Gadgetory

what's up everyone John rector from TechnoBuffalo here with a full review for you of the newest tablet on the block this is rims BlackBerry PlayBook let's go ahead and see if it deserves a place in your bag the BlackBerry PlayBook was the darling of CES 2011 it was actually one of my favorite devices that I got a chance to see but from pre-production to production a lot has changed and there's some new things here that we didn't see before so let's go ahead and dig in this review is going to be done a little bit differently than past video reviews I'm gonna break it into two separate categories things I love about the device and things that I don't love about the device I'm not gonna say hey cuz that's a strong word let's just say not love so the first thing about that I really like about the device is the screen its 7-inch 1024 by 600 resolution display is absolutely beautiful you get great visibility from all angles whether you're at the top or the bottom or the side images look absolutely beautiful on here open up picture it's probably not gonna translate on camera but take my word for it text and pictures and video really do pop everything looks absolutely gorgeous you can see in images picture here the text for example on a website looks absolutely great if you're reading a book through the built-in Kobo book store you will have no problem reading it there isn't any pixelation you don't get any sort of jagged little dots that look like they're floating about in text it really is very very very clear the screen on here is absolutely the excellent one of the best of the tablets that I tested the next thing that I really love about the PlayBook is the OS itself I like the gestures I like that I control and swipe and swipe the multitasking here is probably the best implementation of multitasking I've ever seen let me give you a quick example I'm gonna go ahead and open up a video this is a 1080p video we'll go ahead and hit play say I'm watching it and I want to see the first few seconds and I forget I got checked TechnoBuffalo to see what's new I can use the gesture area which is another thing that I really enjoy about it go ahead and swipe up that video is still going to be playing I can move on over this is very similar to Palms webOS offering I can open up TechnoBuffalo I can read what I want to do I can swipe back up I can head back on over to the video which is still playing and I can resume it right where I was one of the things I find really fun I really like about webOS is actually the ability to close applications just by swiping them up now you can hit that little X later if you want but that's not nearly as fun the menu system is very intuitive you can pull up to get a new menu system it's powered by qnx you can see all your applications all the favorites go ahead and push that right back down if you want to get some more information from a menu you can actually swipe down and you can get all that information right there as well let's go ahead and put that back up the tabs and the interface really do make this a fantastic operating system we're probably looking at the future of BlackBerry's right here so the OS is a huge positive and as you see me go ahead and move through this you're probably noticing that it's moving very quickly speed is one of the other things that I love about the PlayBook this thing is very very very fast its dual-core TI Bilt processor clocking in at 1 gigahertz on each core augmented by one gigabyte of RAM really make this a fast tablet for opening up any application or anything you want to do it does open very quickly if I wanted to open up the music application for example things open and boot with a relative ease and you can have a lot of applications open and still have that speed which is quite impressive considering this is a true implementation of multitasking I love swiping things off like that so the next thing that I really enjoy one jump back here to the browser is the browser itself it works really well it's quick the physics engine is very nice I don't get any of that sort of a checkerboard pattern when you scroll it keeps up with what I want to do pitch to zoom is very fast there is full flash support I don't personally use flash very much on browsers but I do like to have the option it's all about consumer choice so you can choose turn flash off but even with flash on pages look very well and flash content really does work if got some Flash content here on TechnoBuffalo I really do like a browser so if you were worried about from previous BlackBerry browsers whether you honor us five or over six browsers have not been outstanding on previous BlackBerry devices this definitely sets a new standard for browsers I really do enjoy us going click the tab will go ahead and close out the browser the next thing that I really like and this is quite surprising again from the BlackBerry device is the cameras the three megapixel shooter on the front and the five megapixel shooter on the back which also shoots Full HD 1080p video is really nice and aside from shooting very nice quality images and video the location is also really good right in the middle your fingers aren't going to cover it when you're holding the device which is very nice so if you're looking for something that you can use to shoot pretty decent pictures and pretty impressive video the playbooks gonna work out well for you I do wish there was a LED flash at least have that option but that is not a giant omission one other feature isn't really being mentioned all that much about the BlackBerry PlayBook is how it gets charged and it gets charged via microUSB down there which is something else that I really like I don't have a mini or micro HDMI out cable so I'm not able to test that functionality but supposedly that also works very well so those are the things that I love about the BlackBerry PlayBook but there are an equal amount of things that I don't love about the BlackBerry PlayBook I'm sure you can guess what some of them are let's go ahead and jump into the app world here app support is one of those things that just isn't quite your yet you can access some older BlackBerry applications not necessarily optimized for the travel interface that you work but there aren't that many now this is a gripe that's true with most tablets that are running a new operating system developers haven't had access to developer kits and different api's for quite a bit of time so there's not going to be an overpopulation