“The PlayBook is not an “iPad killer, but if you're a BlackBerry phone user or are dying for a tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook might be worth a look.”
- Great design and sharp screen
- Unique OS
- Fun, intuitive gestures
- Android, Java app support coming
- Great keyboard
- Best in class browser
- Launch apps plentiful, but lacking quality
- Screen size may be too small for some
- BlackBerry Bridge has limitations
- No native email, calendar apps
(UPDATE: Please read our review of BlackBerry PlayBook’s 2.0 software update. It adds email, calendar, and some other features that we were critical of in this review.)
Although RIM only released the BlackBerry PlayBook last week, it felt like everyone in the tech community wrote it off as dead before it even hit shelves. A year ago, many reviewers wrote off the iPad as well. We’re not saying that the PlayBook will make a dent against the colossal success of the iPad, but we also don’t entirely know why people are buying tablets and what they use them for. As much as we like Android, RIM is the first company to make a tablet that is unique, simple, and intuitive enough to compete with Apple. There is a lot of promise in the PlayBook; RIM just needs time to follow through and release some of the missing components that are holding its new tablet back.
Size
Choosing to size the PlayBook at 7 inches was either a good or very bad decision for RIM. Initially we didn’t care for the small size (about half that of an iPad), but the PlayBook does win you over with its practicality, giving it both benefits and drawbacks.
Where many of the 10.1-inch tablets coming out are large and hard to use on the go, the PlayBook lends itself more to mobility (doing things on the go) than larger tablets, which tend to be more in the portable category (you move and then use them). Thanks to the smaller size, and good use of visual cues and force feedback, the keyboard is easy to type on with your thumbs at a relatively fast speed in both landscape and vertical orientations. At the same time, however, there is no good way to type on the PlayBook using more than two fingers at a time. It’s easy to write a Facebook post on a PlayBook, but it isn’t a good tablet for writing a document or long email. But, to be fair, no tablet is great for typing, not even 10.1-inch units.
Still, while it is small, its resolution is not. The PlayBook screen boasts an impressive 1024 x 600 pixels, close to the 1200 x 800 the 10.1-inch Xoom runs at, and even closer to the iPad 2’s 1024 x 768 pixels. As a result, the PlayBook’s screen is sharp. Almost everything looks gorgeous on it.
Design
Removing size from the equation, the PlayBook has a clean black look to it. RIM has taken design seriously this time. It not only looks simple and sleek, it feels sturdy and is built well. A nice rubberized grip covers the back of the unit, which prevents it from sliding out of your hands or off a table when you set it down.
The only physical problem with the unit is the power button that adorns its top. It’s absolutely tiny and doesn’t stick out of the unit enough to know you’ve even pressed it. Prepare to use your fingernail or a pokey object to turn the PlayBook on. It’s a painfully odd oversight. Worse, on the top of the tablet is a play button, which has the attributes the power button should have had. It’s larger, centered between the volume keys, and we have yet to ever need a play button. The volume controls are nice and work well. Hopefully RIM will fix this power problem, which will undoubtedly annoy almost everyone who uses the PlayBook. Luckily you don’t have to use the power button as often as on iOS or Android devices, as RIM’s tablet can be awoken from sleep with a swipe across the screen.
The PlayBook has two cameras, each on the horizontal middle of the front (2-megapixel) and back (5-megapixel). The rear camera is centered under the play button to prevent your hands from covering it. Both cameras perform terribly in low-light conditions, but sadly this is an industry-wide problem, not a RIM problem. It would be nice to have a flash for the rear camera, however.
Two speakers adorn the left and right sides of the front of the PlayBook as well. Like the cameras, they aren’t going to blow your socks off, but they are the best tablet speakers I’ve encountered. Most tablets, like the iPad and Acer Iconia Tab, have rear-facing speakers. The mere fact that RIM’s speakers face toward you is their greatest trait.
On the bottom of the unit is a mini-HDMI port, MicroUSB port, and a magnetic docking port. These are pretty standard, but it’s good to see them, nonetheless. There’s also a standard headphone jack up top.
BlackBerry Tablet OS is fun to swipe
RIM’s new Tablet OS is the PlayBook’s biggest advantage over the competition. The fledgling OS is far more fluid than Google’s Android Honeycomb OS due to its emphasis on gestures and, oddly, its lack of a customizable desktop (a feature shared by the iPad).
The PlayBook runs on a set of universal swipe-based gestures that, once learned, make the PlayBook a predictable and engaging experience. It’s a bit like learning how to ride a bike or playing a good video game. Once you get the rules, you are set. A tutorial guides you through most of the major motions. Hopefully, RIM includes an advanced tutorial in the near future.
The PlayBook is unique in that its bezel (the black border around the screen) senses touch like the screen. To turn on your PlayBook from sleep, you can hit the power button, or simply swipe your finger from the black area on the left all the way across the screen to the right (or vice versa). Once it wakes up, you’re on the home screen. A swipe from the top of the home screen will bring down the system settings. This is where you can set up Wi-Fi or whatever else you want to configure. Simply swipe back up or hit the arrow to minimize settings again. On the bottom of your home screen is a row of apps and app categories (All, Favorites, Media, Games). You can click on one of these to enter a category, hit the arrow on the right side of the screen, or swipe your finger up from the bottom of the screen to bring up the apps menu.
