T-Mobile G-Slate vs BlackBerry PlayBook vs Apple iPad 2 vs Motorola XOOM

Introduction:

For the better portion of the last month, we’ve been toiling away getting comfy with some of the newest tablets to hit the market of late, and now that we’ve gotten a feel for all of them, it’s best to sit down to compare and contrast them all in one major showdown. With the Apple iPad 2, BlackBerry PlayBook, Motorola XOOM, and T-Mobile G-Slate all on deck waiting for their turn in the spotlight, we have to focus our attention on all of them simultaneously to better gauge how they differentiate with one another – and at the same time, what categories they excel at. Naturally, it’s rather hard to concretely say which one is the best out of the bunch, especially when user preferences come into play, but nonetheless, we need to look back and meticulously figure out which one is probably agreed as being the most balanced. So without any further delay, let’s get right into the thick of the battle!

Design:

Visually, all four tablets basically rely on the same foundations when it comes down to their designs, and none of them necessarily deviate from the usual slate form factor. However, we’re still at a gaze and really have to marvel at the design and construction of the iPad 2 since it embodies a combination of quality materials and attention to fine detail. Compared to the other crop, its remarkable razor thin profile impressively sets it apart, but it’s only marginally thinner than the BlackBerry PlayBook. With RIM’s model, we have to applaud it as well since it’s very sturdy for a 7-incher – while retaining a pocketable design. As for the two Android tablets, we favor the G-Slate’s design over the XOOM slightly because it’s more comfortable to hold and looks cleaner thanks to its soft touch rear cover.  Still, the iPad 2 clearly has the striking figure from the onset that will easily attract any prying eyes from far away.

Evidently, the screen size of a certain tablet will more than likely dictate whether or not it’s favorable to an individual, but in all honestly, the PlayBook’s quality display shines above the pack. Sure it’s the tiniest out of the bunch at 7-inches, but combining its iridescent color production, stunning clarity, and high pixel density, it soundly comes together to offer an unbelievable experience. Adding to its sheer prowess, the PlayBook edges out the iPad 2 in delivering the highest brightness output, which contributes in making it visible under the gleaming eye of the sun. Apple’s pride and joy follows closely with its 9.7” display, but you can distinctively notice its jagged looking on-screen text. Moreover, the G-Slate still boasts a nice looking display at 8.9-inches, but there is a slight yellowish tinge with its output. And lastly, the XOOM’s 10.1” display provides the most real estate, but it’s recognizable that it’s employing the lowest quality display because of its weak luminance.


Not something you’d necessarily think about, especially taking into account the larger size of tablets, we’re still presented with the ability to shoot photos and videos on the go with all four. In terms of sensors, both the iPad 2 and PlayBook employ fixed focused cameras that lack any flash, but the PlayBook manhandles the iPad 2 since it packs a 5-megapixel one as opposed to the less than 1-megapixel count of the iPad 2. Conversely, both the G-Slate and XOOM carry along 5-megaixel auto-focus cameras with flash, which is handy for macro shots, but the G-Slate has the novel feature of shooting videos in 3D with its dual cameras.



Turning on a tablet shouldn’t be a frustrating experience in any sense, but unfortunately, the PlayBook’s annoyingly small dedicated power button is a nightmare to press. Thankfully it’s not much of a problem with the other three tablets, however, you can bypass on having to press the PlayBook’s power button because you can still execute a swipe gesture from the bottom bezel all the way to the top one to power it on – sadly, there’s no gesture to do the opposite.

Interface and Functionality:

Seeing that the foursome are at the cutting edge of technology, it’s rather not surprising to find all of them packing along speedy 1GHz dual-core processors under their carriage. Even though the dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor of the G-Slate and XOOM work smoothly in various operations, there’s still a little bit of lag associated with its execution – and it’s most evident when using them in portrait. Oppositely, the iPad 2 and PlayBook deliver an immersive and responsive performance with their near instant tendencies. In fact, it’s almost unbelievable to see the high rate of performance exhibited by the two, but the iPad 2 manages to edge out the PlayBook slightly. Nonetheless, they’re all graceful with their navigation and execution, but the iPad 2’s wickedly fast movements in just about every aspect are just blatantly impressive.

