Motion Computing sent me their 10.1″ CL900 Tablet PC to review and I’ve been happily touching and inking away on this light and rugged tablet since last night. My initial impression of the CL900 is that it matches up with what I expected from Motion: a beautifully designed tablet with the tablet user in mind. One area this shines through is with their pen-silo. Unlike other slate tablet manufacturers, Motion knows that tablet users need their pen with them. With that in mind, they designed a pop-out silo that discreetly hides the pen away when not in use, but makes the pen easily acessible with the push of a button.
I’ll be sharing more over the coming days about the tablet writing experience, battery life, performance, the docking station, and more. Meanwhile, enjoy this small picture gallery and post your questions below.
Rob, sounds as if you are more than encouraged! So, can I be more than encouraged also?
Look forward to more… Thanks!
I’m really liking it a lot. However, I need to give the handwriting a some real work before I can say “more than encouraged”
Rob, looking forward to more info and inking/battery experience.
Maybe a side by side comparison with it’s major competitor, the Q550 with the pro and con’s of both tablets.
keep up the fine work!
thanks tuur. I don’t have a q550, so unless something magical happens quickly, I won’t be able to do a side by side
Rob,
Should I cancel my x220t order?
In all seriousness, I am intrigued about battery life nd how the ntrig digitizer works. Also, what kind of noise does it produce?
Thanks Rob…once you have time any chance of a video review?
Joe – the click / clack handwriting noise isn’t as bad as the Slate 500, but not as quiet as the Lenovo X220 Wacom based unit. As far as fan noise, it is pretty quiet. I’ve barely heard the fan and that required thinking about it to notice.
Battery life is still too early to tell, but they report 8 hours.
Performance will not match your X220T, although it is not a dog. It ain’t a speed demon, but it ain’t a dog either.
Digitizer experience has been better on the CL900 than the Slate 500. I’ve experienced very little vectoring – it has occurred, but nothing like the Slate 500.
biggest disappointment so far has been the dock, which I’ll share about tomorrow.
sorry – I can’t answer your X220T question for you…
Shanemac – absolutely. I’ll be trying to get one done in the next day or so.
Look forward to the review Rob…
A few things i would like to know:
How good is the screen in bright sunlight? Motion claims its good but how good?
I notice a rubber like material around the center of unit if so does it make the unit a bit easier to grip at all?
The pen garage you mentioned seems pretty slick does the mechanism and release button feel like it will stand up over time?
The power button looks to be just a push on/off would the power button be to easy to bump off by accident?
The CL900 cameras some samples would be good to see too. I would guess the cameras can do video too?
That stylus tether i think would last 10mins before i had it ripped off in the field.
Thanks
Hi Rob,
I’m trying to decide between the x220t and the motion cl900 as well.
I’m interested to know how well the motion/z670 can handle photoshop cs5 or powerpoint, if it can at all. Also how is the speed compared to N550 netbooks. Currently using a dell duo.
Thanks and I love the insight from this site!
[...] Read more over at RobBushway.com [...]
Hi Rob,
I’m thinking buying one to attend my classes.
I use a lot onenote, mind manager, and other office sw.
Please give us some thoughts about battery life, outdoors usability and the atom’s performance.
Thanks
Rob, it seems like there a lot of hungry CL people here
Rob, I am a user of many proprietary windows software programs. I have been searching for a while for a active digiter pen input. I do use a lot of pre fill forms. I have read so much on the slates problems and now the income Fujitsu Q550 seems to have fallen short on video playback and managing the chip properly for overall performance. I almost order the CL900 and as you likely know there is almost no reviews out there about this tablet. It is not a cheap tablet as it runs about 1300 fully loaded, 4gb’s memory, 64Gig ssd drive and the active digitizer layer and pen. So I am very interested on what you have to say. I am between the asus ep121 and this tablet. Yes, this tablet is a lot less powerfull the the atom chip vs the core i5, but the amount battery life is extremely important to my usage. 3hrs really is poor for a tablet, if only asus had followed through with the keyboard dock like the TF101 transformer, I would like have bought it, as it has great specs with the exception of battery life and a little on the large side. I await you recommandations on the table. Thanks for all you do to inform the public like me. I am definately on of those hungry CL people. Again thanks for your time.
Rob,
Sorry, for the poorly written post earlier. I shoud proof read my messages before posting them. I Should not try to multi-task, post messages while having business calls in progress.
I did want to mention that I also do a lot of powerpoint presentatios. I use an old gateway cx200 tablet notebook and a wireless slim casio led projector. It works great, you can place the tablet notebook anywhere, no cords and use the pen on the presentations. I really am interested, as someone posted earlier, about the presentation power with powerpoint and having the wireless on at the same time. The cl900 should be small enough that I would have freedom to move around the presentation room. That would make it easier in some venues to answer questions and address concerns. Thanks again for your input.
Ipad is overpriced while it has less fetueras than even some cheap mobile phones. while I wouldn’t buy Apad , or epad, I would buy another device that is not copy of Apad and it works. this looks nice, but I hope if they make smaller one.
[...] slate that is being billed as light and rugged. You can check out all of Rob’s posts so far here, here, here, and here. Rob, as you would expect lays out his thoughts well and points out both the [...]
Can we see some handwriting as opposed to printing.
I showed a video of handwriting. I normally don’t do cursive writing.
[...] noted in my first post about the Motion Computing CL900 Tablet PC that it was designed for tablet users and gave an [...]
Can we see a cursive writing demo even though you normally don’t do cursive writing?
thank you
Hi,
Thanks for the review. I’m really looking forward to hearing more about the CL900.
Regards
Pat
I no longer have the CL900, but you can review my follow-up articles that I”ve posted about the CL900.
Hello Rob, I recently purchased a Motion Computing CL900 with no Operating system and it apparently holds no charge in terms of the battery. I am in desparate need of repair so I may resell these two tablets. Any suggestions that can minimize my cost of repair would be greatly appreciated.