Blackberry Playbook - PRD-38548-001 (16GB)

This is the blackberry playbook. pretty sexy isnt it? we thought so too; this thing is definatly
one of those gadgets that make you feel richer when your out and about in public.
The funny part of that though, is this. $200.... thats it lol. half the price of some higher end
android tablets of comparable size - 7 inches by the way.

We loved this thing, it has one downside. its not Android OS; A good thing or a bad thing depending
on who you ask. We say bad; blackberry os will never keep up with android, its not going to.
Google android and the android market place will have at least 10 options of almost anything you
can get in this, and with 2 or 3 of those options being free its hard to justify them staying with their
own OS other then probably being just pride.

Enough bashing time to get to the good stuff. This tablet rocks a dual core processor with 1GB ram, it ran everything we tested at speeds that will not stutter. its a true widescreen tablet as well, so unlike "some, not all" android 7 inchers, it doesnt appear squeesed. Images were clear, and sharp, vivid and bright.

It has the typical features you want in a tablet, with GPS, 6 way gyroscope, HDMI HD output, cumpas, stereo sound and yada yada yada ( see below ).

Blackberry bridge is not a feature we used, as it required a Blackberry phone, but this basically allows you to bridge the 2 deviced together like your own personal network.
BlackBerry Bridge is a feature that allows BlackBerry smartphone owners to interact with core
BlackBerry applications including email (BIS and BES), calendar, contacts, on the Playbook's large 7
-inch high resolution screen but from your phone. BlackBerry Bridge links the two devices
notification systems so you are alerted of new emails, BBMs, and calendar reminders right on the
Playbook display. Through this same relationship, businesses running Blackberry Enterprise
  Software can allow their employees to securely access information found on corporate internet sites
using PlayBook. You also have access to your Smartphone browser so you can get on the web from
 virtually anywhere.



Would we buy one? No, without a blackberry phone, and the fact it uses blackberry OS means
to own one makes ZERO sense to us, since the Android market has far more options, free options
etc etc. But if you got a blackberry phone, and wanna basically use your phone on a larger screen
it may be worth it for you; even then it makes little sense to us, but to each their own.
Over all as far as that goes its an EXCELLENT device thats well built, has many features and will
please you "especially if you never had an android tab and dont know what your missing".


*** THERE IS RUMORS THAT PLAYBOOK IS GETTING ANDROID APP SUPPORT ***

** update **
While most of the comments in here are about the blackbooks terrible os and lack of options
when COMPARED to android; this is actually a good tablet, however using android apps
on this device isnt as easy as you would believe, see here ->>> clickey!!


Time for some of the nitty gritty.


CPU                                      DualCore CPU @ 1GHz                       
RAM                                     1GB
HDD                                     16GB (32 available)
MEMORY                              
O/S                                        Blackberry OS
FLASH                                 Unknown
SCREEN SIZE                     7 inch
SCREEN TYPE                    4 point multitouch Capacitive.
Dimentions                            7.6 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
Weight                                  0.9 lb
CAMERAS                          3mp face & 5mp back
Rooted/Rootable                   yea.
MARKET                             On OS v2 rooted Check here.
MIC/Speaker                         Yes to both.
CONNECTORS                    hdmi, phones,
BATTERIES                         Unknown
NETWORKING                    Wireless a/b/g/n

Coby MID8125-4G 8" Kyros Android tab

This is the Coby Kyros 8125-4G; (The 4G is for 4GB Storage, not 4G wireless, unfortunately).
Coby is a little unknown company from the USA.

Out of the box, this thing is a piece of shit, a literal clay tablet, but you can make it magnificent with
a little nerd power, but you do need that nerd power.

We had no market access, to any market. android market wouldnt install, amazon market said
no compatability "so get lost" and getjar kept bitchin at us. When we finished with it, we had all 3
markets running fine.

There is no GPS, no eCompass, and no accelerometer, by the gryo "tilting" worked fine.

