Pros
- At 425g, it’s considerably lighter than the iPad 2 and not much heavier than the Galaxy Tab.
- The rubberized chassis and rounded edges give you a better grip on your tablet (infinitely preferable to the Tab).
- High-quality LG-manufactured display with generous levels of brightness and saturation.
- An ample five-megapixel camera on the back, with a three-megapixel one giving you excellent front-facing viewing angles.
- If you’re sick to death of lagging processors, you’ll be happy to know that this one is pleasantly responsive—apps load quickly and you can navigate between them with minimal effort. Great for productivity.
- An intuitive interface, with a small but responsive keyboard.
- Flash support, instantly endearing it to frustrated iPad users.
Cons
- It’s not intended as a standalone device—for now, at least, it has to be tethered to a BlackBerry handset via a BlackBerry Bridge to unlock its full potential. That’s fine for business users with confidentiality conocerns, but an annoyance for the rest of us.
- The screen is pretty small. Just 7”, compared to a whopping 10.1” on the Xoom.
- While the battery can go for about seven hours, it doesn’t beat the iPad’s, which lasts up to 10 hours.
- The Playbook doesn’t support simple USB mass storage, which means you can’t just transfer stuff over. Being able to mount it as a drive via the USB port still only gives you access to a small, read-only volume.
- Apps are thin on the ground. But it’s Android app compatible, so that should change.
Verdict
A good bet if security is your prime concern; everyone else will want to wait until it’s untethered.
Available for $668-928 (16GB, 32GB & 64GB) at Challenger, #06-00 Funan DigitaLife Mall, 109 North Bridge Rd., 6339-9008.
