Are you in the market for a new Android tablet? Do you want something bigger than the 7-inch display on the Nexus 7 and do you need to have wireless data connectivity? A pretty great deal has popped up on the Internet for the Motorola Xoom. It’s unlocked and ready to do the 3G thing with your GSM carrier of choice and, better yet, it’s selling for just a touch over half price!

You might remember my review of the Motorola Xoom Android tablet last year. It’s a seriously solid Android Honeycomb tablet which can be updated to ICS. This version comes with both Wi-Fi and 3G to go along with its 10.1-inch display and 32GB of internal storage. Power comes by way of a dual-core 1GHz Cortex-A9 OMAP 4 processor, 1GB DRAM, and integrated NVIDIA graphics.

When you consider that this 3G-enabled tablet originally listed for $699.99, the current sale price of $379.99 sounds pretty darn good. That’s $320 (47%) off the list price and it comes with free super saver shipping too. Having it unlocked certainly helps too, especially if you plan on doing any sort of international traveling.

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The new Toshiba tablet has apparently shaved some weight too, tipping the scales at a paltry 1.18 pounds. Despite the shedding of millimeters and fractions of pounds, the Toshiba Excite 10 LE still has a reasonable assortment of connectivity options, including microUSB, HDMI, microSD, WiFi, and Bluetooth.

Power comes by way of an OMAP 4430 1.2GHz dual core processor and Android 3.2 Honeycomb, backing up that 1280×800 10.1-inch AutoBrite Display. Ice Cream Sandwich is being promised by the end of spring. Rounding out the specs are a 5MP rear camera and a 2MP front camera. The 16GB and 32GB models will sell for $529 and $599, respectively.

As I mentioned in my review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, though, thinner isn’t always necessarily better, particularly when it comes to tablets. It’s just harder to get a comfortable grip, but I guess that’s up to personal preference.

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The new Android 3.2 Honeycomb powered tablet has appeared on the Future Shop website in Canada, being offered up for pre-order. The product page is showing an “estimated” release date of February 29th. Much like its predecessors, this tablet will also be shipping in 16GB and 32GB flavors.

The rest of the specs sound like they’re par for last year’s course, coming with a 10.1-inch (1280×800) display, a 1.2GHz processor, 2MP front camera, and a 5MP rear camera. Given the push toward more cores, faster clock speeds, better cameras, and ICS, the Excite X10 doesn’t exactly get me excited. The pricing doesn’t help either with 16GB and 32GB models listing for $550 and $600, respectively. You can get a Sony Tablet S or Eee Pad Transformer for much less than that.

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Consumers have a lot of choices when it comes to tablets these days. There’s the iPad 2, of course, but you’ve also got an assortment of Android tablets, in addition to cheaper alternatives like the Kindle Fire. In the world of Honeycomb tablets, though, it can sometimes be difficult to really differentiate between the different offerings. Sony is certainly giving it a try.

You might remember when we first previewed the Sony Tablet S and now we’ve got our hands on one for a more comprehensive review. How different is it compared to all the other Honeycomb tablets that are already out there? What sets it apart from the pack that would make you choose it over the others? Read on to find out.

Features at a Glance

On paper, the Sony Tablet S is going to sound a lot like the competitors. It gets its power from the standard NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, backed by 1GB of RAM and your choice of 16GB or 32GB of internal storage. They’ve opted for a somewhat nonstandard 9.4-inch touchscreen, but most people will just place this in the same bin as the 10-inchers. One big differentiating feature is the inclusion of a full size SD card slot, whereas many other tablets go with microSD. That’s great for travel when you might take the photos from your camera and plunk the SD card in here for a bigger viewing experience.

Here’s a quick overview video that I put together that better illustrates some of these features.

The 5MP rear camera and VGA front camera do the job that they need to do, but they’re far from being the top of the league. Rounding out the specs are the usual array of WiFi, Bluetooth, microUSB and Flash support. There’s also infrared support, so you can control all of your home theater equipment with the right apps too.

The Folded Magazine Design

Another big way that Sony is trying to separate its Tablet S from the rest of the pack is with the physical design. Instead of going with a regular flat slate, the Tablet S has a unique “folded” design that is meant to mirror what you get when you open a page of a magazine and fold it over. This makes for a wedge-like profile.

In some ways, this works, since it creates a slight angle when you place the tablet on a flat surface. It also creates these indented grooves on the sides, so the buttons are less likely to be pressed accidentally. I’m not saying that it’s necessarily superior to the more conventional flat sides, but it does make the experience just a little different.

Everyday Performance and Benchmarks

Using the Sony Tablet S as an everyday device, I don’t have a lot in terms of deal-breaking complaints. Flipping between the different home screens and quickly scrolling through webpages isn’t quite as snappy as it could be, but it’s not so painfully slow as to render it frustrating. I tried a variety of media streaming apps, games, and so on to see how it stood up and the Tablet S is perfectly suitable.

