Engadget's testing clocked the battery in at 8 hours and 20 minutes. That's an hour and 13 minutes less than the iPad, but more than any other tablet on the market. "We could easily see maximizing this if you're in airplane mode with a slightly lower brightness setting," Topolsky wrote.

Apps

Third-party app support is going to be hit-or miss until developers start writing software specifically for Android Honeycomb. Time's Harry McCracken had trouble with Facebook and Twitter, and said that other apps "tend to wind up with vast amounts of unused screen space, as if they were wearing an XXL user interface when they'd really fit into a Small." PCWorld's Perenson noted that there's no way to tell from the Android Market which apps have been optimized for Honeycomb.

Verdict

Motorola and Google come out of the gate with an impressive, but flawed product. In addition to the drawbacks noted by reviewers, and the steep $800 price tag, the Xoom is missing Flash support, 4G service and MicroSD storage -- all of which will be added later. So it's no surprise that there's a wait-and-see attitude among reviewers.