February 06, 2012

Blackberry Playbook review

Seeing that Blackberry had a super sale with all the units listed at $299 (I think I figured why), I of course purchased the 64gb. Days after I bought it, the 16gb was reduced to $199 and the 32gb was $250, so that lead me to believe there were thousands of 64gb models laying around and at their awful original price point it wouldn't surprise me that they needed to move these more rapidly than the rest.

Anyway, I ordered mine straight from Blackberry and had it in about five days.

This would be my third tablet behind the original iPad and a junk Chinese 10 inch knockoff running Android. The Playbook came with a neoprene sleeve which means I don't have to buy any aftermarket case which was nice. There was also a charger and a USB cable in the package.

I've had about a week's worth of usage so I'll get right down to the pros and cons.

CON - Kind of...small screen. Being used to the iPad made the 7 inch screen seem quite small until...

PRO - The screen itself. The quality of image is absolutely fantastic. The demo video was beautiful. Web sites look great because...

PRO - Flash. Enough said. Youtube works like it should and I've found that on the iPad and iPod Touch I can't find the videos I want to watch. Not an issue here.

CON - Scrolling through websites makes me minimize the browser quite often. It's a small inconvenience but enough of one to note it.

PRO - Turning the device on from standby via a 'swipe'. I love that.

PRO - Bridging with my Torch. This was the main reason for buying it. I love being able to easily access my calendar and email while talking on the phone. Checking my calendar is a requirement on just about every phone call I make, so this alone was worth the price.

PRO - Tethering. This will come in handy. It's not often when I am stuck without wifi somewhere, but when I am, I don't like it!

CON - Applications. Of course, the iPad annihilates the Playbook in the sheer amount of applications. I hope Android integration is not far behind.

CON - Must download to watch podcasts. That takes time. I would much rather stream them as on my Apple devices.

PRO - Battery life. Yes, it surprises me too. I don't it off, I just put it in standby by tapping the battery icon. I keep it connected to both wifi and bluetooth and have charged it twice this week. I'm very happy with that.

PRO - Transferring files. It's incredibly easy to transfer files (my mp3s) from my laptop to the Playbook. No special software to sync, etc. Just dragged songs from one device to the other through My Computer on the laptop.

CON - Only being able to video chat with another Playbook. Hopefully someone out there is working on this.

That's about it. So far so good and I feel it was a worthy purchase.