Apple’s 2nd slate came out tops in consumer reports – beating off rivals Samsung and even Motorola’s Xoom.
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The iPad 2 even beat the original model, although many have found the difference between the first and second installation to be lacking. According to several web sites and an unnamed Apple employee, the iPad 2 was a bit of a rush job, to say the least.
However, at a close second came the highly anticipated Motorola Xoom on Honeycomb, and although rated second best it failed to beat the consumer favourite iPad 2.
This was in spite of the extra features it sports including built-in memory card reader and support for Adobe Flash.
The independent US report, conducted by consumer reports.org, the equivilant of Choice in Australia, assessed ten competing tablets on 17 criteria including colour, brightness, viewing angle of the display as well as touch responsiveness, video and battery life.
Other devices tested included the Samsung Galaxy Tab, ViewSonic tablets and even the original iPad.
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The 32GB iPad 2 with Wi-Fi and 3G topped the ratings, scoring “Excellent” in nearly every category. One of its greatest advantages was its battery life, which lasted 12.2 hours. Dell’s Streak 7 tab, although cheaper in price, had a flimsy 3.8 hour lifespan.
Motorola Xoom, the first tablet to run on Google’s Android 3.0 OS, is due to hit here later this year and looks set to be a market favourite, already receiving rave reviews in the industry.
Specs-wise it boasts 1080p HD video support and Adobe Flash support for browsing and gaming, packing a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 1GHz processor, 1GB DDR2 RAM and 32GB of space.
The same consumer body it refused to give the iPhone 4 the thumbs up last year due to poor reception issues.
