Blackberry Playbook - any experience?

[Frettchen]

My iPod touch died... and by died I mean it fell out of my bag and spent two nights in the garden and I don't think all the rice in the world is going to dry it out enough to come back to life.

So I figured I'd replace it with a budget 7" tablet and the only thing I can find in my price range (up to/around £100) and with a high memory (64gb) is the Blackberry Playbook. It would be able to handle my iTunes library, and has the same capacity as my old iPod.

It's about 2 years old, and when first released there were complaints about the lack of Android Apps it could run, but that seems to have been sorted out by subsequent updates.

I don't think it's supported any more, so I don't think there'll be any further software updates. Is this a big enough con to not get it? There's got to be something else wrong with it - for such a low price and with all the functionality I'm looking for, I'm missing some major flaw, right?

[LoriGrimes]

My DD had one last Christmas, after a few days of playing around with it she found there wasn't very much she could do apart from surf the internet. She sold it a few weeks later and got an iPod.
Can you actually access your iTunes library from a playbook?

[Frettchen]

There appears to be an app which allows you to sync your iTunes library to your Playbook. That's what's been pushing me toward it as it's basically going to be a replacement iPod but a bit bigger.

[12thmonkey]

Hi Frettchen,

the major flaw you're missing is that its a Blackberry playbook. Blackberry wrote off millions in producing these 'tablets' to compete with the ipad. The company is going under and they won't be supported or receive updates. My advice to anyone thinking of buying a blackberry product is not to.

[Frettchen]

Ooh, that a very strong anti-Blackberry message.

What does the lack of support/updates actually mean? Are they already obsolete, or will they function, but be missing any bells and whistles?

I really only want something which will play music, and maybe have a few free game apps, but even that's not a big deal. I can live without internet browsability, and I do like the front and back cameras (esp with the camera at the top when held landscape as have half a mind to start to do little vlogs if I ever get back to blogging) - can you recommend any alternatives? I've looked around and nothing else has a 64gb capacity for such a low price.

My alternative thinking at the moment is to put all my music on my external harddrive and bring that to work, playing the music (well the mp3s and wmas) through my work pc's windows media player as I generally used my iPod for listening to at work. Thing is I don't want to risk my hdd getting damaged as it holds my photos and videos - hence considering the Playbook. Plus I couldn't ever use that method outside of the office.

Would you be able to recommend another budget tablet which could function as a music player, notepad and video camera?

[12thmonkey]

for a hundred quid its going to be tricky to get all you want. there is the option of second hand ipods, they are pretty durable so there should be no issue in getting one, ebay is a good place to look.

There is the option of using the phablet type phones like the samsung ones that have decent cameras/storage etc and double as a phone.

If you could stretch there is the ipad mini, the newer/updated one will be released this month so the current one will drop in value and could be worth getting.