I think there's something I'll have to get rectified as the platform and the whysa matures and also we're going to have support for Android applications coming soon which is going to dramatically increase the number of applications that are available so while it's a gripe right now it's launched I think that will get rectified in the coming months and probably years as the operating system and the playbook is whatever comes out next play but to probably continues to mature the next thing this is probably the biggest right is the lack of missing core functionality and of course I am talking about a mail application and a calendar application there are some bundled really just web shortcuts here for Gmail Hotmail Yahoo and AOL I'll just take you to the web portals for each this is something that really doesn't help the rumor that perhaps the PlayBook was rushed to market now there is bridge functionality if you have a blackberry you can pair them up you can't do it quite yet with 18t but the other carriers you can access the mail functionality and calendar functionality and the data connection but if you don't use a blackberry you are going to be losing out on those really necessary features exec with the Gmail application just take me to the website and that is a tremendous omission and that's almost an unforgivable omission now certainly that is something that's going to be rectified very soon but most people who use a tablet especially me I need to be able to check my mail and you fail to hook up to my calendar if this is a 7 inch size so it's very portable you don't want to put it in your pocket and because it's a portable chances are you're going to want to input all of your data on it not having that option not sort of having that choice to whether or not you want to use the mail or calendar functionality I find quite annoying and a huge omission now again something that will be rectified very soon and one no longer need to be a gripe instance this is a BlackBerry device I'm assuming that's a mail application that they put on here will be outstanding so let's go ahead and move on the next thing that I'm not the biggest fan of on the PlayBook is its on-screen keyboard so I'm going to use the built-in word application this does ship with Microsoft Office functionality there's sort of a word to go PowerPoint to go and this spreadsheet to go under different names this probably comes to a gripe from the size of the screen the seven inches just doesn't lend itself to much room for typing it's too small to do typing as you would on a normal full-size keyboard like you can on the bias with a nine or a ten inch screen and it's almost too big to do very quick thumb typing comfortably if you do flip it over out of landscape mode into portrait you can't thumb type here feels very smart phone s so the keyboard if you're looking to put in a lot of information the on-screen keyboard is not gonna be the quickest way to do it one thing however jumping back about things I do like the cut copy and paste functionality is quite good on here I'm gonna go ahead and put some text get out of selection all right can't slow that there we go so I go ahead and type something the quick copy and paste it's not as elegant and some other operating systems but it doesn't work very well go ahead and select you can move that and you get cut copy and paste and it works really well so really did a very nice job with that the next great thing that I don't necessarily love about the playbook its highs into that keyboard and that is the screen size now this is definitely a personal preference thing for some the seven-inch screen might be absolutely perfect and the absolute ideal size for me I prefer a little bit of a larger screen a nine point seven or a 10.1 inch screen so I recognized that this might be unique to me the playbook if it was larger so like I could probably use it on an everyday basis once there was that mail and calendar support because it's a little bit smaller I'm gonna have a hard time reading a lot of books I don't have the best eyesight in the world so I would have really liked a larger screen real estate well I assume that'll probably come with updates to other hardware down the road the next gripe and this is a huge gripe with the device is the power and lock button it is that tiny little guy right there that you have to if you've got big college you're gonna hard time pushing you gotta make sure you hit it and you're going to need that to lock and unlock the device now the device is locked right now and ordinarily to have to find that power button to unlock it I think goes right there there's another way to unlock that uh but it's not really being talked about that much if use the gesture area you swipe to the right that will unlock it so that mitigates some concerns I prefer to hit a hardware button just what I'm used to for locking devices and this one is very very very small you can definitely get used to doing the swipe to unlock type mechanism here which does make it a bit easier but something to keep in mind especially if you've got giant fingers so this has been a full review of the rim blackberry playbook there's a lot to love about the PlayBook I'm very encouraged by the future of the operating system and the future of the hardware looks like RIM has really put together a potential competitor for the tablet crown but it's not there yet the lack of core functionality mail and calendar the lack of app support just doesn't make it the most ideal tablet right now however once we have Android support and you've got that mail and calendar this really might be one of the better tablets out there the operating system's buttery smooth it works well it handles multitasking better than any other mobile operating system I've used it's got a beautiful screen a fantastic browser and really does bring a lot to the table so if you are looking to get a rim blackberry playbook and you can live with them as limitation for right now knowing that in the next few months they will get fixed go ahead and pick one up and don't have any reservations or trepidations if you need some of those features that are missing and you want to see how the whole tablet market plays out especially with all these new Android tablets about the hit you may be better served waiting so I am John render from TechnoBuffalo for all your blackberry playbook and tablet coverage be sure to check out the website and I will see you in the next video all them links are down below