The screens display was very crisp and clear, however it was a single touch resistive display and
it wasnt responsive out of box "we fixed this too, but it will always be a single touch"

The camera works, but is in a spot that gets easily covered when you hold it in portrait mode, placement
isnt the best, but easy to get used to, the overall design is actually very slim, sleek and sexy.
Although its not a great tablet, youll feel good being seen with this one; if thats your thing.
This is because at just $200, it looks like it costs $400; just dont let onlookers actually try to use it hahaha.

It plays game as you would expect on a resistive screen, nothing with virtual controllers will work
but angry birds will work fine. Netflix worked well and so did skype. (With custom rom)

This ends our review "since we review out of box tablets"; and this will only truly shine when
rooted with a custom rom "and boy, it does shine!"

This unit has HDMI, and it worked fine out of the box at 720p with stutter at 1080p
Our test model was sold to be a dedicated TV Top netflix box; so it does have use :)


So. its time to get down in the nitty gritty of this clay, errrr techie tablet.

CPU                                  Cortex A8 1GHz                                 
RAM                                 512MB
HDD                                 4GB
MEMORY                         microSD up to 32gb
O/S                                    Android 2.3
FLASH                             10.2
SCREEN SIZE                 8"  800x600 SVGA  4:3
SCREEN TYPE               Single Touch Resistive
Dimentions                       15.8x20.6x1.4 cm
Weight                              521g
CAMERAS                      1.2mp
Rooted/Rootable               yes and highly recommended
MARKET                        GetJar out of box
SENSORS                        Gyro
MIC/Speaker                    yes, stereo
CONNECTORS               microSD, microHDMI, 3.5mm microUSB
BATTERIES                     liPoly 4000mAh
NETWORKING               WiFi b/g

Superpad 2 Tablet PC - A 10.2" Miracle

Does this tablet look familiar? It shouldnt, the name brand is unknown.. Even to me and I had one in my hand... However it does look remarkedly like an iPad2 from the front, "but not from the back or sides :)"

A visitor to the website asked me, well.. heres the snippet.

"Scuse' me sir: but i was wondering if you could do more
budget tablets, I was looking at the superpad; but what the hells that?
thanks in advance

-Troy S of Dakota"

Well Troy S of Dakota; its your lucky day, i found one that looks like cheap chinese technology
"BUT ISNT!!!" lets get started.

The "superpad 2" has everything your going to want on a larger screen, even features like GPS are
available, which was great. However, the reason I bring it up is because this is the only tablet ive
seen that claims a built in GPS, but the antenna is external; there is an upside and downside to this.
The down side is you may lose it, it make come loose, frayed, lost, stolen, broken, etc.
The upside is sometimes GPS signals are lost when they are internal, blocked by steel, or mortar, etc.
With this line you can place the antenna end on your dash, or tape/glue it up to a fixture in a window.

Another thing I noticed was it had an ethernet port! I just thought that was fantastic, albeit a bit
redundant in a tablet, having a much faster internet access when your near a hard line is a plus.
The WiFi is still there though, so dont sweat it; and its just as stable.

We noticed it only has 2GB of storage "gotta cut corners to make it cheaper right ;p " but it supports
up to 32gb microSDHC, which is fine; at least it was with me since most apps can be installed
to SD Card; in fact the first thing you should install on here is an app called "app2sd" from the market. Im also going to note here it has full sized USB 2.0 slots (2 of them) and the tablet
took a 16gb SDCard perfectly fine, as well as an external 220gb, storage wont be an issue.
Your gunna just have to dance around a bit to get it all to work "2gb yuk", but it will!
-= The one for sale below claims 4GB memory, the one we used had 2gb though =-
-= Ask the seller, if your unsure, but even if its 2, its still fantastic =-


*** Notice the seller got back to us, there is in fact 4gb in it, he claims  - Edited jan 23rd

This tablet, when used with an iPad2 stand, we put a keyboard and mouse on there "both usb",
the little mouse arrow showed up promptly, and the keyboard worked too.

Webcam worked well, we used it with Yahoo video, and there was no issue. Not much to say here
the video was as to be expected on a tablet this cheap, cloudy quality "but you can see fine"; no idea how else to say that haha.

Heres a side shot view, and an "unboxing" view.

