There is a lot going for this tablet - the backing of Samsung who clearly have a serious commitment to tablets, and the help from Google who gave away these tablets at their Google IO event. But there are also a couple of problems.
One is that it's so like the iPad 2, why wouldn't you in fact go ahead and buy an iPad? After all, your friends will often have iPads: you could discuss apps with them; share pictures and videos more easily, etc. etc.
What we're explaining here is how the "network effect" favours the iPad. It might not be fair, but it is there. In fact I personally think it is sad as in many ways, the Tab compares really well with the iPad.
But you could still be right to go for the Tab. Maybe the Flash video player is important to you, but do check out what the iPad can do without it. Or maybe you need the Android platform for a particular app or because of a corporate policy. But otherwise, an Android tablet needs something to differentiate it from the iPad rather than trying to tackle the beast head on. For example, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer has a really good keyboard dock which contains an extra battery - this can make a real difference.
However, the new Tab does perpetuate one bad design choice from last year's 7" version - the proprietary connector. Again it's similar to the iPad's, but the Tabs just don't have the market momentum to sustain a unique design and encourage enough third party manufacturers to run with it.
This was the tablet which Google chose to launch the Honeycomb platform the first time around, but there were serious issues then: some of them are still around and others have left a bit of a bad taste in the mouth. Since it was updated to Honeycomb 3.1, though, things have been much better. And now, in the UK, there's a pretty widespread offer of a free keyboard and mouse to Xoom buyers. This makes quite a difference, but perhaps not quite enough to put the Xoom ahead of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer where the keyboard dock contains an extra battery.
There is one angle from which the Xoom wins out against the Transformer, though. Despite them both having the same size 10.1 inch screen, the Xoom is actually noticeably smaller as the Transformer has a very wide bezel.
This tablet covers all the bases pretty well, but again, just not quite so well as the Asus Eee Pad Transformer.
HP TouchPad
This runs the much rarer WebOS platform, and that's part of its problem. Other parts are the lack of a rear camera and the lack of an HDMI out port. It also has a lower resolution than most of the Android Honeycomb tablets. In fact, the Touchpad would not really have made it to this "almost" category without the reputation of HP to fall back on.
