Reviewing the Playster Experience

THE TABLET

Before we even signed up for our Playster account, the hardware itself seemed worth taking a look at.

The closest point of comparison many users will have for the Playster8 tablet (which is branded Playster both on the exterior and in startup screens and the like throughout the OS) is Barnes & Noble's Nook, or the short-lived Kobo Arc and Vox tablets.

Playster's tablet lacks some of the finish and ambition of Barnes & Noble's devices, which were designed to challenge Amazon's Kindle and which were, in many ways, superior in overall design and adaptability for a while, but it's certainly a step and a half above the Kobo devices; a company that has made mostly dedicated e-readers for prose books, Kobo never fully committed to the tablet market.

There will, of course, be comparisons to the Kindle Fire, and that's fair: the devices are very different and serve different functions, though; like an iPad, the Kindle Fire is a delivery device for Amazon's ecosphere. The reason a comparison to the Nook HD and above is more apt is that while Barnes & Noble still had integrated and non-removable proprietary software on the Nooks, that did not define the experience. The Barnes & Noble tablets were essentially just tablets which featured a custom interface.

To be fair, the Playster8 is even less like the Nook HD and HD+ than it is the more recent Samsung Galaxy Nook devices, which are essentially just plain old Android devices with custom branding.

On that note, the Playster device starts up easily, sets up easily, and has any user with a Google account ready to roll in minutes. It's also free of Samsung's resource-heavy custom add-ons, which slow Android to a crawl on the Nooks and eat up most of your available space.

The Playster device itself is pretty small, although there's a card slot to expand storage. You start out with a hard drive that will have about 11 GB free to load up with apps, photos, and what-have-you after the 5 GB or so of operating system and pre-loaded apps are accounted for.

The device has few limitations; it used to be that Amazon and Barnes & Noble, for instance, wouldn't play nice, so the Kindle, Amazon Music, and other apps wouldn't load on "competing" devices. Here, the Playster8 isn't supported by Amazon's video app, but otherwise a full battery of reading and streaming apps like Vudu, Nook, Kindle, Amazon Music, and Netflix will run just fine, allowing users to bolster the multimedia library Playster offers with whatever accounts they already own.

(There is a workaround for the Amazon Video issue, accessible by attempting to access one of your purchased videos through the Chrome browser and downloading Amazon Underground -- so if you're really married to that format and willing to mess around a little bit, it's doable.)

It may seem as though we've spent a lot of time on what is, ultimately, a pretty standard Android tablet -- but there's a reason for that. If this is meant to be the ultimate -- or at least the default -- means by which audience members can interface with the service, it seemed worth evaluating.

Ultimately? It's a solid device. Nothing spectacular -- it's no Nook HD+ and it won't stand up to the most current iteration of the Fire family -- but for what it is, it's quite nice. Our instinct -- and we'll see how this shapes up as we delve a little deeper -- is that the device may come up a little short in terms of video and gaming performance but be a perfect fit for music and books.

A minor cosmetic note or two:

First, the home button and other Android function buttons at the bottom of the screen take a little getting used to: whereas the current standard seems to be to place the three primary keys side by side at the bottom of the device, the Playster8 instead has only the home key in that bottom row, with the three "function" keys lined up across the bottom of the screen itself. It's a nice setup that helps to avoid accidentally exiting out of what you're doing, as some users are wont to do on Samsung and similar devices.

Second, the finish of the device (at least the "black" tablets, which is what we got and the only tablet in stock at the time we browsed the Playster site recently) is a matte, almost "brushed steel" kind of feel on the back. First impression is that it would be easily scratched, would show dirt pretty badly, and may heat up if the device is running for a long time. Those who had early iPads may remember some or all of these issues, from a device that also had the same style of back.

Because of its size (standard 8" Android display), it's pretty easy to find an inexpensive protective case or sleeve for the Playster8 -- something we would recommend to anybody considering getting one. Ditto on screen protectors.

Now...to actually set up a Playster account.

THE SERVICE

The setup itself is relatively painless. If you're here just for comics (or music, or audiobooks, or whatever), it may be a touch more of a hassle because like all of these services, they want you on the variety package and the setup screens try to steer you to more media.

Connecting to the service, the interface is simple: again, what you see might be a little bit different if you only get a selection of features, but signing up for everything on their custom tablet creates a pretty seamless, easy-to-navigate interface whether you're on the mobile app or on the web.

