If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that I’ve been in the market for a tablet for a long time. I would have been an early iPad adopter if it hadn’t been for the whole iTunes thing. And since I got my first Android phone last year, I’ve been pretty sure I want my slate to run Google’s OS. The problem with Andriod tablets however is availability. The first serious contenders are only just starting to pop up in shops.

I played with an Acer Iconia and loved it. The Asus Transformer is cheaper and looks great. But there’s one that – in my opinion – really stands out. Samsung’s first tablet, the Galaxy Tab, was too expensive and too small for my taste, but its 10.1″ follow-up looks really promising. Not only does it match most of the iPad 2′s specs, it bests a couple of them too. Most notably, it’s thinner and lighter. It’s still no match for Apple’s super-slick design, but it’s very sexy in its own right.

Like pretty much all Android tablets, Samsung’s offering has USB, HDMI out, a MicroSD slot and version 3.0 of Google’s mobile OS. It also runs the same 1GHz Tegra 250 processor, and has the same 1280*800 screen resolution. It’s hard to stand out among the current wave of Android tablets, but the Galaxy Tab 10.1 manages to do so through excellent design and better-than-ipad specs.

The 10.1 will be available on june 8th. Samsung is currently selling an older, thicker, “10.1v” revision through mobile providers, but I would recommend waiting for the “real” one. What’s another month?