The sleek and sophisticated Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is merely 8.6 mm in thickness, markedly slimmer than the 12.9 mm Motorola Xoom and 8.8 mm Apple iPad 2.

At about 1.25 lb. in weight, Samsung’s new tablet is 6 per cent lighter than the iPad 2 and a 20 per cent lighter than the Android Honeycomb-based Motorola Xoom.

Aside from weight and dimensions, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 also has some very striking hardware and software features.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 runs Android 3.1, the updated version of Honeycomb released by Google around a month back, and draws power from an NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core 1GHz processor. It offers 1GB of RAM, and comes equipped with a headphone jack, a 3-megapixel camera and LED flash on the rear.

The tablet’s 1280 by 800-pixel LCD, with brilliant colors & crisp definition, is really is bold and vivacious.

There is a Samsung virtual keyboard that makes use of Nuance's XT9 text-prediction technology. It comes set as the primary keyboard by default, though the user can switch back to the standard Honeycomb keyboard if he/she wants to do so.

However, the device has some drawbacks also, such as lack of USB, HDMI and microSD ports. Perhaps, Samsung believes that less is more.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 will officially be launched on June 17.