Fusion Garage JooJoo review
By Paul Miller 
posted April 5th 2010 6:30PM
posted April 5th 2010 6:30PM
Video walkthrough
Look and feel
The champagne-colored brushed aluminum backside of the tablet certainly gives everything a sophisticated look, and it also feels really nice in hand, if just a tad flimsy in the middle due to its expansiveness. But a "handheld" the 12.8 x 7.8-inch JooJoo is not -- at least not in comparison to the iPad or other e-readers, like the Kindle or Nook. The larger and heavier form factor makes it more of a sit up / lap device, rather than something you can use lying down and holding it up. Obviously the payoff is in the bigger screen, and we really shouldn't whine too much about a 2.4-pound, 0.7-inch thick device when it comes to portability, but one-handing this thing is pretty much out of the question.
A single USB port, a standard headphone jack, and a microphone jack live on the right edge. You can use the USB port to charge the device, but that's all it will do since the operating system is completely browser-based and doesn't allow for side loading music, video, or pictures. The camera on the top of the screen is apparently meant for video conferencing, but all our attempts to video chat through Meebo or Tokbox failed.
Screen and speakers
Obviously the JooJoo's heart and soul is its 1366 x 768, capacitive 12-inch display. We have no qualms about the responsiveness of the glass display – light taps and swipes were all we needed to make selections / scroll down pages as long as the software was keeping up (we had to restart the device a couple times to get things working again touch-wise) – but viewing angles are less than stellar. Unlike Apple's IPS display, colors fade quickly when the screen is tilted to a 120-degree angle (as demonstrated in our video walkthrough), and when we held it up while lying on our side it was hard to position it to get a great view of the entire screen. The horizontal viewing angles are wide enough for sharing the screen with a friend or two, though.
Getting the screen to rotate from vertical to horizontal can at times be a bit of a crapshoot – sometimes the accelerometer decides it'd like to pitch in and adjust just perfectly and other times it needs a bit of a shake to rotate (JooJoo thinks we might've gotten a lemon in this regard, and the problem certainly wasn't consistent). We're told the sensitivity will be tweaked in an upcoming software update, along with the speed of rotation. Luckily the ambient light sensor is much more accountable, dimming the screen when not in use and raising the lights in dimly lit situations, but unfortunately it's positioned right where you might be likely to rest a thumb when holding the tablet in a landscape orientation, causing plenty of unintentional dimming. The two speakers on the back of the tablet sound like typical netbooks speakers – they're loud enough for personal listening, but won't fill a room.
Software: Browser and more browser
The user interface on the JooJoo can best be described as a Monet – very attractive from afar, but up close it's just a mess. |
The web viewing experience on the device is what you'd expect; pages look very nice on the wide display and we surely didn't take for granted the ability to watch a video or play Farmville right in the browser (more on that Flash experience later). Our biggest problem with the basic viewing is the 16:9 screen ratio, which renders regular sites with extra room on each side in landscape, but crops in on the sides of sites when held vertically. We appreciate that JooJoo is trying to provide a straight pixel-accurate representation of web sites, but they could've picked a better screen ratio to do it. A smaller foible is a mere fact of Linux: type isn't rendered as cleanly as on a Mac or Windows machine, and not all fonts are supported.
A purely web-based device needs to have excellent navigation features, and the JooJoo... doesn't have those. As we were telling a friend, there's so much wrong with it that it we're just not sure where to begin. It's hard to put a finger on our biggest complaint, but the fact that the navigation bar atop the browser isn't locked in place seems to be our largest frustration. Instead, every time you want to move backwards, forwards, or input a new URL you have to swipe a finger downward to bring it up. We'd be okay with that little trick if it happened to be more responsive and the software didn't mistakenly think we were trying to make selections on the page when trying to swipe downwards to make it appear. At times our swipes worked perfectly, but if the JooJoo is preoccupied or feeling grumpy, the gesture goes unheeded, or a mistaken tap or second tap takes us back or to the home screen, since so much is packed into such a small area. Since it's so core to just about everything you'd want to do on the device, it's a real shame that it doesn't Just Work.
