In case you haven’t kept up with the news, or turned on your tv in the past week, the iPad officially went on sale to the general public a few days ago and sold a staggering 700k respectable 300k units on launch day.
I reviewed the iPad a few weeks back (new readers can get up to speed here) and, for better or worse, there was nothing really new to cover on the iPad side (though I would give like give a shoutout to the Marvel comic book app which looks pretty damn sweet). I’ve added links to some of the more recent reviews below for good measure.
What did come as a surprise was how fast the competition was to jump on its coat-tails. Just two days later, the fine folks at Engadget get their hands on a shiny new JooJoo. WTF is a “JooJoo” you ask? Relax, it’s not an ethnic slur. The name JooJoo was actually inspired by the African word for “magic.” Sure it is an odd choice for an electronic device, but really, after weeks of hearing about Mac’s iPad, I’m just tired of making fun of product names. In any case, tech enthusiasts may better recognize the device by it’s previous moniker: the CrunchPad. Fusion Garage, the device’s manufacturer, renamed it after the dissolution of its partnership with Michael Arrington and TechCrunch. Despite a still ongoing lawsuit, the device somehow still managed to see the light of day. In fact, devices should be in the hands of those that pre-ordered (all 75 of them) by the time this article airs.
So on one side we’ve got venerable Apple’s iPad which Steve Jobs has called “magical,” on the other we have Fusion Garage’s device is actually named “magic.” Well this should be a no-brainer, but you may be surprised at how well the JooJoo stacks up.
First off, the JooJoo matches the iPad’s sexy factor With it’s black border and silver aluminum back. It even looks remarkably similar to the iPad, but in their defense, the JooJoo was in development well before Apple publicly acknowleged the iPad, and certainly before anyone outside of Apple had physically seen one. Winner: TIE
Next, the JooJoo’s capacitive touchscreens is significantly larger than the iPad’s (12.1″ diagonal vs the iPad’s 9.7″) and has a 1366×768 resolution which supports full 1080P HD video. The iPad falls just short with only 1024×768 resolution and support for up to 720P video. Granted, the iPad does use IPS technology which gives it better viewing angles, but seeing as these devices are meant more for a solo experience, I’m putting more weight towards the bigger screen. Winner: JooJoo
Bootup time for both devices is very fast with the iPad clocking in at about 17 seconds and the JooJoo at 9. Technically a win for JooJoo, but the difference is so small I’m going to call it even. Winner: TIE
The JooJoo supports Flash! That’s right, you have full access to everything the web has to offer. Granted it’s not hardware accelerated so video may be a bit choppy, but this is much better than no support at all. It should also be noted that on YouTube, JooJoo can mimic the HTML 5 ability to play native mpeg video files which gives you better performance when compared to the Flash version. JooJoo says it has plans to add support for other sites as well, so this is a nice alternative in lieu of full HTML5 support. I’m personally not a fan of Flash and I can’t wait for HTML5 to become more widely adopted, but I really can’t argue this as anything but a win for JooJoo. Winner: JooJoo
As far as peripherals, there is no arguing the iPad will be a popular device, so naturally there will be a slew of attachments for it. That said, the JooJoo has something the iPad mysteriously lacks: a USB port! This means the JooJoo could theoretically use many existing peripherals while the iPad is limited to new devices made specifically for its proprietary connection. Winner: JooJoo
The JooJoo has a built-in camera but the iPad recently released a camera connection kit for pre-order. You might have to pay extra for it, but I’m still calling this one a tie. Winner: TIE
Battery life is where things start to go downhill for the JooJoo. The iPad gets about 10 hours of average use or 5 hours of heavy video use per charge. The JooJoo gets only half of that at with 5 hours of average use or 2-3 hours of heavy video usage. Winner: iPad
Network connectivity options on the JooJoo are also limited to only wi-fi (802.11b/g). The iPad of course offers the option of upgrading to use cellular networks and also tosses in 802.11a/n for good measure. Winner: iPad
Application selection may be the key to the iPad’s success with tons of iPhone apps available right at launch and hordes of developers working on iPad-specific apps as we speak. Application selection may be JooJoo greatest weakness. The JooJoo is wi-fi only and does not support local application installation. This effectively means you need to be constantly online for it to be anything more than a paperweight. Fusion Garage shares Google’s vision that the future of applications is all online, but that future is not yet here. There may be a lot you can do online, but so far nothing is remotely comparable to Apple’s app store. Winner: iPad
The downward spiral continues with the user experience. Don’t get me wrong, the JooJoo does have a nice interface and using isn’t really all that bad. The main screen is grouped into 3 sections: “Be connected” for social networks, “Be informed” for news sites, and “More apps” for everything else. The interface reminds me of a slightly less elegant Microsoft Phone 7 OS. It even supports multi-tasking, which means you can keep Pandora open and connected in the background while writing an email or talking on a chat client. That said, it just lacks a lot of functionality and luxuries that the iPad has. For example, it has very few multi-touch gestures and lacks the ability to zoom-in/out that we’re all so very used to. Also there is no auto-correct or predictive text which makes the chore of typing on a virtual keyboard that much harder. Additionally, there were some annoying bugs in the demo like websites not auto-adjusting to full-screen when switching between portrait/landscape modes and cookies not being retained when the browser instance is closed. This just emphasizes how new Fusion Garage is to this industry. Winner: iPad
That brings us down to the final comparison: price. The JooJoo is strictly a web browser, and for what it does, it would be perfect at the $200-300 price point. Even a few months back when Michael Arrington was still on the project at stated he was shooting for a $300-400 price point, that wouldn’t have inconceivable. Instead, Fusion Garage has chosen to price it at a whopping $500. This is the same price as the entry-level iPad model, but even the lowest-spec’d iPad can do so much more than the JooJoo. Winner: iPad
OK so while I did trash the JooJoo in the last few paragraphs, it is important to note that the JooJoo did put up a good fight! Heck, the thing is so good it was even named one of the “10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009” by Popular Mechanics! http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/upgrade/4332415.html?series=88 This was, of course, before Apple flexed its muscles. The biggest showstopper in my mind is the cost. Many of its shortcomings can be tolerated, worked around or fixed via software updates. Had the JooJoo come out a year earlier, its price may have been justified. But now, they are jumping into a market at the same price point as a device that is more functional, more familiar (since it has the same interface as the iPhone), and being sold by a company that has a HUGE fanbase. If they can’t lower the price, then they really need to up their game and offer a ton more features if they hope to stand a snowball’s chance in hell. Winner: iPad
Have an iPad or JooJoo? Let me know what you think!
* UPDATE: So I was scouring the interwebz at 3am like I do every night when I came upon an Engadget article by Paul Miller this exact same topic using the exact SAME TITLE as my post! Well since his is stamped 2 hours earlier than my post, I feel obliged to change my title. Touché, Paul Miller!
JooJoo reviews:
Engadget – Fusion Garage JooJoo review
Engadget – JooJoo ships to actual consumers, gets dissected for good measure
PC Mag – JooJoo: Unboxing the First iPad Contender
VentureBeat – JooJoo CEO: This is just the start of tablet era
Wired – First Look: JooJoo is no Apple iPad Killer
iPad reviews:
Engadget – Apple iPad review
TechCrunch – The Unauthorized TechCrunch iPad Review
PC Mag – Apple iPad (Wi-Fi)
Slashdot – iPad Review
CrunchPad fiasco:
TechCrunch – The End of the CrunchPad
Wired – CrunchPad Tablet Dies Stillborn
