package.
Power. Nothing in this generation is backed by less than 1 GHz of processing power. Most come with 1GB of RAM, except Apple’s offerings. The iPad comes with only 256MB and the iPad 2 doubles that.
Cameras. The first gen iPad has no camera. The TouchPad only has a front-facing camera. The rest come with front and back-facing cameras, although the iPad 2 has the worst one of all.
Connectivity. With all sorts of ports, the Android devices here dominate in terms of interactivity with peripherals, with the Xoom being the best example. The iPads have 3G versions avaialbe on both AT&T and Verizon networks and HP, RIM, and Samsung say they’re all working on carrier-backed versions. The Xoom runs on Verizon’s 3G network but if you want to upgrade to 4G you have to mail the tablet to Verizon for a week.
Browser Performance. To gauge this, Wired tested Javascript performance using the SunSpider benchmark tool. The iPad 2 came in with the fastest time, followed in order by the Xoom, Galaxy Tab, PlayBook, first-gen iPad, and the TouchPad in last place.
Battery Life. With about 10 hours of juice, the iPads dominate in this category. The rest of the tablets came in around the eight-hour mark.
Price. While Isaac says the field in this category is pretty level, the Xoom suffers a bit because of its lack of a low-end option.
To read Isaac’s full comparison, his detailed chart of specs, and the snarky comments that always follow these tech show downs, visit Wired.