Speaking of swiping downwards, two-finger scrolling happens to be very smooth, but one finger scrolling isn't supported. That happens to be annoying when holding the device with one hand since you can't just use a thumb, or with two hands (for weaklings like us) because you have to drop one hand to do scrolling, or use a janky dual thumb method. Pinch to zoom isn't a feature either, so trying to enlarge text or small web buttons to make selections are a no go.
The truth is we could go on and on about software flaws. Like how when in vertical mode the bookmark dialog doesn't display correctly, or how when you log into sites like Facebook or Twitter it doesn't keep you logged in when the browser closes. Though you really don't know irritation until you try closing web pages. Similar to Palm's webOS, all your windows are open in a sidescrolling "tabs" video, where you are supposed to be able to swipe upwards to close a page. However, for some reason this only works when it wants to, another known bug that might have something to do with Flash, but made us want to throw the unit across the room. We'd like to say we were the only ones that became completely bothered by the software, but every person we handed the tablet over to became peeved within five minutes and began asking us how to do simple things like go back to the home screen.
Performance, Flash video and battery life
Software issues aside, the JooJoo actually happens to be quite speedy thanks to its 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM and 4GB solid state drive. It only takes about 7 seconds to boot and toggling between the menus is snappy. WiFi speeds were also quite fast with it taking 11 seconds to load Engadget and 8 seconds to bring up NYTimes.com.
The worst part about the Atom / Ion combo is that it results in those original issues we had when we reviewed all those Ion netbooks. First, it causes the entire tablet to get quite warm (especially when playing Flash video) and then it murders its battery life. The JooJoo's integrated three-cell battery repeatedly lasted 2.5 hours (just as we predicted!) during our moderate use, which included surfing the Web and playing short videos. JooJoo claims you can get 5 hours if you avoid Flash entirely, but that sort of defeats the purpose, right? In the end we don't understand why they didn't just go with an ARM processor like NVIDIA's Tegra or a more current Intel Atom N450 processor paired with Broadcom's Crystal HD solution. Both options would have enabled HD video playback and resulted in some more juice. We will take this moment to non-tactfully remind you that the iPad lasts over 10 hours on a charge.
Wrap-up
There are just so many things we wish Fusion Garage did differently with the JooJoo. Even putting aside the fact that Apple's $499 iPad brings more to the table than just web browsing, the JooJoo is less portable, has a worse (if larger) screen, is unintuitive to use, and ships with half-baked software. We commend the start-up on its nice piece of hardware design, but until the software is given some much-needed love and the price is seriously reevaluated we simply cannot recommend this tablet. To add insult to injury, Apple's entry level iPad provides a much more seamless and feature-packed experience, and there are plenty of $199-ish ARM-based tablets just around the corner. We told you it was terrible timing. The one shining light we can see is that Fusion Garage has actually managed to finish and build this thing, which is a lot more than can be said for the dozens of ARM / Tegra / Fairy dust-powered, Android / Linux / CE-based tablet prototypes we've seen in the wild.
The future
Most reviews don't warrant a post-mortem, but with JooJoo there is just one sliver of hope: we're promised an aggressive near-weekly update schedule with the device. Sure, it would be much better if the device had actually shipped with ready-to-go software (we'd peg it at about an alpha level currently), but we'll be keeping an eye out for how Fusion Garage improves this over time. For instance, the experience will be radically altered by hardware-accelerated Flash (even many of the sluggish UI elements seem to be Flash-based) if it ever arrives, and there are a lot of design decisions that wouldn't be so hard to tweak, like an expanded, permanent address bar. But updates are a promise, not a feature, and it's a small comfort for the few early adopters out there.
Additional reporting and testing by Joshua Topolsky.
