I suppose it's fitting that I should be the one to write our PlayBook review. Before Android and the iPhone, there were two mobile platforms/devices that I was hugely fond of: the Palm V and my BlackBerry. In fact, it wasn't until the iPhone that I finally let go of my last BlackBerry - moving on from the email era into the smartphone age.

Today's BlackBerry is of course very different than the devices I used in college. And the PlayBook is unlike anything RIM has ever done.

I don't believe any tablet maker has perfected the formula just yet. I made that abundantly clear in our review of the iPad 2. While you can't argue that Apple is the forerunner in the smartphone based tablet space, over the long term I still believe this is anyone's game. Remember, the leaders in the early days of the PC industry weren't the ones who ultimately dominated the mature market.

What follows is our review of RIM's first attempt at building a tablet. The PlayBook is far from perfect, but there's a foundation here that can be built upon if RIM has a good roadmap and good execution. And if you're a BlackBerry user, there's a lot of synergy to exploit.

Let's get to it.

2011 is the Year of the Tablet. With all due respect to the rabbit, who would have otherwise been assigned to this year, I think the tablet has earned the right of representing 2011. If you followed CES at all this year, you’d know why.

I decided pretty early on that I would make a huge post with all the tablets we looked at instead of posting each one individually, simply because the sheer number of tablets on the show floor meant that I would have taken over AnandTech’s front page with tablet-related posts. It would have been impossible to cover all the new tablets, but I think we managed to get our hands on most of the high profile tablets in addition to some of the more promising new tablets out there.