Sascha joined me in the studio last night for a full-on 3.5hr marathon testing and discussion session with 10 different tablets. The iPad2, Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Acer Iconia Tab A500, HTC Flyer, Blackberry Playbook and Samsung Galaxy Tab were the focus of our efforts and we recorded three parts of the live session for you to view below.

The Blackberry Playbook impressed with its smooth UI, video handling and gestures. The Flyer beat the other 7 inch tablets in a browsing test (and is as fast as any Tegra2 + Honeycomb browser I’ve tested.) The Galaxy Tab was crowned the value-for-money king and in the 10 inch category, we couldn’t really find a winner. The iPad2, of course, just sits in a special space all on its own and isn’t truly challenged by the 10 inch Android devices although as Honeycomb and Honeycomb-optimised apps start for mature, that could change., especiall when we look to lightweight hardware like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Anyway, here are the videos. We hope you enjoy them. All products are owned by Sascha or myself.

Don’t forget the detailed HTC Flyer Live Review tonight, May 18th,  at 2100 CEST (Berlin) on Carrypad.com/live. Follow @chippy for more on that.

The first video is an overview of all the tablets Two 10″ Devices were tested in detail in Part 2 Three 7″ devices were tested in detail in Part 3

RIM are showing a new product, the Blackberry ‘Playbook’ at DevCon10 in San Francisco as I write.  I’m adding specifications as they come in.

Specifications (updating) https://www.umpcportal.com/products/blackberry/playbook (now with official specifications)

Press Release is here.

First image via http://twitter.com/hardwarezone

Slashgear have some more images from the event here.

• 1Ghz CPU (Dual core, must be Cortex A9 – possibly Tegra2?)
• 7 inch Screen 1024×600, Multitouch Capacative
• Micro HDMI-out, Micro USB
• 1BG RAM
• 9.7 mm thin
• 16GB flash storage

More (official) specs now in the product page.

Image set now in the gallery.

This is being pitched as a stable, secure platform with ‘uncompromised browsing.’  Flash 10.1 is included.

Stay tuned here or on the product page for updates.

Blackberryplaybook.com is redirecting to Blackberry America.

Initial thoughts:

It will be offered as a partner device for blackberry owners for a very cheap price, a ‘value-add’ upgrade. Web support is being promoted heavily with Flash and HTML5 support and a “high-fidelity web experience”. Could the browser be better than the iPad and Android devices? At 400gm with a Cortex A9 ARMV7 Core (Thx TheLukeTailor in comments), the battery life probably won’t beat the iPad. I estimate something similar to the Galaxy Tab – 4-6hrs online usage with good standby capability. Mobile usage will depend on the tethered phone. Storage is said to be 16GB which is a good starting point. No word on removable storage capability yet.

Application ecosystem needs to be analysed.

That’s it for this post. More soon so stay tuned for analysis.