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BlackBerry PlayBook on sale at Best Buy for $299

Electronics retailer was quick to put the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet on sale. All models see a price cut of $200.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
Brooke Crothers

That was fast. Best Buy in the U.S. knocked the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet down to $299, apparently in response to the market-upending price of Amazon's Kindle Fire.

Is RIM feeling the Amazon Kindle Fire heat? The BlackBerry PlayBook went on sale Wednesday at Best Buy.  The 16GB model dropped to $299 from $499.
Is RIM feeling the Amazon Kindle Fire heat? The BlackBerry PlayBook went on sale Wednesday at Best Buy. The 16GB model dropped to $299 from $499. Best Buy

Clicking on each model on U.S. Best Buy's PlayBook page as of Wednesday night will reveal that the 16GB PlayBook fell to $299 from $499, the 32GB dropped to $399 from $599, and the 64GB model to $499 from $699.

While this doesn't quite match the $99 fire sale for Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad, $200 off the regular price of a PlayBook is nothing to sniff at.

Amazon announced today the Kindle Fire will sell for $199, despite having very similar specifications to the PlayBook.

Earlier this week, reports cited discounts at Best Buy in Canada and Staples. And earlier in the month, Best Buy briefly cut the price of the 64GB PlayBook to $550, $150 off the regular price.