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Best Buy discounts BlackBerry PlayBook

By Michelle Haag on 1 Sep 2011 05:07 pm
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If you're in the market for a BlackBerry PlayBook, head on over to Best Buy and have a look at the sale they are currently running. As pointed out in the forums, from now until Monday you can buy a 16GB PlayBook for $449 and a 32GB or 64GB for $549. We have also heard rumor in the forum of Staples sending out emails through internal sales reps offering the PlayBook at 50% off for 2 days only (Sept. 7th and 8th). This means 16GB for $249, 32GB for $299, and 64GB for $349. If you have a Staples business account, you may want to contact your representative and see if this offer is available for you as well.

So now the speculation begins. Why the deep discounts on the PlayBook? Are retailers trying to clear out stock of the wifi version to make room for that elusive 4G model? Is it prep work for the PlayBook 2.0 relaunch? Is a sale ever really just a sale? Sound off in the comments, and let us know if you find any other great deals on the PlayBook.

Topics: BlackBerry Playbook News & Rumors

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Michelle Haag Michelle Haag 1141 (articles) 1620 (forum posts)
87 comments

rellyrellz

First. If I can get a 16gb for 249 I will buy two of them lol

sta1

PM me. I'll be more than happy to provide you with the contact information for my Staples sales representative.

sta1

flyingspatula

/me prays for $99 fire sale.

oscarantonio718

Did they state if this would be an online thing only or will it be available in stores at this price as well?

victorshikhman

I don't understand the big deal. Amazon has had the 16GB Playbook for under $450 for at least two months (last time I checked).

I just checked right now, and Amazon is offering 16GB PB for $420, less than Best Buy even with the rebate.

http://www.amazon.com/Blackberry-Playbook-7-Inch-Tablet-16GB/dp/B004UL34...

RyMac04

I'm pretty sure I would have to buy it at $249.

guerllamo7

Who cares! I'm going to Staples and forcing my rep to give it to me for 299.00!
I have purchased three for full price and we, my wife, mother in law, and I love them.

This device is just perfect in size, does Flash, has way better cameras and speakers than the iPad 2, it is awesome!!

My brother, does not know it yet, but he just scored an awesome bday present.

Marc_Paradise

Don't get me wrong, the PB is great... but dude, you're a little frightening.

Sharma15

I'l be your brother if you buy me one :)

lol but in all seriousness il prob pick one up in later september.

MrsD.

Hey - long lost sibling, my birthday is just around the corner. You know that brother of ours won't appreciate it as much as I will. You might as well send it my way. ;-)

jwn66

I'd guess making room for 4g, timing seems right. I might get one if there 50% off, dunno who for tho, it's just too good of a deal not to buy it lol.

3migo

It may be only $50 off, but that's incentive enough for me to go out and buy one.

PN009

You'd rather look at the 100$ rebate Staples is giving on all Playbook versions RIGHT NOW

pjmacklin

look at it this way, for $50 more, you can get a 64gb! of course, if you have access to the alleged staples deal...!

feldmen01

My issue is that lots of these big retailers have NO CLUE how to sell this product!

Hell... half the store I go into, the damn thing is outdated, or worse, dead!

Telus is the worst offender of this, I make it my duty to go to these stores and update/ plug in/ promote the PlayBook in any way possible.

axllebeer

I hear ya there. The Local Wal-Mart where I live has had one on display for months now. With a faulty USB port so it won't charge. So therefore it's dead. So sad.

Sent from my little Black Book PlayBook

Sarvey

It's unfortunate that Canadians do not get the same deals when our dollar is higher than the U.S. dollar. :(

rsxsniper

oooooooooooo canada...

dkingsf

Blame Canada, Blame Canada! la, la, de, daaaaa!

gdewit79

Go figure! I already bought a 64 gig version lol

koool1

I suspect $99 Touchpads hurt all current tablet sales.

I also suspect Playbook (even before the Touchpad fire sale) needed something to spur sales. Why RIM doesn't offer $100 off Playbook with any Blackberry activation or something I will never understand.

I really hope to see a permanent price cut to $399 (16GB) and a 10" intro in the next few weeks at $499 along with a 2.0 OS release. I have dream!!!!!!!!

PN009

Staples is offering 100$ off all PB models online. I just checked their Website.

pjmacklin

in a void, the rebate deal is interesting at best. not really worth it in my opinion, though.

LegenJERRY

My two cents: if you haven't gotten it, save your money n wait for the next one... The features are cool, but too sluggish (bridge) maybe they'll get it to work as intended...

123berryaddicted

Bridge will NEVER run as intended. Sorry to say - but bluetooth is the crappiest technology ever, or at least it was not meant for this type of data transfer... The odd bluetooth headset works alright, but beyound that I find it to be lousy (keyboards, mouse, speakers, printers etc etc).

