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Motorola has stuck some price stickers on its new Xoom 2 and Xoom 2 Media Edition tablets. The 10.1-inch Xoom 2 will be flogged for £380, while the smaller Media Edition slate will set you back £330.
How reasonable is that? Well, it’s not nearly as cheap as we’d like, but at least it’s cheaper than Apple’s iPad 2, which costs £399 for the Wi-Fi only 16GB version.
Frankly we’re a little relieved. The first Xoom was way too expensive, priced at a credit card-melting £450. We’d hazard that the high price was the main reason Motorola’s first Android tablet failed to take off, so it’s possible that the Xoom 2 and its smaller cousin will be more attractive to punters shopping on a budget.
That said, we weren’t bowled over by either the Xoom 2 or the Xoom 2 Media Edition during our hands-on session. Neither tablet will be running Ice Cream Sandwich when they go on sale in a few weeks time, which feels like a huge missed opportunity.
Instead of cutting-edge ‘droid goodness, these two tablets are stuck running Android 3.2 Honeycomb. Elsewhere the specs are middle-of-the-road — a 1.2GHz dual-core processor in each tablet is good news, but it’s hard to get excited about the 5-megapixel camera around the back of each tablet.
We were also dismayed to find that unlike the first Xoom, these new devices don’t feature a MicroSD card slot, so you’re stuck with the rather meagre 16GB of on-board memory.
Will these tablets prove to be surprisingly good? Or will poor sales force an HP TouchPad-style price crash? Get navel-gazing in the comments or on our Facebook wall.