@Myst3ry The ipad is the things closest competitor. What do you want them to compare it to? Also, you think they should give it a pass for not working correctly because no one expected it to work? That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
I don't think this is a fair review, the video in particular. The guy reviewing doesn't seem to have much experience with the device at all and I noticed multiple errors in the written review. I don't even own a joojoo and I know that you can enter a web address by simply tapping the open area on the drop down menu at the top of the screen. I think that this device needs to be re-reviewed and the UI re-evaluated.
@nwashington5 - So suddenly you have to be an expert in using a tablet that does nothing more than surf the web? It's clear by your response that you're making excuses for a faulty user interface and (what appears to be) a crappy device that was shipped too soon and clearly at the wrong time.
If someone can't pick this thing up and immediately start using it then it's the device's fault, not the user.
WOOO! Tablets everywhere! I just gotta pick which one...
@koolerz1569
agreed but for me its MS courier,notion ink adam, or the hp slate
@koolerz1569
Damn, News is on Firee today, Fire Firee Fiireeeeee
@zarq HP Slate sounds good to me. But I WANT THEM ALL. hahaha
@koolerz1569
I would hold off on this one. The widescreen looks beautiful, but they need hardware-accelerated flash badly.
@The Advanced Kind Elf needs food badly!!1
@koolerz1569 I cannot imagine a non-utterly frustrating experience on the Slate. Have fun typing on that default Windows 7 onscreen keyboard and using those netbook internals.
@koolerz1569
its a pretty stupid product but im proud of engadget for such an unbiased review.
@koolerz1569
i'm not even trying to be a dick about what I am about to say.... but.....where are all the people who were getting their credit cards lined up for this thing? I haven't seen a single comment thus far and this is 30 minutes past the intial post.
@koolerz1569
Not sure if the Mini5 counts but thats still the winner for me.
@BrandonHarris Oh I don't know... I don't even have a credit card. :/
@dansus I think it does... but I think the screen is too small. I love android though
@koolerz1569
android is definitely ftw
@Matt l I'll have fun using the stylus with windows 7 superb handwriting recognition, while you attempt to touch type on your iPad soft keyboard.
lol @ engadget for not making this BREAKING
@NoOrdinaryMSFT i just wish they didn't make me wait 3 days for it while they iDrooled...
@zarq Those two sound like the only two that are viable options to the ipad. Courier seems to run something similar to the WP7 software so hopefully they won't try to fit W7 on it.
@koolerz1569 HP Slate
Sorry for spamming first post, BUT THIS THING SERIOUSLY BLOWS. 500$ for a giant web broswer that doesn't work properly and lags with Flash? 2,5 hour battery? CRAP. I hate Apple, but I gotta hand it to them; their iPad looks like a million bucks next to this.
@koolerz1569
Cant watch the darn video on my ipad... :(
@BrandonHarris They're busy playing with their iPads right now. But seriously, how can these people charge $499 for this? I wouldn't even consider it at half the price.
@koolerz1569
The latest iPad killer comes up a bit short. Next!...
It just looks like a prototype
@Very Powerfull Codfish Gotta agree there. Why on earth does this thing need an Atom N270 and Nvidia ION if they're gonna cripple it with crappy software? An ARM processor would be cheaper, get better battery life, likely maintain the same performance, and just all-around make more sense for a web-only tablet. The internals are designed for a Windows OS, not a custom gimpy custom OS like they chose.
@TonyMontana2367 "Cant watch the darn video on my ipad... :("
I can watch it on the Joojoo but it lags like hell i.e is unwatchable.
The issue we need to consider here about Flash has nothing to do with blocking/enabling features. Do we always want companies to have to wait for Adobe to produce software updates for every platform combo to get hardware acceleration and correct security problems?
It's better that all companies get access to a standard they can easily support on their own and get a great experience at launch. The iPad-compatible videos played just fine on the Joojoo and I think that fact alone is highly significant.