As you can see, power slot, HDMI, 2 usb, microSD, ethernet, and reset. "And the applesque home button" just on the top there, on the face. It even has the cute overused lame square, awww....
The sound was terrible and tinny, but it comes with headphones which sounded fantastic
and the hdmi did too, our verdict on this is the cheap speakers used.



Whats our verdict? Buy one, they work and well too; remember you get what you pay for though
dont expect to be playing the latest Tegra2 3D games here. I suggest a A500 Iconia Tablet for that.

Nitty Gritty time? I think so:

CPU                                    ARM11 x220 1GHz Single Core          
RAM                                   512mb DDR2
HDD                                    24Gb (2 on some older models)
MEMORY                           microSD to 32gb (and any USB HDD or thumbdrive)
O/S                                      Android 2.2 Froyo
FLASH                                Froyo supports up to 10.1
SCREEN SIZE                    10.2" 1024x600
SCREEN TYPE                   TFT Touch
Dimentions                           Not Specified
Weight                                  2kg
CAMERAS                          1.2mp
Rooted/Rootable                  Ive been told yes, but havent done it.
MARKET                            GetJar, Android, Amazon (with rooting)
SENSORS                           Gyro, Accel, GPS
MIC/Speaker                       Yes/Yes
CONNECTORS                  hdmi, microSD, 2 usb, power, external gps, 3.5mm
BATTERIES                        6hours with 6kmAw li-ion
NETWORKING                  wifi b/g and 10/100 Ethernet

The only canadian seller we could find is amazon.ca we couldnt even find a usa source.
the price increase reflects the fact the you wont have to pay the customs and chinese freight charges.

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer TF101-A1 Beastly.

This thing is frakkin fantastic! My personal tablet of choice; that I carry with me is an Acer A500
but that may soon change!
Lets start with a quick skim, this is a Tegra2 tablet, as such its very fast, very powerful and sports
3D like a champion! The back is a hard plastic, harder then the acer a100 was; so we are ok with it, its not that brushed aluminum we love, but this is actually a good plastic. Rockin inside is 16gb of flash and if that isnt good enough for you, it has "MyCloud" similar to acers cloud system of unlimited storage. Which is good since Honeycomb tablets cant install apps to SDCard "something to consider when deciding between a 2.0 and 3.0 tablet"; 4.0 doesnt have this problem either.
which reminds me, if you plan on buying a tablet that rocks only 8gb of flash because hey, you can always drop another 8 in "or 16 etc",your wrong... That sdcard is going to be limited to ebooks, mp3s, and video untill your model gets a 4.0 upgrade; keep this in mind.
Now... this is an asus, so the pre-installed apps are glitchy, as most of their software is, but thats
what the "full access" to the android market is for ;p most apps youll need is free anyway; and buying one or two "special" ones are ok too. We accidentally turned it off a few times while turning up the volume, bad placement, but after an hour of playing it no longer happened.

This tablet comes in a packaged version as well "more cash of course" which includes a docking
station "laptop conversion kits i call them now, as they arent like the docking stations of old.
the docking pad also has a battery giving 8 hours more "+8 from the internal battery"; asus touted giving you 16 hours of battery life. Keep in mind you can buy 3rd party ones as well for tablets
that can charge from usb "this one cannot so it would be useless."
Heres a look at the "kit" version

Overall we highly suggest this tablet, $400 here gets you one easily sold for $500; and if you can
get it on sale, more power too ya, I havent heard anything about 4.0 on this tablet yet

Whelp! time for the nitty gritty!!1!1!1one12111!


