The Blackberry PlayBook

With the premiere of the BlackBerry PlayBook, Research in Motion enters the tablet market with a device that has some solid points but, surprisingly, falls short in a few ways—particularly when it comes to e-mail access. (See Consumer Reports video, below.)
RIM touts the PlayBook as “the world’s first professional-grade tablet.” But the PlayBook’s biggest shortcoming hits professional users where it hurts most: in its lack of an e-mail client. If you’re a BlackBerry user, you have to wirelessly connect your mobile phone to the device, and keep it nearby, to enjoy your mail.
There are some positives with the PlayBook. Its display is crisp and bright, and the display screen is responsive and quick. And the tablet is slim and light, making it easily portable.
The device’s navigation gets mixed reviews. The navigation is nothing like what you find on the BlackBerry smartphone, which might be off-putting to those accustomed to that device. An upward swipe moves you from one screen to another, but it wasn’t immediately apparent that this was the way to get around. The PlayBook would benefit from a Home and Back button, and the Off button is tiny and hard to depress. On the plus side, the PlayBook has a convenient Play/Pause button on the top of the device for starting and stopping music and videos.
I liked the Web browser, which assists you to call up a navigation bar on top of the screen where you can easily open and view numerous pages. As do many other tablets, the PlayBook has an HDMI and a USB port, as well as front- and rear-facing cameras.
The PlayBook uses the BlackBerry Tablet operating system, and has its own app store. Sadly, the app store doesn’t have the big selection you find in Apple’s and Google’s stores.
Prices for the PlayBook range from $500 for the 16GB model to $700 for a 64GB version. Look out for our lab test results and Rating (available to subscribers) very soon.


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