Blackberry Playbook 7" Tablet PC First Impressions Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,016 words · ~10 min read
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so today i'm going to be having a look at the blackberry playbook and the first
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thing i'm going to do with the playbook is i'm going to click to play i'm on
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fatpie.com i actually really like fatpie.com
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and i've got one of his videos playing this is a flash video and it is playing
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it's already in a lot of ways
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better than this for my purposes okay so i'm just going to go ahead and
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i'm going to oh no that's i'm writing a book and i just need to know okay i'm
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gonna go ahead and pause that i don't have a box for this product
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today so i can't really do an unboxing sorry i can't really i can't really do
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this from the from this way so i don't really have a um
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a box so i can't do an unboxing today but i am going to be doing a quick product tour and just a an overall quick
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overview of the blackberry playbook which so far i am very impressed with so
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here's my big buck bunny video that i usually play to show hd youtube playback
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and it is sorry it's really hard to use this from this angle it is phenomenal
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full screen hd video playback is absolutely flawless completely smooth
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without any tweaking or playing around with it whatsoever i'm very very
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impressed if we can skip forward to sort of a more
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action-packed scene in the in the show that might help a little bit to
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demonstrate the smoothness internet browsing is very very snappy so
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far it does feature a dual dual core one gigahertz processor so
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that's not that unexpected the touchscreen here is seven inch and it is
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able to use four fingers concurrently for its multi-touch interface
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and yeah skipping in hd videos on youtube
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isn't always super smooth is it come on
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you can do it youtube i don't see it doesn't want to do it for
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me okay fine forget it um the overall interface is very very neat so
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you have actually beyond the touch sensitive screen you've also got a touch
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sensitive frame so depending where you drag in onto the screen from it'll
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actually give you a variety of different functionalities so here i can access
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my menu so this is where i can do things like connect to wi-fi which i am
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connected to right now i can control my HDMI output yes it has micro HDMI as
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well as usb on the bottom and then this is for a dedicated charging dock
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actually let's finish off with the hardware here so it's available in 16 gig 32 gig and 64 gig configurations
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it has stereo speakers on either side of the screen which is an improvement over
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other tablets on the market which have their speakers at the bottom for
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whatever reason and this one seems to have only one speaker i haven't actually
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done too much research on the ipad too so forgive me on the top you find a couple of
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dedicated hardware buttons including power volume and play pause as well as a
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headphone jack you've got a front facing three megapixel camera as well as a back
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facing 5 megapixel camera which is also capable
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of capturing hd video uh let's see what else do i want to say
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it has uh uh bluetooth tethering
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with other with other devices uh so you can actually access internet on here but
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as if you use something else to tether to your 3g connection or whatever the
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case may be overall smoothness so i want to show you
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guys this just everything is incredibly smooth
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when you rotate it's not like a Windows tablet where it's like this clunky three
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second delay if you're bringing this stuff if you're bringing this up
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whatever whatever you happen to be doing everything is very smooth so let's say i
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want to navigate to my other now it's playing again that's okay um
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oh yeah oh that's interesting okay i don't know how that works but apparently
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i minimized it so it'll take some getting used to in order to really get
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the hang of the full functionality of it here i'm at the desktop though so i can
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see all favorites media games this one doesn't have any games installed on it
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this is just a demo unit that i have on hand for about 20 minutes here while i
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try to put together a video but like i said
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overall just wicked smooth interface very very impressed with that aspect of
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the blackberry playbook i'm holding it upside down right now and i didn't realize let's go back to youtube and i
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just want to show you guys how quick the browsing is on this little guy here
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so let's go to uh oh i love the keyboard by the way ncix whoops
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see i'm not used to a couple of the features yet love the keyboard and part
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of the reason i love the keyboard so much is just the fact that so here we go
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there's no 21 no 120 hertz oh no there's
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no 120 hertz now we're going to go back now we're going to see something else we
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got you know banners on the side let's have a look at the ncaa excel browsing
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is very snappy very very impressed with that aspect of it um
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oh yeah here's something neat so let's say i wanted to go to a different web id
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let's say i wanted to go to easter 2011.
