BlackBerry maker RIM has posted a video on YouTube which offers a side-by-side comparison of the BlackBerry PlayBook and the iPad’s web browsing capabilities.

The video, titled BlackBerry PlayBook and iPad Comparison: Web Browsing, runs through a series of comparison tests with a BlackBerry PlayBook and Apple iPad, which RIM says demonstrate the speed of the PlayBook Browser, its support for rich Flash content, and the performance of open web standards like HTML 5 on the PlayBook.

It opens with a rendering test, with both devices attempting to load content on two websites, UEFA.com and CBS.com. In both instances, the PlayBook loads the content some 3 – 4 seconds ahead of the iPad. It then goes on to show what happens when the two tablets are asked to browse a site with Flash content, adidas.com. The PlayBook accesses the Flash content while the iPad, of course, does not.

The next demo compares an Acid3 test on both devices. This is a test page from the Web Standards Project that checks how well a web browser follows certain selected elements from web standards. While both devices score 100 per cent in the test, Matthew from the RIM web browser group, who narrates the video, points out that the iPad has a small artefact in the top corner of the screen, which means that, in this test, it does not have “pixel-perfect rendering”. The PlayBook, on the other hand, opasses the testm, which translates into: “better rendering and higher fidelity when you’re rendering real world websites”.

Finally, the video shows a Pocket Full of Canvas test on both devices, designed to show their ability to render Javascript and HTML5 Canvas element used in rich web content such as online games. Again, the PlayBook has the edge, rendering the animation smoothly and fluidly, while the iPad looks, in Matthew’s words, “quite choppy”.

Reading between the lines, we think what RIM is possibly trying to say, ever so subtly, is that the PlayBook knocks the iPad into a cocked hat with a large sledgehammer, though Matthew is far too polite to be so explicit. Let’s see if Apple rises to this one.

You can catch the video here.