CPU                                     Tegra 2 "dual core 1ghz powerhouse"          
RAM                                    1GB DDR2
HDD                                     16gb
MEMORY                            microSDHC up to 32gb
O/S                                       Honeycomb 3.2 Android
FLASH                                Full
SCREEN SIZE                    10.1" wsvga 1280x800
SCREEN TYPE                  Capacitive Multitouch
Dimentions                         10.6x6.9x0.5 inch
Weight                                 1.5lb
CAMERAS                          face 1.2mp    rear 5.0mp
Rooted/Rootable                  Unknown
MARKET                            Full market + Android + Getjar support
SENSORS                           Gps, Compass, Accelerometer, Gyro, light
MIC/Speaker                      yes/stereo (SRS)
CONNECTORS                 docking, microHDMI,
BATTERIES                      9.5 hours li-poly    (24.4 w/h)
NETWORKING                wifi b/g/n, bluetooth 2.1


Without Kit

With Kit

Acer Iconia W500 10.1" (The w means windows)

As you all know; "or should, theres a link here if your curious, look for the Iconia A500"
there is naming convention it seems, among the icona tablets.
the 100's are 7 inch tablets, the 500 are 10.1. The A is for Android, W is windows.
This tidbit of information should help you decide what to buy; we arent fondest of windows, but hey
its your world, we are just tryin to get a nut.

Soooo... this is about the Acer Iconia W500 tablet; another acer powerhouse, and that it is.
It runs Windows 7 32bit home premium. "A custom UI of course".
A question you need to ask us is "Tablet or Notebook"; and we cant answer you, the line is very very
thin and very very blurry.  Mostly because since its a Windows 7 machine you can literally run anything
on it a normal laptop or desktop computer will run; this includes all your games, productivity programs "like office or visual studio"; its technically a touch screen desktop computer, without a mouse.

We believe this makes the choice hard; there is something to be said for androids epic market place.
provided of course your buying an equally powerful android machine "the A500 for example".

This thing rocked, i takes a keyboard and mouse if you so choose "basically your tablet converts into
a speedy little dual core laptop"; with a simple plug. It only has a single USB port, so we had to
use a USB Hub to do it, but it worked; "unless of course you buy the docking station, which is basically the other half of a laptop, full with mouse and keyboard".
It is a microUSB though, we had to use a microUSB to USB Female adapter - amazon has them.

This thing ran just as we expect, a dual core notebook. we played Civilization 4 with no hiccups; as
well as Borderlands; lotta fun. We took it off the stand, used it as an eReader with KOBOs
desktop windows application and called it a great tablet!
And graphics are powered by ATi Radeon 6250, and the CPU is an AMD 1GHz C-Series.

The only issue we had is no way to add more ram with SDCard, but the model comes in
32Gb size "only".
There is a card reader though "you CAN put an SDCard in it" it just isnt meant as a permanent
piece of hardware, but as a medium to transfer files, and of course you can plug a USB
thumbdrive in as well "in fact we used a 16gb usb drive to install our test software"
You wont go wrong here!

Want some nitty gritty? here it is.


CPU                                  AMD Dual Core 1GHZ C-Series             
RAM                                 2GB DDR2
HDD                                  32gb SSD
MEMORY                         Not Expandable - 3 in 1 card reader is present
O/S                                    Windows7 Home Premium 32bit
FLASH                              Any Windows 32bit flash
SCREEN SIZE                  10.1" 1280x800 wide LCD
SCREEN TYPE                Capacitive Multitouch
Dimentions                        27.4x1.5x19.3 CM
Weight                                970g  (Heavy for a tablet)
CAMERAS                        Front and back both 1.3mp
Rooted/Rootable                 Not Applicable
MARKET                          Any PC Intel/Windows application (so yea.... lol)
SENSORS                         aGPS,
MIC/Speaker                     yea/yea
CONNECTORS                3.5mm, usb, card reader, docking, microUSB
BATTERIES                     up to 6hours   Li-Ion
NETWORKING               WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, HSUPA

Coby MID7012-4G 7" tablet

This is the amazing Coby Kyros 7012 tablet; and for only $120 your going to be extreemly happy!
lets get started...

First, this has the 2.3 android system; that means you wont run out of support, and its going to
run just about any program (app) you put on it. This is also the hackers dream, there are more mods,
roms and updates from the community for this then anything else we have ever seen; "Except the Coby Kyros 7022 - also on this website";

This supports the Amazon appstore fully, so that means free apps all the time which is a great bonus.
the Google appstore required rooting the device, which we did. No issues.

