Apple's iMovie app for the iPad. In some ways it's more flexible than iMovie since you can choose whatever combination of transitions, video effects and titles you wish whereas in iMovie your choice is restricted to whichever theme you've picked for your project. Edited videos doesn't look as polished or as professional as a video edited in iMovie though. Video playback within Film Studio itself is also surprisingly jerky.
As an app in its own right and as a demonstration of the benefits of the dual-core Tegra 2 processor, Film Studio feels half-finished.
As an app in its own right and as a demonstration of the benefits of the dual-core Tegra 2 processor, Film Studio feels half-finished. You're more likely to edit footage captured using the Xoom's own cameras, rather than imported footage from another camera, such as a Flip or a fully-fledged camcorder. The Xoom doesn't have any full-size USB ports for connecting a camera and even if the micro SD card slot were functional it would be of little use since most camcorders use full-sized SD cards.
Luckily the Xoom's own cameras capture reasonably good-looking footage. Clips look much crisper and sharper than the iPad's miserable little cameras, which admittedly isn't difficult. Footage captured in low-light conditions is quite grainy and the dual LED flash only helps so much. You'd still get better looking results from a recent HD Flip camera, but it'd good enough in a pinch even if using a tablet as a camera feels very conspicuous.
One nice thing about recording video on the Xoom is that you have the same range of camera settings and effects as you do when shooting stills, but these can't be changed while you're recording something.
Verdict
The Motorola Xoom is a little tricky to judge. The battery life is surprisingly good and it doesn't cost any more than a comparable 32GB WiFi-only iPad 2. It's much heavier than Apple's tablet though and neither the Android 3.0 interface or the Android Market are as impressive as their iOS equivalents. The Xoom isn't as flexible as Asus' rival Eee Pad Transformer Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet. Asus' tablet has the additional flexibility of a bundled office suite as well as an optional hardware keyboard with USB ports for copying files off flash drives and a full-size SD card slot. As much as we wanted to like the Xoom, if you need a tablet now either the iPad 2 or the Eee Pad Transformer would be better choices.
Connectivity: N/A Display: 1,280 x 800 pixels, 10.1in OS: Android 3.0 Honeycomb Cameras: five megapixels rear-facing, two megapixels forward-facing GPS: Assisted GPS Processor: 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 RAM: 1GB Bluetooth: v2.1 + EDR Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n Storage: 32GB internal Ports: 1 x micro USB2, 1 x micro HDMI Slots: 1 x microSDHC (currently non-functional) Dimensions: 168 x 13 x 249 mm (WxDxH) Weight: 716g Battery: type and capacity not disclosed Warranty: one year collect and return