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i can actually unlike iOS i can navigate to
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some anywhere in my url i know Android does this as well but personally i find
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that a boon as an iphone 4 user that i can edit text without actually going
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back and retyping the entire sequence um
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shoot there was something i wanted to say give me a sec
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so let's do a little bit more functionality so here this is the word
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to go app so i can type hello world i actually really like the
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keyboard and i did mention this before but i didn't say why because the size of
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the device is just about right so i can actually type with my thumbs like i
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would on a touch screen phone without it being awkward and uncomfortable the way
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it would on a larger tablet where you
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basically here i'll just show you guys the uh the ipad 2 for comparison so on a
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larger tablet like this let's go and try to make a note of some sort let's make a
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new note i like i can't really do this
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comfortably and uh it loses a little bit of functionality
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for someone like me that way let's actually have a let's do a quick
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physical comparison so here's the size of the blackberry playbook compared to
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the ipad or ipad 2 rather okay here is the
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thickness
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okay so it is a touch thicker but it's actually not that much thicker and this is something
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another thing that i actually quite like it's square like the iphone 4 as opposed
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to uh being beveled at the edges like the ipad 2 and like the uh the older
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iphones and that actually allows me to hold on to it better i find my fingers
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are less likely to slip off it from the back and i personally prefer that let's
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just show you guys the multitasking really quick so why don't we open up
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something else so we've got a browser open let's go to all let's see let's
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open adobe reader or something so here's the multitasking functionality we go
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like this we can switch between our browser we can switch between our word
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to go where we can type things and the
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the interfaces is impressively snappy i really really like that aspect of it i
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already talked about the micro HDMI already talked about the okay you know
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what let's go back and give big buck bunny another chance so
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youtube.com really is so fast
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okay and i'll show you guys when we start at the beginning
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how quickly i'm able to get into playing 1080p hd video
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full screen here there we are
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so the browsing i was doing before wasn't really properly indicative but
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you can see there's absolutely no frame skipping whatsoever here
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love it it comes with 90 days of free tech support i don't know if i mentioned that already but if you're having
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trouble using it you can call in for free and and get help with it they've
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also got some pretty neat guides on their website uh where they walk you
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through a lot of the different aspects you know how to type properly on it how
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to get started connecting your wi-fi how to use the app store
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and uh i think that pretty much covers
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everything i wanted to say about it why don't we use the camera real quick here
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and uh just try it out we'll do a little bit of video capture shall we
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so i'm using the rear mounted camera so let's uh here actually
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why don't we why don't we capture me am i am i aiming at myself
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am i doing it am i doing it i can't tell i should go this way this way this way
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down okay well whatever okay i'm basically here i'm talking to myself
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through the uh through the blackberry playbook we're
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gonna go ahead and stop that and then let's just
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actually this is really intuitive now it took me forever how to figure out how to
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minimize something but now that i'm now that i'm doing it it's like no problem
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whatsoever so let's go to my videos and we've got the one that i just is
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this the one i just took must be
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and let's just play it back so let's uh here actually why don't we why don't we
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capture me am i am i aiming at myself that looks really good am i doing it am
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i doing it i can't tell i should go this way this way
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crazy russian's trying to show me where to point it i'm basically here i'm
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talking to myself through fantastic okay well thank you for
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checking out my quick product tour of the blackberry playbook don't forget to
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subscribe to Linus tech tips for unboxings reviews and other computer videos actually one more size comparison
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for you guys before we wrap up here so here it is next to the ipad 2 and i also
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happen to have an ASUS transformer tablet that i can put next to it as well
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just so that you guys have some good context for
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the size and thickness of these devices so the playbook if you come down on this
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angle you can see the playbook is actually very similar to the ipad 2. the
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transformer is a little bit thicker and then i'm just going to throw my iphone
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down on the table just for context there as well the iphone 4 is
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just a touch and right in between the ipad 2 and the blackberry playbook okay
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now i'm actually done don't forget to subscribe guys