Like WebOS before it, the BlackBerry Tablet OS is built for multitasking. Whenever you’re in an application, you can minimize it and reenter the desktop by simply swiping upward from the bottom of the screen. At one point, we were running almost 10 apps simultaneously with little noticeable slowdown.
Want to quickly swap to the next open app in your list? Just swipe your finger from the left or right side of the screen. Want to enter the menu of an app? Swipe down from the top of the screen. Want to take a peek at the status bar for a minute while you’re in an app? No problem, just swipe down from the top left or right corner of the screen. Want to bring up the keyboard? Swipe in diagonally from the bottom left corner.
After a few minutes, these commands become second nature. Unlike Honeycomb, which seems to be getting clunkier and more Windows-like every day, the PlayBook’s interface is designed for speed and efficiency.
Stability
While the current Tablet OS software running on our PlayBook doesn’t appear to suffer from many crashes, earlier versions in the last week or two were highly unstable. Apps crashed randomly and the OS would randomly shut down apps to keep its resources stable. In addition, our first review unit bricked itself, we think due to an overnight update, but it’s impossible to say. We believe this was an odd defect, but it is impossible to say.
Apps, the good and the bad
Apps are where the PlayBook has taken a beating from the press, and rightly so. The system should have come with a native calendar and email app. However, it did come with a BlackBerry Bridge app, allowing users to sync up their BlackBerry phone calendars, email, and contacts with the device. So BlackBerry phone users should be okay for a while. The app does, however, keep your PlayBook on a pretty short leash (about 10 feet) from your BlackBerry phone (and AT&T users, you may want to read these instructions). The PlayBook will have native email and calendar support available this June.
Where it lacks a calendar and email app though, it makes up for with great Web support for Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and Facebook, as well as a number of free preloaded apps. A podcasting app (still not available on Windows Phone), Slacker Radio, Tetris, and Need for Speed all come standard on the device.
On to the app store: Though there are a lot of apps (more than 3,000) already available on the store, you’ll be hard pressed to find more than a few worthy of download. Still, how many apps were there for the iPhone when its App Store first launched? How about Android? Building an app library takes time and RIM is already showing more commitment to establishing itself as an app playland than any other manufacturer. The PlayBook will be compatible with apps built for Android 2.3 early this summer as well as Java apps. Developers will be able to submit their Java or Android apps directly to the BlackBerry App World store. Considering how boxed and segmented the mobile applications space is becoming, it’s good to see some cross-compatibility.
In addition, representatives from RIM tell me that app and game publishers like Airplay, Atari, Digital Chocolate, Evernote, Fortune, Gameloft, eBay, Electronic Arts, EpixHD, BoxTone, MediaFly, The Weather Channel, Time, Sports Illustrated, Mattel, and Adobe have already signed on and publicly announced that they are working on the platform. RIM is also trying to court Hulu to develop Hulu Plus for the platform. Other big name apps are coming as well, but haven’t been publicly announced.
The Web
As fun as apps are, the PlayBook is built for the Web. RIM’s browser is far better than Android Honeycomb’s. We still had a lot of slowdown and trouble when playing Flash content or browsing complex websites, but did not encounter the weird, random errors we’ve experienced on Honeycomb tablets and other mobile devices. Flash works pretty well, and RIM keeps pushing out updates that make it more stable.
Beta versions of the PlayBook browser were less reliable. Hopefully RIM keeps working on the performance of the browser. The update RIM released days after launch did appear to speed the browser up, but it could be better. It is also currently impossible to open up more than one browser window. Tabs are nice, but there’s no reason why two instances of browser shouldn’t be allowed to co-exist, especially on a tablet built for multitasking. We’re also hoping that Netflix gets itself on the PlayBook soon. RIM has created an extremely secure and business-friendly platform, so we’d hope that whatever DRM problems Netflix is having with Android will not be an issue for the PlayBook.
Battery life
The PlayBook runs about 10 hours, give or take. When we were using it, it lasted a full day, and thanks to RIM’s processes management the battery decline seemed rather stable and predictable. We have not tried to watch 10 straight hours of video, but the battery appears to be on par with the iPad. It lasts a long while.
Conclusion
The PlayBook is not an “iPad killer,” whatever that means. We doubt that anything can kill the iPad right now, just as nothing seems able to kill the iPhone. What RIM has done is widen the category, proving that a 7-inch tablet can be useful and offer up an experience as unique as the iPad’s.
With that said, in its infancy, the unit still has some problems and our first PlayBook completely died. RIM was prompt to replace it and doesn’t believe the problem is widespread among launch units. Representatives have told me that a lot of these issues will be ironed out by June or July, which is when the app catalog will open to Java and Android apps and RIM will release native email and calendar apps. Coincidentally, it’s also when RIM plans to release 3G and 4G versions of the unit. If you don’t use Web-based email, it might be wise to hold off for a couple months. However, if you’re a BlackBerry phone user or are dying for a tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook is on sale now for $499.
Highs:
- Great design and sharp screen
- Unique OS
- Fun, intuitive gestures
- Android, Java app support coming
- Great keyboard
- Best in class browser
Lows:
- Launch apps plentiful, but lacking quality
- Screen size may be too small for some
- BlackBerry Bridge has limitations
- No native email, calendar apps
