The LG Optimus Pad is essentially the T-Mobile G-Slate, but for the rest of the world, following the launch of the latter device at CES 2011. Fast forward a month and here we have the LG Optimus Pad. 

It offers up a screen that's 8.9 inches on the diagonal and rocking a nice sharp 1280x768 pixel resolution. This is packed into a frame that measures 243 x 149.4 x 12.8mm and weighs 630g. It feels solid in the hand. It is light enough to port around one-handed, but we suspect when you're watching something you'll give it a two-handed grip.

The quality is also excellent, and it looks and feels like a premium device. This seems to be the route that most of the major manufacturers are going with their Honeycomb tablets, with some lesser non-Google Android tabs catering for the more affordable end of the market.

From our brief time with the tablet, the screen looks fantastic, with deep blacks and vibrant colours. It became immediately obvious that the glossy finish on the Optimus Pad is going to be a real fingerprint magnet, so keep your screen wipes handy.

Honeycomb in working form looks sensational, offering up all those optimised features for tablet users. It's also a dynamic system, perhaps moreso than the iPad, so you get the feeling that using a Honeycomb tablet you'll be better placed to multitask. This will need some close examination, but first impressions are very good.

The Optimus Pad that we played with didn't have a sim card in it, but seemed happy offering up websites over the busy Wi-Fi channels on the show floor. We're hoping to have a more detailed look at some of the features over the next few days to bring you more on this.

One of the quirky features - and one we're still arguing about here at Pocket-lint - are the two cameras on the rear of the Optimus Pad. As the screen is a standard display, i.e., 2D, you won't be able to view anything you capture in 3D on the Pad. But then, are you going to be filming with a 9-inch device? We think not.

Anyway, we've decided that offering 3D capture gives LG the chance to not only differentiate from the likes of Samsung and Motorola, but also play a part in its 3D creation story. It offers the means to view 3D content through its TVs, so why not offer 3D capture? There is the HDMI to output it afterall.

This is another device running on the Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset, and we already know that offers simultaneous Full HD encoding and decoding for your video, as well as great gaming opportunities.

So far we're impressed with the Optimus Pad. We're more convinced than ever that Google's insistence that Froyo wasn't for tablets is now more justified than ever.

Check out how the LG Optimus Pad matches up to the Motorola Xoom.