BlackBerry Playbook Tablet PC Sneak Peek

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, March 01, 2011, 11:00 PM EDT

We spent a little time today at a private event being held in New York City, where RIM—makers of the ubiquitous Blackberry--was showing off their upcoming Playbook tablet. We got some hands on time with the device and think it definitely has promise, although a flaky internet connection at the venue made it hard to get at good feel for the browsing experience.

The Playbook’s form factor made it very easy to handle and at under a pound it’s nice and light. The 7” screen (1024x600 resolution) had good viewing angles all around and it felt very responsive when navigating through various menus on the device and typing on the on-screen keyboard. Browsing the web (when the connection at the venue was working) was also quite snappy, and because the Playbook has full support for Flash, there were no limitations when viewing sites with Flash-based video or ads.

To give you all an idea as to how fluid and snappy the Playbook was, we asked a rep from the company to give us a quick demo on video, which we have for you here...

As you can see, multitasking, even when it entails running HD video, a game, and a 3D benchmark is quite smooth on the Playbook and the in-game graphics with Need for Speed are pretty good. As we’ve mentioned in the past, the Playbook is powered by a 1GHz dual-core TI processor and it has 1GB of RAM. On the top of the device are volume controls, power, and a play button. And on the bottom are a micro-HDMI out, mini-USB port, and a power port.

Blackberry Playbook, Click Images to Enlarge

The Wi-Fi Playbook we show you here should be available sometime in the late March or April timeframe, but other versions with 4G network access will become available at a later date. Final pricing, battery life specifics, and other details like the number of applications that will be available via App World at launch weren't disclosed, but that information will certainly trickle out soon enough. For now, there's still plenty more to see at the Blackberry website.

Tags: Mobile, BlackBerry, RIM, tablet, Playbook

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com