News - Dixons axes price of Motorola Xoom tablet

[HEXUS]

HP, Samsung and poor sales are probably to blame.

Read more.

[Infinite]

Mediocre product should be of mediocre value.

[[GSV]Trig]

I like my Xoom tbh, screen chould be a bit better but other than that its pretty much inline with the rest of the Android units..

[Brewster0101]

Too be honest I think if Google really want to make inroads into the tablet market, they will need to produce and release their own tablet at a low price - £300 ish including 3g and wifi.

[Cousin_Hod]

Too be honest I think if Google really want to make inroads into the tablet market, they will need to produce and release their own tablet at a low price - £300 ish including 3g and wifi.

Google have recently bought Motorola haven't they? Making their own cheaper tablet is probably one of their many ongoing goals ATM.

[crossy]

The Dixons retail group has chopped another £70 off the price of a 32GB Wi-Fi only Xoom to bring it down to £329.99, and £80 off a 32GB 3G on to £399.99. Back when the Xoom first became available it was priced above the Apple iPad 2, and cost £500 for the Wi-Fi one, with an extra ton for 3G.

I'd say that the new prices are probably about right - although £300 for the 16GB and £360 for the bigger one would be better. £500 for a 32GB unit is just plain stupid - and I still think that the iPad2 is about £50-80 over priced, even with the Apple tax.

Yes, I paid £416 for my 16GB tablet - but that came with a keyboard dock/backup-battery/expansion. (Plus the tablet I bought has a uSD slot, so I can easily expand the memory - unlike the iPad2 and Xoom).

Hopefully, we'll now see Android tablets priced a bit more sensibly - just in time for the Christmas sales...

[HSK]

^ SD slot? It has one...

I ended up buying one! Abit of an impulse buy... Really like it so far though.

[[GSV]Trig]

Yup, got a mSD slot here, 16Gb card in mine so far..

[crossy]

Yup, got a mSD slot here, 16Gb card in mine so far..

Thanks, I stand corrected - I was daft and went on what Motorola list in the spec's (http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/GB...i-Fi-GB-EN.alt). Although I did think it a bit weird that a top-level 'droid tablet was sans uSD slot. In which case I think if I was in the market I'd go for the 16GB unit and figure on adding a uSD later if needed.

Oh, and I've got a 32GB class 10 uSD slotted into my Asus tablet! (Play had a couple on special offer).

[Betty_Swallocks]

The trouble is that tablets in general are too expensive. Smartphones would be except that they are subsidised with contracts so hardly anyone pays full price for one.

If they want tablets to become mainstream devices they should give them the ability to make calls and supply them with a good quality blutooth headset so that they can replace phones rather than supplement them. Then mobile service providers could offer them as part of a contract deal.

If I was able to get a good tablet that I could make calls on instead of a phone when upgrade time comes around I'd jump at it. I'm not paying 4 or 500 quid for one though.

[crossy]

If they want tablets to become mainstream devices they should give them the ability to make calls and supply them with a good quality blutooth headset so that they can replace phones rather than supplement them. Then mobile service providers could offer them as part of a contract deal. If I was able to get a good tablet that I could make calls on instead of a phone when upgrade time comes around I'd jump at it. I'm not paying 4 or 500 quid for one though.

Agree on the price ceiling - £350 is about my limit for a "reasonable" spec'd one (excluding any accessories). So like I've said before, the Xoom at nearly £500 was horrendously overpriced in my book.

With one exception, I'd disagree about the desirability of being able to make calls - although there is Skype? I just can't see the point of schlepping a 10" device - like the Xoom - around with you all over the place - and to be a phone replacement surely you'd have to be able to take the tablet everywhere. I'd also suggest that the 7" devices are probably too large to do that with too. Instead I'm going to agree with the folks that say that tablets are pretty much "secondary" devices designed to supplement a desktop, replacing a netbook or low spec laptop. Certainly that's been the case with two out of the three in my household.

Remember I said "one exception"? Sony 'Tablet P' - http://www.sony.co.uk/product/sony-t...w?cid=14003865 - the nature of that means that I think that one would be pocketable - in which case, I'll agree that a phone-capable version of that would be desirable (are you listening SonyEricsson?).

[[GSV]Trig]

I'm not bothered about the ability to make/recieve calls, texts however would be nice on a 3g device and should be standard imho..

One thing that they all should do tho is the ability to pick up/talk thru a paired phone the same as the HP touchpad does with HP phones..

[crossy]

I'm not bothered about the ability to make/recieve calls, texts however would be nice on a 3g device and should be standard imho.. One thing that they all should do tho is the ability to pick up/talk thru a paired phone the same as the HP touchpad does with HP phones..

Good points both - I'd go further with the pairing idea though, and allow the tablet to treat the phone as a dumb modem (carrier permitting of course - so that's everyone other than Three excluded I guess), so all texts would go to the phone then be automatically forwarded to the tablet, with the phone-based copy deleted. Same for reply's.

I wonder if this'd be a way to allow video conferencing for those of us who were overly eager and bought phones without front facing cameras. Pair a tablet with a phone and use the tablet's speaker and camera?

[HSK]

I think that's how my Xoom is handling texts - I was able to receive and read a text while I had my sim card in it (didn't look for an option to reply) Once I put the sim back in my phone, I didn't re-receive that text.