We’ve gone through the intricacies of each respective platform already, but it ultimately comes down to personal preference with this one amongst people. Flaunting a straightforward and uncomplicated platform experience, the learning curves associated with the iPad 2 and PlayBook are naturally low, but they sorely lack a meaningful amount of personalization. On the other hand, the Android 3.0 Honeycomb powered tablets offer a rich set of personalization features that beautify and enhance the overall experience – like their useful widgets and gorgeous looking live wallpapers.


Speedy typers will enjoy the performance dished up by each tablet, thanks to their fast processors in tow, but it’s once again size that comes into play with this one. Besides the PlayBook, the layout of the landscape style keyboard of each tablet is generally sufficient in size, and its operation is easy to handle. However, we like how the PlayBook will actually distinguish the buttons that are pressed as it supersizes each one as we type. But in portrait use, it’s clear that both the G-Slate and PlayBook have the upper hand since they’re narrow enough to allow most thumbs to encompass the entire layout of their keyboards. As for the iPad 2 and XOOM, their wide figures make it nearly impossible to input text at a moderate rate seeing that there’s a lot of travel required with your thumbs.


Unless you can tether the PlayBook with a BlackBerry smartphone to unlock its email client, the tablet is almost rendered useless for emailing – that’s unless you can deal with using the web browser instead. Fortunately though, the other three tablets are exceptionally adept at handling your email needs, but seeing that we’re presented with the multitude of Gmail features available with the two Android tablets, they’re by far the most satisfying in handling our email needs.

Even to this day, we still despise the obtrusive notifications system in use with the iPad 2, which hasn’t changed one bit since the first day iOS rolled along. Offering a more suitable experience, the XOOM and G-Slate intricately level all notifications in one central hub for you to look at any time.  Lastly, the PlayBook might not receive that many notifications unless you have BlackBerry Bridge activated, but when it is, you’ll find them popping up at the top bar of its home panel, which is not as useful as in Honeycomb, but still a decent solution.



Internet:

Alright, it’s very hard to find any fault with any of the respective WebKit based web browsers of each tablet, especially when the end results are truly satisfying. Safari on the iPad 2 is absolutely the most responsive when it comes to kinetic scrolling and pinch zooming, so its buttery fluid movement  gives you plenty of control in terms of navigation. And even though the PlayBook, G-Slate, and XOOM offer a desktop like experience with their support for Flash, the PlayBook is by far the most captivating in this category seeing that it doesn’t falter in the face of heavy Flash content. At the same time, the PlayBook still provides a reasonable level of responsiveness with its movement when navigating around a web site. Surprising to say the least considering that the PlayBook is one of the newer tablets on the scene with its QNX based platform, it combines a host of elements to supremely provide a well-balanced web browsing experience that sets the bar amongst all others.


In case what you desire is super-fast cellular connectivity though, the LTE-equipped XOOM seems like the most viable option. However, keep in mind that Motorola is yet to start activating those radios, which will be a process that will involve shipping your device to the manufacturer for a week.

Camera and Multimedia:

Generally not something that you’d think about bringing along as a replacement for a traditional point & shoot camera, all four tablets have the ability to shoot photos and videos on the go – though, they’re not the most ideal. Without a doubt, the Motorola XOOM produces the best photos out of the bunch with its sharp looking snapshots and natural looking color production. Coming in at second place is none other than the G-Slate which closely produces the same quality as the XOOM, but colors are more on the dull side. Also, the two Android tablets handle macro shots and low lighting situations with ease thanks to their auto-focus and LED flash. Meanwhile, the PlayBook handles well on its own despite the lack of auto-focus with its acceptable looking shots. Sadly though, the iPad 2 just doesn’t cut it with its poor and grainy looking visuals.

Granted that it didn’t take top honors with its snapshots, the PlayBook astoundingly delivers the best looking high definition videos that put the rest to shame! Combining its fluid capture rate and crisp visuals, the 1080p videos of the PlayBook are by far the most acceptable – even more when we still rarely find devices offering 1080p recording. And even though the G-Slate boasts 1080p recording as well, there’s just an abundant amount of artifacting evident when quickly panning – albeit, it does have the novel feature of shooting 3D videos. To tell you the truth, the XOOM’s quality with its 720p videos are moderately better than the G-Slate, but it still looks rather too muddy for our tastes. Finally, the iPad 2 once again shows us that it’s just incapable of competing with the other tablets in this category with its paltry 720p recording.

