BlackBerry PlayBook: Hands-on gallery and iPad comparison

The BlackBerry Playbook has arrived, and it’s an interesting direction for RIM.

The first tablet from the smartphone specialists, it most definately looks the part; a black monolithic tribute. With a smaller sized 7-inch touchscreen, it’s still belts out an impressively high-resolution image, capable of full high-definition video play-back.

You’ll notice there’s no physical touch-button on the front of the device, and any buttons on the PlayBook are confidently styled and petite, and hidden on the top edge.

When the screen goes into sleep, one tap and it’ll return to what you were doing. You can swing out and between apps using a combination of swipes.

Switching between the web-browser, media players, email and other apps is done with a swipe to the left or right. You can then close them with a swipe upwards. There’s also a small kill-box ‘x’ if you’re not the swiping kind.

The web-browser is zippy, and it isn’t all down to the dual-core processor inside, though we’re sure it helps. We were impressed by how quickly the webpages appeared on the PlayBook, and flash content loaded up just as easily. We think a good test of the web-browser is BBC’s iPlayer, and videos played faultlessly.

RIM are going after their business customers, with a ton of Bridge features; connecting and syncing the PlayBook to your BlackBerry. We're waiting for the arrival of a new BB to test it all out ourselves.

There's a lot of features for the security conscious user, as well as word-processing, spread-sheet and other office programs already installed.

Click on for more hands-on impressions and photos of RIM's tablet. Expect to see our review on Recombu next week.