Kiddo2050

You don't need to wait. Whatever you get now will upgrade to 2.0 for nothing. IF you don't like the email don't use it. You ain't use-N it now cause you don't owns one....

burkey1973

son of a....buddy won one and didn't want it so I bought it off him for 450.00 two days ago, deal is a deal and it was a good price then.

Siiid

lets hope this signals in 2.0 update

asianguy80

If the 16jiggabyts are coming down to $250 I'm going to pick up another one of these for sure.

nbamford80

Does anyone know if Best Buy in the UK will be reducing the price also?

green_ember

Just picked up a 32gb this week from Staples with the $100 visa prepay rebate. A local grocery chain here has a deal where evey $50 you spend, you get 10 cents off a gallon of gas (up to 30 gallons). They were running a special last couple weeks where $50 gifts cards would get you 20 cents off a gallon. So $600 worth of Staples gift cards later, I have $1.20 off per gallon on my next fill up too. Now THAT'S serious money off the price of the Playbook!

DustBow

$249 and I will get one - I personally can't justify any tablet for $400+ but at $250, I'd probably bite. Altho, I'd still be a little concerned about the small screen size since it would mostly be used for browsing

gdewit79

I will personally attest to the PlayBook's browsing capabilities with such a "small" screen size. I find I do not mind it in the least, and I have used some of the larger 10" screen tablets.

DustBow

Good to know. I would love a sale for $249 but seems kinda unrealistic if they are already giving $100 rebates currently - would they run 2 specials like that back to back?

El Cid

Ditto!!! I have the 64GB PlayBook and prefer it to any of the 10" tablets I have tested at retailers. The screen size does not matter in this case because its sharpness and clarity are awesome, additionally its size is actually perfect for most people, I have average size guy hands while my wife's hands are small, yet both of us love the PlayBook. I'm tempted to get another one at these prices.

TongueDar

You should get a netbook. ;)

The PlayBook's screen size doesn't bother me one-bit. I love its overall size and the fact its browser behaves much like my desktop. I use it for almost all browsing outside of my comps, as its size is just right for me to cary everywhere and I can tether it to my phone's 3G connection when I'm away from my wifi.

And just for reference, I also own an Asus Transformer, which is a great device all around and an iPad, which quite frankly sucks for most tasks, especially browsing.

RichardZA

I think what RIM are trying to do is let consumers buy a PlayBOOk probably at cost to manufacture and once they've it in their hands they will probably go out and buy a BlackBerry handset.

they are trying to basically encourage consumers to buy their product and in return if the marketing pays off (works), they will have a client hooked for life on their product..

D B

Ya'll want a PB cheap...I'll sell you my 16g for $300! Bought brand new...email me go2girlaustin@yahoo.com

blazeone90509

Im glad I sold my 16gb Playbook for $350 just last week on Ebay that was perfect timing, because I would have had to sell it for about $150 to get anyone to bite on ebay, it was a tough sell @ $350 I had to relist it 3 times. I dont know what the speculative reason R.I.M or retailers are discounting the playbook but I believe anything not named Ipad should discount their tablets just to compete, Im waiting until theres a real competitor for the Ipad before I jump back into the tablet arena I bought a galaxy tab 10.1 and returned it in less than 24 hours, the android Tab is super buggy and it doesnt play well with Macs, the If only the playbook had some apps it would be the perfect Machine.

Jonathan-Archer

May I ask which Ebay you're using? I've been looking at 16gig PB's for weeks now and none of them went for less than $400.

EDIT: I stand corrected. Many of them went for $350, but I'm seeing very little of them getting stuck at a lower price than that.

blazeone90509

Sold it to a guy in Atlanta Ga, for $350 and gave him free shipping, im in the u.s

Kuttysark

For the record, the pricing at Canada Computers has been on for months, and is still better than Best Buy. http://bit.ly/pJUtBl 429.99/519.99/609.99 for the 16/32/64gb models

it's no where near the supposed pricing of Staples Sept 7 and 8th though.

radiobuck

You can get one for 389.99 at ebay right now, part of deal of a day promotion.

Jonathank

who knows but u know something is in the works....love the stock going up i made a good move .... go rim

silvia8787

hmmm 249 might just do xmas shopping early for my bro and sisters. damn they're lucky ass hell i wish i had a sister like me lol

Maestrodog

Ugh.

The dirty secret of sales--outside of traditional seasonal and lifecycle stuff--is they indicate weakness and a lessening of value. 50 percent?

FIFTY???

Four months into launch? A mere 120 brief summer days with several full blasts of national advertising all through the hockey playoffs and everywhere else?