Dont get me wrong here, the the tablet is far from perfect, but its $120; and its DOES do fantastic things
The limiting factor here isnt the build quality, or the OS, etc. its the CPU which is  1ghz single core.
 but its ARM11 (about 20% slower then its equal speeded A8 CPU)
1000 mhz ARM11 runs about the same as a 800mhz A8
All things considered thats still pretty fast. Its going to run your Angry Birds "maybe not Rio though"
Plants vs Zombies ran on it as well with no sputtering. The second limiting factor in this unit; and probably the real reason you would have any issues "remember, 1ghzmhz is pretty fast still"; is that it only
sports a WHOPPING <-- lol  256mb ram.
Also, its a single touch resistive screen; not all games are going to play on it properly; even if they run.
Dont expect any real multitasking here. Which that being said; it can eread as well as a $220 kindle fire or
a $200 kobo vox, only better because its open to all those stores "ie: its not branded a kindle for example"

it plays your games, runs flash 10 (os is 2.3), rocks youtube and netflix well.


So with all that, lets hit the nitty gritty button on this flight of raw epicness.

CPU                                     1GHz ARM11  
RAM                                    256mb ddr2
HDD                                    4Gb     
MEMORY                           microSDHC up to 16GB
O/S                                      2.3
FLASH                                10.1
SCREEN SIZE                     7" 800x400
SCREEN TYPE                   Resistive single touch
Dimentions                            1.5x19.5x12 inch
Weight                                  726g
CAMERAS                       None
Rooted/Rootable                Hell ya, a hackers dream
MARKET                          Google market to rooted, android to all, getJar, applib
SENSORS                         Gyro
MIC/Speaker                     3.5, Mono.
CONNECTORS                microSDHC, 3.5
BATTERIES                      5hours
NETWORKING                WiFi b/g

Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101 (16/32)

This thing is simply amazing; its a solid all around tablet with no flimsy feel what-so-ever in any way.
Based purely off its technical specs, solid design and highly customizable OPEN Android OS many
users have simply stated they would have paid more for it. And if you have been wanting a PC
that runs android, this is it; the docking station is simply seamless and amazing.
If you do not want to buy that, it will still take a keyboard and mouse easily "usb or bluetooth".
The mouse cursor shows up instantly, and keyboards work flawlessly; what does that mean?
Simply put, its a laptop/netbook at this point. With additions like quickoffice, mail, firefox, messaging
and more; you can be as productive on it as a laptop as well. The only disadvantage is that its
a tablet "you need to get it to stand up somehow is what i mean". I typically use a 8x11 picture
stand, like the one pictured here, and it actually works really well.

You of course can use a myriad of iPad stands as well, as the size is pretty close.
Heres the laptop conversion docking station.

Its pretty fantastic too by the way, other then android instead of windows; you cant tell its a tablet.
Its a tegra2 system, so like all tegra2's it has a dual core processor, 3d video rendering and a speed
comparable to  mid range laptops. And with unlimited cloud asus storage, your good2go!
The batteries are 10hours rated, and in 8 hours we couldnt drain it. so we expect it to be 9-10
hours as advertized.


Time for the nitty gritty


CPU                                          Tegra2 - A9 Dual Core @ 1Ghz                            
RAM                                         1Gb
HDD                                          16gb and 32gb available
MEMORY                                 microSDHC up to 32GB
O/S                                             Shipped with Android honeycomb 3.2
FLASH                                      Full
SCREEN SIZE                          10.1" WXGA 1280x800 16:9
SCREEN TYPE                        10 finger capacitive multitouch
Dimentions                                271x177x13mm
Weight                                       680g
CAMERAS                               1.2mp Face, 5mp rear
Rooted/Rootable                        ??????
MARKET                                  Full
SENSORS                                 GPS, Gyro, Accelerometor, ecompass, light
MIC/Speaker                            yes, 2 speaker stereo
CONNECTORS                       miniHDMI, 3.5 + mic,  MicroSD, dock
** the dock adds usb, card reader, more battery
BATTERIES                            10 hours
NETWORKING                      WiFi b/g/n  Bluetooth 2.1 EDR


     16gb model