OK the much hyped QNX OS develop tablet, the heavily bashed Blackberry Playbook has become available for purchase as of Tuesday. Now that it is out, it is time for me to go in. I received mines from RIM’s launch party last week Thursday, and since everyone has been asking what do you think of it so far. This was difficult to answer at first since I had a couple of false starts, but now I’m ready to clear the air, let’s dive into it.
Style
If you read my thoughts on Laptop Magazine, you know that the Playbook is how I feel a tablet should be. To me it is a perfect size at 7 inches, and looks great. I have a thing for my device having rubberized backing, as it provides a nice feel to the device and a better grip. The Blackberry Playbook has this, check! The screen on the Playbook looks really good and when watching a HD video on the device, you wouldn’t even think about the fact that it is only 7 inches. The quality is excellent.
I’m not going to lie, I had some early on issue with this device. Part was probably my fault, and all seems to be good now, but I feel compel to at least mention them. First I had a issue after I restarted the device, it seem to have got stuck on this splash screen and didn’t come back up. I was under the assumption that if the battery was too low, when plugged in, I would still be able to use it. In reality, I need to let it recharge some. Then I had a issue where it wasn’t connecting with Desktop Manager on Windows, but then that found it’s groove and worked. The last issue I had was that the music player, browser, and the weather app seem to have some issues. But after a factory reset, and upgrade to the latest OS, all was right with the world. Your experience may be totally different however.
Now that it has been all smooth again, the Blackberry Playbook is quite nice. It is the perfect size I feel at 7 inches for day to day use. Navigating the tablet is easy, and application load up fast. Multitasking on the Playbook work great, never did I notice any slow down or crashes. The browser is great, better than any Blackberry device’s browser before it. I mean the FULL internet, flash and all. And speaking of Flash, oh does the Playbook handle Flash effortlessly. I mean I was watching full screen shows on Hulu.com on it (that is before they got wise to it and blocked it!). To be able to visit any website and view ALL of the content on the page is wonderful!
[singlepic id=804 w=320 h=240 float=left]AppsIf there was to be a sore spot with the Blackberry Playbook, apps would be it. The amount of apps currently available to very much on the slim side. All of the core apps I would like to use like Pandora, Evernote, a Twitter client, and Facebook are missing in action. Now I can only assume developers will come on board and we will start to see them come in, but to not have a few of the big boys at time of launch is a little wack. Yes I can go to these site from the browser and the experience in there is very good, but I think I’ve been too condition to using apps, so now that there aren’t I kind of miss it.
Battery Life & Other Notes
Battery life has been really good. For how I’ve been using it so far, I can probably go for about two days or so before I need to charge it again, so very nice there. Other notes being the included sleeve, very nice touch.
I just purchased my MicroHDMI cable for the Playbook, so maybe in a future post I’ll talk about that little bit, but I’m very excite at the idea of what I will do with this feature!
Overall I don’t really understand the negative reviews about the Playbook. My only sore spot being the lack of Apps right now. So if you was thinking about getting one, I might wait till summer when I think there will be more then. Otherwise I think the Playbook is a pretty solid device. It looks goods, feels good to use, and the browser is amazing. With time I think this tablet will be a force to be dealt with.