In running it through the Quadrant Standard benchmark, though, I found that most of the scores ranged from about 1,550 to 1,750 or so. This isn’t so painfully useless, but it is toward the lower end of the spectrum. This is the same range as the Motorola Xoom, but a fair bit behind the 2100 range that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is able to achieve.

It’s possible that the ICS update could help this, but that’s all really conjecture at this point.

It’s a PlayStation Tablet…

Just like the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play smartphone, the Tablet S comes with PlayStation certification. In the grand scheme of things, this really won’t make that much of a difference to most tablet users, but it does mean that this tablet is somewhat optimized for the Sony mobile gamer. And yes, I know that Angry Birds Seasons isn’t a PlayStation game.

Conclusion

What makes you special? It’s the question that we ask of just about every tablet that we see, since they’re all so similar. They come with different sized screens, but the processing power is roughly similar, as are battery life and general daily performance. You are stuck with a proprietary charging port, complete with a power supply brick, but most other Android tablets don’t charge over USB either. I do like the full size SD card slot, though, and the “folded” wedge design is growing on me.

The recent price cut might help a little, but just about every other manufacturer of Honeycomb tablets is doing much the same thing. At the end of the day, the Sony Tablet S is perfectly adequate, but it’s also not terribly special either.

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We already know that you can get something like the Kobo Vox or Kindle Fire for $200, but they’re not really in the same kind of Android tablet league as their more expensive counterparts. Archos is breaking the Honeycomb price barrier today, though, with the unveiling of the Archos 70b Internet Tablet. This is the first Honeycomb Android tablet to sell for under $200.

Set to ship with Android 3.2 Honeycomb, the Archos 70b is powered by a 1.2GHz processor and 512MB of RAM to go along with its 1024×600 capacitive touchscreen display. And yes, it has full access to Android Market, not restricting you to a smaller app store. Rounding out the key specs are WiFi, a 3D graphics acceleroator, microSD expansion, and HDMI output.

That’s the good news. That bad news is that it won’t be arriving in time for you to stuff it under the Christmas tree. The Archos 70b Internet tablet with Android 3.2 Honeycomb hits retailers in January with an MSRP of $199.

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From this first look at the tablet, you can tell that the design is quite different. For starters, you get more of a wedged-in corner kind of style, not unlike the design cue that we see in the recently launched Droid Razr. The back has an industrial design that almost reminds me of Getac’s rugged convertible tablet PCs.

While the Droid Xyboard ships with Honeycomb, it will be eligible for Ice Cream Sandwich at some point in the future.We’re being told that two sizes will be available too: 8.2-inch and 10.1-inch, both of which have the same 1280×800 resolution display, dual core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB RAM, Verizon 4G LTE, 5MP rear cam, and 1.3MP front cam.

The 16GB version of the 8.2-inch and 10.1-inch Droid Xyboard will retail for $430 and $530, respectively, with a two-year Verizon contract. Both can be bumped to 32GB models, while only the bigger tab will get the 64GB option.

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The NVIDIA Tegra3 processor is easily one of the biggest stars of this upcoming Honeycomb tablet, but Asus is throwing in a few extra goodies to make sure you want it too. For starters, they’ve reworked the design so that it has more of a metallic finish, not unlike the gorgeous Asus Zenbook UX21. They’ve also slimmed down the package to just 8.3mm and 586 grams; compare that to the the 12.9mm and 690 grams of the original.

The rest of the specs are right in line with our previous expectations, including the 10.1-inch IPS display, 12-core GeForce GPU, memory expansion, 8MP rear camera, 1.2MP front camera, GPS, WiFi, USB 2.0, microHDMI, and 12 hours of battery life. Curiously, they’re only putting a single gig of RAM in there. I hope that’s enough to give us the true Kal-El experience.

The 32GB and 64GB models should both become available next month for $499 and $599, respectively. It looks like they’ve killed off the 16GB option, but pricing has remained steady for the upper two capacities. The keyboard dock is $149.

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It was originally stated that this version of Sammy’s Honeycomb tablet would be available until November 13, but it seems that it is available for purchase through Amazon, as as well as other larger retailers across the nation. Yes, this only represents a little more than a week, but it means you can give yourself an early Christmas present right now.

As a quick refresher, you get Android 3.2 Honeycomb, a 1.2GHz dual core processor, either 16GB or 32GB of internal storage, a microSD expansion slot, a 2MP front camera, and a 3MP rear camera. This is all on par with the rest of the current Galaxy Tab range, which also includes options with 8.9-inch and soon 7.7-inch displays too. The 16GB and 32GB of the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus carry an MSRP of $399 and $499, respectively.

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I spotted this price at Future Shop in Canada, but it seems that at least a few other retailers are offering variants of the K1 at that price point. This is notable for a couple of reasons. First, it undercuts the Eee Pad Transformer 16GB by a solid fifty bucks. Second, the Lenovo has 32GB of internal memory.