The selection is kind of all over the map, and so a lot of what you would get out of Playster depends on what you're here for. Comics are a new area for them, so while there are a fair number of books from the mainstream market that are really comics in disguise, the biggest publisher they've got on their unlimited service is IDW Publishing. More on comics in particular later.

As an add-on to other services, Playster is an easy-to-use and versatile no-brainer. As your primary means of being entertained, it's probably less effective. That said, for your dollar, it performs better in certain areas than most of its competitors. We'll get into that a little more soon.

ComicBook.com readers who want to try the service can sign up by navigating over to the site and using the coupon code Comic90 at checkout for a free, 90-day trial of the service.

THE COMICS

Comics are a new feature on Playster, and it's something that they're currently putting a lot of resources into.

The downside is, that means we'll be reviewing a product that's more or less in beta, with limited features and selection.

The upside is, their comics subscription isn't a stand-alone. So while it's tempting to compare this to something like ComiXology Unlimited, they're very different products. Comics on Playster are included with an eBook subscription, which is itself an excellent service (see the next screen for more on that).

So far, the only major publisher involved is IDW Publishing, which appeals to casual and non-comics readers, obviously, through their diverse lineup of licensed titles. For the sake of argument, we test drove it on the collected edition of J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Cavallaro's The Life and Times of Savior 28, a comic this writer once called "one of the finest superhero stories of the decade."

Comics on Playster are an unambiguously better experience on tablet than on web, mostly becuase it's designed for the app. It's essentially a PDF reader, like what you get with the other eBooks, although on a touchscreen it's easy to use pinch and zoom features to navigate, and the transfers are excellent, so IDW has you covered.

On web, some titles -- not all, but enough to mention it -- have distortions in the art when viewed in "widescreen," where the reader is apparently trying to accommodate your screen, presumably assuming that everyone is vieiwing on a tablet.

The limited selection and middling quality of the viewer are very much in line with what you saw in the first little chunk of time that Google Play was experimenting with comics. They didn't go all-in on the idea like Barnes & Noble did in the early days, but Playster has said that they're moving forward on an upgrade soon to address some of the issues mentioned above.

Right now, if you're looking to Playster as your comics provider, it's only really worth it if you're viewing the service as "IDW Unlimited." If you really enjoy their particular offerings and licenses, you're in luck. Otherwise, be aware that it's a work in progress and that it's a much better deal if you read prose books as well.

OTHER MEDIA

Much like comics -- where there are some good elements and some bad, but on balance we would rate it "definitely worth a try" -- the other media offered on Playster could turn out to be a bargain for some folks, whereas others would find it lacking.

That sounds like it's a non-verdict, but let's dig in a little:

In terms of movies and TV, like most streaming services, there's a lot of content, but the quality is up to the eye of the beholder to judge. There are a lot of movies that are low-fi, low-budget movies that used to go direct-to-DVD back when there was a market for that. Instead, most of these languish on pay cable and streaming services now.

There are some gems hidden in there -- and maybe a good idea would be for us to do a later exploration of "10 underrated movies you can find on Playster" or something -- but it's definitely not a replacement for Netflix.

It's also not as 100% generic as many of the would-be Netflixes that have emerged and generally failed in the last ten years, either. You can get things like the Transformers Animated series, a pretty good selection of stand-up comedy, and a whole bunch of low-budget movies starring major celebrities.

The music selection is similar: limited, but you can find something there pretty easily. You won't get the most popular music on the airwaves right now, but if you're using it to bolster your existing Pandora account or record collection, it's easy enough to find albums that will be good background noise (right now, it's Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Live 1975-1985).

With music more than anything else, the simplified, tablet-friendly look of Playster's interface tends to give off a "cheaper" vibe than the service actually offers: the stock photos they use for their music genres focuses on abstract ideas rather than available choices, and at first glance it would be easy to pass over the music section altogether. Don't: there's some good stuff in there, as a rule.

Games are similarly situated: a lot of generic material and the kind of stuff you can buy for pretty cheap on your tablet or on Amazon, but not devoid of recognizable franchises or titles with nostalgic appeal.

The area where the service shines is really in the book market. Whether it's non-comics eBooks or audiobooks, you can find almost anything on Playster, and for the price point it's a bargain. As somebody who listens to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks while at work, the audiobook selection is so great that it would be a difficult thing to part with.

New bestsellers and older releases are all included as part of the eBook/audiobook service, and the result is an area where the eBooks are better than you'll get outside of Amazon's Kindle reading service...and we haven't found an audiobook provider we like better for the buck.