Apple iPad 2 Sample Video:



RIM BlackBerry PlayBook Sample Video:



Motorola XOOM Sample Video:



T-Mobile G-Slate Sample Video:



At their core, the music players of all four utilize the same conventional looking music player when listening to music – like the album cover, track information, and on-screen controls. However, the G-Slate and XOOM employ an eye catching presentation with its 3D like carousel when browsing through albums. Aside from the iPad 2, you’ve got stereo output with the other three tablets since they have left and right speakers. Small in size, we’re astounded by the pleasant, yet powerful tones emitted by the PlayBook’s speakers – it’s just very easy on the ears! In contrast, the XOOM is also up there in terms of volume output, but at the highest setting, it becomes irritating since there’s a notable amount crackling evident with it.


Honestly, you really can’t go wrong watching videos with any of the tablets – especially when they operate at a blistering rate. High definition videos play magnificently on all four tablets, but it’s once again size preference that will win people over. Regardless of that,  you’ll be enthralled nonetheless by their smooth playback.

Displaying content in a familiar grid-like format, there’s nothing really spectacular with the photo galleries of the iPad 2 and PlayBook. Of course, the Honeycomb flavored tablets show off their graphical prowess with the 3D like stacking effects of their galleries. Additionally, they offer a small set of editing tools that are missing with the iPad 2 and PlayBook. Likewise, the same can be said about the vast sharing functions offered by the G-Slate and XOOM.

Both the iPad 2 and PlayBook are available in three capacities (16GB, 32GB, and 64GB), but the G-Slate and XOOM  are dead stuck with their 32GB of internal storage. However, the XOOM is the only one to feature a microSD card slot for additional storage, but it’s still inactive at this point until Motorola pushes out an update to turn it on. And as for the G-Slate, it comes packaged with a microUSB to USB adapter that would allow you to connect any USB flash drive to it – but just like the XOOM, it’s missing the drivers to actually read them.

While the iPad 2 is the only one that’s required to use an adapter to offer support for video out, the other tablets all come with microHDMI ports to easily connect them to any high-definition display. Once connected, all four provide a mirrored experience that mimics the platform experience on the big screen – nice touch indeed!

Software:

Looking around their respective app stores, it’s blatantly evident that the iPad 2 lays claim to the most amount of tablet optimized and feature-rich applications. However, we have to say that the Google apps available with the G-Slate and XOOM, like Google Maps, feel more complete in their offerings compared to the others. Being the new kid on the block, the PlayBook’s offerings are quite quaint and don’t feel anywhere close to being as polished as the competition. Thanks primarily to its developmental head start, there’s undoubtedly a higher amount of reasonable apps that are available with the iPad 2 to boost your software experience.

Performance:

In our daily usage, all four tablets are easily capable of delivering a solid day of normal use without the urge to juice it up. However, it just seems in our experience that the iPad 2 just edges out the others in the battery life category. Still, you can expect to get a fair amount of usage with all of them throughout the day and still find some juice as you’re headed off to bed.

Conclusion:

We’ve gone through in explaining which devices excel in specific categories, but it’s still rather difficult to concretely say which one is ultimately the cream of the crop. Naturally, there’s a host of other factors that come into play that would make one more highly prized than the other, like pricing. Taking that into consideration, the two cellular enabled Android tablets currently sport no-contract price tags of $750 and up – making them super pricey! Chiming in at a more reasonable starting price of $500 for their base Wi-Fi only models, the iPad 2 and PlayBook offer plenty of bang for the buck, and if you want to add 3G connectivity to the iPad 2, it'd still be more affordable than the Honeycomb-rocking alternatives. In any event, there’s no denying we’ll still be hearing all four of these tablets in the coming months, especially when they’re setting the pace for all others to come out after them.

T-Mobile G-Slate vs BlackBerry PlayBook vs Apple iPad 2 vs Motorola XOOM: