After months from the first announcement and tons of posts about it, it’s time to take the first official look at the RIM Blackberry PlayBook, a 7 inch tablet for the enterprise market that teases us with the best specs of this class size (that’s until others upgrade their tablets). Planned for store launch on April 19th, the Playbook will be offered first in 16,32 and 64 GB versions, WiFi only, for $499, $599 and $699 respectively, the same starting price as the iPad 2 WiFi only tablet. Update: Playbook is here: 16 GB model for $499, 32 GB model for $599, 64 GB model for $699.

    Later this year we’ll get the 4G LTE version, but until then we have to do with the WiFi only version. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as most users are playing with their tablets at home, where usually a WiFi connection is available. If you’re not one of those people you can pair the Blackberry Playbook to your Blackberry smartphone running OS version 5.0 or newer. This way you’ll get full app support (more on that later) so for now there’s no reason to say the Playbook is a bad tablet because it doesn’t feature 3G/4G capabilities. Before we start let’s get to the specs.

    Blackberry Playbook Quick specs:

    • 7” LCD, 1024 x 600, capacitive multitouch
    • BlackBerry Tablet OS
    • 1 GHz dual-core processor
    • 1 GB RAM
    • Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), 1080p HD video recording capable
    • HDMI video output
    • Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
    • Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
    • Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
    • GPS, accelerometer, 6-axis gyroscope, and digital compass
    • Dimensions: 5.1”x7.6”x0.4” (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
    • Weight: 0.9 lb (400g)

    Construction and built quality

    The first thing you’ll notice about the Playbook is it’s excellent build quality, with everything pointing towards a premium product, something that you can’t achieve on a cheap tablet. There are of course problems, but they’re not related to the manufacturing process, but have to do with the tablet design: the power button on top is very small and sits flush with the case making extremely hard to turn the tablet On and Off. Fortunately, the tablet goes to sleep when not in use and a simple gesture starting from the touch sensitive bezel wakes up the Playbook.

    Remarkable is the way Playbook feels in hand, being perfect size for portability, as a lot of reviewers have noted. And at 0,9 lbs it’s quite light too.

    Photo gallery

    Touch sensitive bezel

    Blackberry’s PlayBook is the first tablet to feature a touch sensitive bezel, meaning you’ll be able to swipe your fingers starting from the pretty thick bezel and the go over the screen area. Main gestures include:

    • Swipe from bottom: goes to Home screen
    • Swipe from top: bring the contextual menu
    • Swipe from left or right: selects the previous/next running app at one moment
    • Swipe from top corners: open a quick status bar where you can see battery status, Turn On/Off Bluetooth and WiFi, see how many unread messages you have and so on

    After a few hours of use you’ll begin and appreciate those gestures that include using the screen bezel, but you’ll also find touching the parts that can recognize gestures by accident when holding the tablet in hand will disable any other gesture you might be performing at that time, so if a gesture doesn’t seem to work it’s always because one of your fingers is pressing where is shouldn’t on the black bezel.

    Performance

    Leaving the excellent construction quality aside, the second revelation comes when you turn on the tablet and see how smooth it works. Everything is ultra smooth, with 60 fps consistent almost  100% of the time. The problem comes from the rare occasions you don’t get those 60 fps, as you’ll feel the difference immediately. One plus of the Blackberry Playbook tablet is the Full HD playback capabilities that work like advertised, so putting to good use that micro HDMI port will be something you’ll want to do. The problem comes in the software codec support, that doesn’t include .mkv files and some audio codecs, but the situation is bound to change with every software update from RIM.

    Now talking about components, the 7 inch 1026 x 600 pixels screen is perfect for this display size, as the first Samsung Galaxy TAB showed us. In Playbook’s case the colors are natural and viewing angles are satisfactory, maybe in line with the ones provided by the iPad and iPad 2 screens. Worth noting are also the two stereo speakers, some of the best on a tablet and the back video camera that can record pretty nice 1080p videos (front facing video calls are not supported yet). Take a look below for an example:

    Operating System and Apps

    As with any non Apple tablet these days, the biggest problem comes from the software. In RIM’s case is pretty impressive what the company has done since it acquired QNX, as the Plabook’s OS was developed in less than 12 months. Unfortunately while the tablet is fast you’ll notice all kinds of problems during day to day use, ranging from app crashing (but not killing the whole tablet) to low memory warning with the top of the screen displaying a pulsing red background similar to backlight bleeding.

    Those problems will eventually be solved by RIM thanks to over the air firmware updates, which are said to come pretty fast since there won’t be any carrier partnership to require a dedicated ROM version for each brand. Engadget even noted that during the past week the Playbook was updated two times, which means RIM is working hard to get to the final build of the tablet OS, the one Playbook will ship with on April 19th. But for now the software makes the Playbook seem unfinished and a rushed product, the same situation like Motorola Xoom and Android 3.0 Honeycomb.

    The only notable exception is the browser, which loads pages very fast and offers full Flash support (RIM was Adobe’s long time partner). There are the occasional low memory warnings when you open the browser and tabs are not saved once you switch to other apps and have to be reloaded (it’s done automatically) when you switch back, but overall the Playbook offers a very satisfactory experience when browsing the Internet.

    Now getting to all other apps, it’s the same problem all over again: lack of good apps which will put Playbook owners into a dark place if they ever have to compare their tablet with the iPad and iPad 2. The situation will eventually get better, but expect at least a few months of  ’solitude’ when browsing the Blackberry App World. And to better illustrate the situation you have to activate the Blackberry Bridge app and pair the Playbook with your Blackberry smartphone to get access to your Email, Calendar, Contacts, Memos and Tasks apps that launch from the smartphone and display on the tablet’s screen via Bluetooth. It’s an  interesting way to deal with this situation until RIM will offer those native apps via a system upgrade, but right now it means you’ll be tied to your Blackberry smartphone. That’s not cool at all, especially if you don’t have a Blackberry smartphone.

    Battery life

    If you remember, one of the problems that would have caused a problem with the Playbook was battery life, but reviewers say it’s not a problem at all, as the Playbook will be able to hold its breath for several days until it runs out of juice. Sure you can deplete it faster if all you do is use the tablet, with video playback being the most demanding task, but in this worst case scenario the 7 inch Playbook tablet still lasts over 7 hours. That’s impressive, considering the smaller form factor. Overall the Playbook is only a few hours behind what the bigger 10 inch tablets are capable of.

    Official accessories

    Together with the Playbook itself you’ll be able to get a few official accessories from RIM including a docking station (with charger function), a travel charger, a gel skin, neoprene sleeve and a convertible agenda case that also acts as a stand to facilitate typing when placed on a flat surface. Sure other manufacturers will rush and get Playbook compatible accessories to market soon (I’ll cover that in another article), but for now the offer is pretty limited. It’s no wonder since you can’t even get the tablet, right?

    Conclusion

    I have to say that RIM’s Blackberry Playbook looks like a very interesting device, but it’s plagued by the early software bugs and lack of apps. It’s still a good device to consider a few months from now, when problems get solved and apps support broadens, but until then the advice would be to wait. Sadly this is the same advice I would give for those looking towards Android 3.0 tablets. Too bad the hardware is so good.

    More purchasing options for Blackberry Playbook here