To get the Eee Pad Transformer in 32GB (without the keyboard dock) is still in the $499 range, so you could say that the IdeaPad K1 is undercutting by $150. Yes, this is still almost double the price of the Kindle Fire, but you are getting a real Honeycomb tablet here with real Android Market access and a peppy NVIDIA Tegra2 processor. Is that cheap enough yet? Or are you willing to pay more when the Kal-El tablets arrive?

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Times have changed substantially from the days of the Samsung Instinct. That was a sad dumbphone that tried to compete with Apple;s iPhone. Now, though, the Samsung Galaxy S line of Android smartphones are among the best in the business, but can we say the same about their tablets? Well, let’s have a look at one of the best in the bunch in the form of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. It’s name is pretty much self-explanatory: this is a Samsung tablet with a 10.1-inch screen. Does it stand out?

Features and Specs

Quite unlike the original seven-inch Galaxy Tab, this version isn’t running on a stretched out version of a smartphone operating system. Like the Asus Eee Pad and Motorola Xoom, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has Honeycomb under the hood. There is some customization with TouchWiz too. It’s still unclear whether this will be upgradeable to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich at some point in the future, but I’m perfectly happy with Honeycomb for now.

This particular review is of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G from Bell Mobility, but it’ll largely be the same Tab 10.1 as you’d find elsewhere like the recently “leaked” date from T-Mobile on November 2.

It’s not Super AMOLED Plus, but it’s still very bright and vibrant. It boasts a 1280×800 pixel resolution. As with so many other tabs of this ilk, it gets a dual core 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB storage, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, and so on. The camera on the back is a 3MP unit capable of 720p video recording. The “4G” part of the name refers to the HSPA network compatibility with speeds up to 21Mbps.

The Skinny Tab

“Wow. This is thin.”

That was the first thought that struck me when I opened up the box. Yes, I realize that most tablets are relatively skinny these days, but with just a 8.6mm profile, I believe the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the skinniest of them all. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on your personal preferences. I had a friend say that he didn’t like that it was so thin, because it made it more difficult to get a good handle on it.

Coupled by the fact that the back is a slippery glossy plastic and you can see how grip might become a bit of a concern. Contrast this to, say, the slightly thicker Asus Eee Pad Transformer with its more textured back and you’ll notice the difference right away. Even so, I didn’t find the slippery back and super slim size to be much of a problem at all.

The design is actually very simple with just three buttons in total. There’s the power button, of course, and the two volume control buttons. That’s it. Ports are very simple too: you get a headphone jack, a charging port, and a slot for the SIM card. This relative simplicity is both a blessing and a curse.

It’s Honeycomb All Over Again

There’s not a lot to say about the UI, since you’ve seen it all before. Yes, Samsung has gone through the trouble of putting a few tweaks here and there with TouchWiz, like several of the Samsung-specific home screen widgets, but they’re relatively minimal. I did like how there was a dedicated screenshot “button” near the home, recent apps, and back “buttons” on the screen, though, but not everyone will want or need that kind of functionality.

The settings menu looks a little different too, but I wouldn’t say that it’s necessarily any better or worse. Getting at the hotspot functionality seemed a little simpler, including the ease of changing the security and password settings, but these are all really minor.

Battery life was again on par with other Android tablets, getting somewhere around 8-10 hours under constant usage. Naturally, your mileage will vary considerably here depending on how and how often you use the tablet. With intermittent usage, I could get a couple days before needing to reach for a power outlet.

Quadrant Standard and Speedtest Benchmarks

To give an objective test to the performance, I put the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 through Quadrant Standard. The results were within the realm of expectation, getting anywhere from 2022 to 2288 in the few iterations that I attempted. This range is similar to other Honeycomb tablets with similar specs.

General everyday performance felt reasonably smooth most of the time and it stood up to par with other similarly equipped Honeycomb tablets that I have tried. The exception was when I tried to play YooNinja, a game where a ninja runs quickly across the screen. The game played much more slowly than I had experienced elsewhere, but I’m not sure why: other games seemed to be just as smooth as elsewhere.

As far as the 4G network was concerned, I ran a few tests with Speedtest.net in the Vancouver area. Ping was typically under 100ms with the download speed in the 2-3Mbps range. This is a far cry from the claimed maximum of 21Mbps. It is nice to see the upload speed approach the 2Mbps range, though, which is certainly handy if you’re going to be uploading any of that 720p video you’ll be shooting. This is nowhere near 4G LTE, but for a tablet, it does the job just fine.

Conclusion

Considering that we are on the eve of Kal-El, it’s harder to recommend a current Honeycomb tablet like the Galaxy Tab 10.1. You can’t get it in certain countries and I can see why Apple would say that it’s a little too similar to the iPad in some regards. Even so, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a seriously solid tablet with an attractively slim profile, decent performance, and a svelte user interface.

If you’re looking at current dual core Honeycomb tabs, though, I would still take the Eee Pad Transformer over this, if only for the added flexibility of the keyboard dock. In general, I like the Samsung over the Motorola Xoom and LG Optimus Pad, but that could be because of the brighter screen and overall better-looking package.

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