For now Flash has more features, better publishing tools than HTML 5 but so what? That's a short-term view. Raise your hand if you still have a floppy drive on your machine and keep it up if you still use it. Flash needs to go because it's simply an extension - in other words an extension of what the browser should be able to do anyway and the best way to force content producers and creative software makers to step up is to give them no other option.
All web sites, animations and video should be able to be published and viewed from pretty much any platform and Flash is a no go to reach that end.
@Techno1q
AAAAGGHGHGHGHGG
@BrandonHarris and where are all those folks who sight-unseen claimed this was better than the ipad?
@TonyMontana2367 Even with the 12,353th iteration of that stupid old remark you get upranked. Amazing how little it takes to exite basement-dwelling geeks.
@TinWard
Steve....Steve Jobs....is that you...lol..j/k
@Very Powerfull Codfish
Well said!
@koolerz1569 Hardware wise the joojoo is there software wise it's still in beta stage. If they can sort it out with their promised weekly updates it will definitely hold lots of potential.
But if you are going for Internet only tablets I'd rather wait for tegra 2 tablets with Chromium OS or some other linux distro.
Opinions for the FG device: http://bit.ly/joos-tablet-impressions
Nice review, hopefully it can help those who are sitting on the fence.
@Kwame Nkrumah
intern: "paul wait before you go home, u forgot to do the video review for the joojoo"
paul: "SOB... fine lets just sit at the table here and hammer this out real fast"
intern: "but you were suppose to write up a review too..."
paul: "SOB! wtf do you think i have u here for? now sit ur ass down, record this bitch, and then go write it up for me... and don't u forget to throw in some cheap 'iPad's better' shots too."
@samkash:
Really? I found that Engadget was really unbiased with this review, I would've torn that thing up after all those glitches, but he brushed it by. And yeah, of course he's going to do a little comparison to the iPad… they're both recently released tablets fighting for the same crown.
@samkash Except the joojoo is actually a piece of crap, so the "iPad is better" shots aren't really all that cheap.
@Kwame Nkrumah
Hardware wise the joojoo is there software wise it's still in beta stage. If they can sort it out with their promised weekly updates it will definitely hold lots of potential.
But if you are going for Internet only tablets I'd rather wait for tegra 2 tablets with Chromium OS or some other linux distro.
@Kwame Nkrumah
@ernie I agree that this product has even less functionality than the iPad, and I for one am not impressed yet. However, I don't think this review was really unbiased, and you could see that he didn't like it even before starting.
Examples:
When he says about having to swipe down to see the button to go home, "if nobody told you that, you might never figure it out."
If nobody ever told me to pinch to zoom, I'd never had figured it out.
When he says...the power button, which is recessed and you have to kind of use your nail to press it (like its a bad thing).
I'm glad it won't turn on while in a bag, etc.
"I'm accidentally tapping things, I'm not sure what we're gonna end up with here..."
"For me, i'm over here trying to show you what I'm doing and I can barely see what's going on."
When was the last time I was planning to watch a video from behind/above the device?
My point is, this could have been a much better review that was actually unbiased. Some of the "issues" are just the normal learning curve of any new device with a new UI and new touchscreen. It takes a bit of getting used to, no sense in being sour about it in the review.
That being said, no thanks, JooJoo. I'll wait and see what else is coming on the horizon.
@broli
The review is about what the product is, not about what the product will be. The JooJoo IS half-baked half-assed crap.
Holy flash Batman!
@richb93 not even, Dell, hurry up and bring us your Streaks.
@richb93
It's sad how you thought your comment would be highest ranked (you obviously sent it before watching the review).... if only flash wasn't utter crap on the JooJoo. Why the hell not use Tegra? Why didn't they actually have the software that would benefit from ION? RIP Garage Fusion.
@TareG Don't shit your pants ;)
YES!
@Needsahaircut Yes?!
@Needsahaircut
NO!
@Kitten
MAYBEEEE!