As expected, CES 2011 has ushered in the Year of the Tablet—over 75 tablets have been introduced or showcased in Las Vegas this year. Which tablets actually matter? Are any good enough to take on the iPad? Is Android 3.0—Honeycomb—really a game-changer? Let's take a look.
First off, the PlayBook wasn't running animated demo videos—it was fully functioning. The screen's responsiveness is every bit as good as the iPad, and the user interface seems quite intuitive and fast. Secondly, the PlayBook will be a 4G device (from Sprint) at launch. For full specs on the PlayBook.
So, the CES tablet craze can be summed up this way:
• There may be 75 or more tablets at CES 2011, but most of them are quite similar and not running operating systems intended for tablets—meaning they are almost exclusively running Android 2.2.
• The Motorola Xoom is promising, but with no true demos available to the press, it doesn't feel like a fully fleshed-out device yet.
• RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook is the real deal: a beautiful, working 4G tablet—and the best bet to contend with Apple's iPad in 2011.
Apple has probably been viewing Google's Android OS as the prime enemy for the past year now—but it looks like RIM just changed the game. BlackBerry devotees will likely drool over the PlayBook.