That's simply grim. RIM is desperate to try to get some mo for this thing, and to get retailers to care. Pretend otherwise all you want, even as you've been made a fool for buying it at full retail and suffering the flawed OS updates and lack of application development for your troubles.

As for the minor stock uptick, speculators hoping for an acquisition or hoping it's oversold. Lotta bottom fishing out there. Check the volumes, not just the price, among other things.

This is scary. Once you do this, it's that much harder to get anyone to pay full retail ever again. They'll know to wait for the next capitulation.

maxmanian

my playbook was free from a friend and my ipad was a returned item at Best Buy. Grab the playbook. The OS is fantastic. . .much more intuitive. I'd go with the Staples deal on the 32g.

lengend

I will buy one in a heart beat 32GB thats the staples deal.

JustAnotherBeerbot

probably just the usual back-to-school sales. it's september.

caysmooth

is this sale for everyone or do i have to be signed up with staples?

klara_j

are you kidding me? now, Im going to have to make a major decision whether to jump on this blackberry playbook deal or to just pass on it and wait for the 4G version. Im actually still waiting for the white playbook to drop and I haven't seen any updates in regards to that. does anyone know if they are still releasing the playbook in white? ;/

Hirudin

As a PlayBook owner I am sad to say that *if* Staples is truly going to start selling PlayBooks at half price I would have to conclude it's because it's not selling very well.

Don't get me wrong, I really like my PlayBook, but it really doesn't offer very much. In my opinion RIM has seriously dropped the ball. I mean, promises are nice and all, but seriously: where the heck is the email app? Where is the Android app support? Why do I want to slap the programmers at RIM every time I use the podcasting app? Why isn't there some way to move the cursor in the web browser?

If I wanted to but consumer electronics with a great start, a lot of potential, and a lot of promises I would travel back in time and buy some more Nokia phones. We all know how well they're doing. Now-a-days I'd sooner buy an Apple product than something from Nokia. At least with Apple I could move on to the "acceptance" step (Flash will never happen) instead of being stuck in the "anger" phase.

nyc_rock

Reasons for this can only mean sales have been below expectations. Retailers would be really annoyed that they have to take markdowns on the PB only three months after launch to make room for a "new" playbook. Makes no sense.

MattD

I would love to pick up a 64GB for $249

koool1

I bought a Touchpad on the fire sale last weekennd at Best Buy. It's fine and the kids can use it but the Playbook is so much better. Aside from native e-mail and a couple of games, there is nothing I like better on touchpad. If you grab a Playbook for $399-$450, do it.

dcorx

They need to get there product to work straight out of the box, the playbook was awesome for the 3 whole hours I got to use it. The touch screen doesn't even work anymore

bhgreene

Much as I like the idea of getting the Playbook into the hands of more people, I am disappointed that we early adopters are left holding the bag as usual. I got a great price on my 32GB, but now the 64GB is even less.

donnation

Is autocorrection completely built into the OS yet? I hated that when I had the playbook that it wouldn't correct misspelled words throughout the entire OS. Typing on the web was a pain going back and correcting mistypes.

kingbernie06511

Fire sale on the only tablet without an email client!!!!

doninotown

Staples is offering a $100 prepaid VISA Card rebate on all Playbooks purchased between 8/25 and 9/03. (Standard 4-6 weeks after mailing in rebate form, etc.) Just got back from demo'ing one. Really like it. Tempted, but if there's a $100 rebate this week, I think I'll wait it out.

victorshikhman

I don't understand the big deal. Amazon has had the 16GB Playbook for under $450 for at least two months (last time I checked).

I just checked right now, and Amazon is offering 16GB PB for $420, less than Best Buy even with the rebate.

http://www.amazon.com/Blackberry-Playbook-7-Inch-Tablet-16GB/dp/B004UL34...

herrbremerhaven

A short test of prices to gauge the market. I think if they cut prices too far, then consumers might think the device was being discontinued. However, I would expect further price cuts in the next few months.

If a 4G PlayBook launches before the end of the year, it may come in near what the previous WiFi only version price was at launch. That would make the current small reduction just a step prior to bigger discounting. A next generation PlayBook is unlikely until mid 2012 after QNX phones launch.

Jonathank

GO RIM ...sales for rim and stocks will continue to climb...love u rim.....all the wayJonathan Kopycinski
MrKsBerry@Blogspot.com

Jonathank

wish i waited lol

Jonathan Kopycinski
MrKsBerry@Blogspot.com

klara_j

I called the 1-800 number for Staples and after checking with her supervisor, the representative that I spoke with said that the 50% off offer on the Blackberry Playbook is NOT valid. Im bummed out ;(

d12c20y

I saw the 16 gig at Walmart for $419.

gibingus

price is now back up to to "normal" at bestbuy, staples, etc.