As the name suggests, the new baby of Samsung’s tablet range sports a 7.7in, 1,280 x 800 pixel screen. It’s not just any old display, though: Samsung has squeezed in a Super AMOLED Plus panel, and the eye-popping vibrancy of the thing just has to be seen to be believed.

Even under the viciously bright spot lighting in Samsung’s (still half-built) hall, the Galaxy Tab 7.7’s display looked glorious. Colours are super-saturated – so much so, that it doesn’t feel like you’re looking at a screen at all.

Reach out and touch the tiny tablet, though, and it’s beautifully petite. Measuring just 7.89mm thick, the gently curved edges felt great in our giant hands, and it feels just as barely-there as the 335g weight suggests.

As you’d rightfully hope given the dual-core 1.4GHz processor inside (we’re waiting on confirmation of the actual architecture) the Tab feels pretty alert in use. We did experience the odd hitch here and there while surfing the web, but we’d be more inclined to blame the variable quality of IFA’s wireless airwaves than the tablet itself.

Indeed, delve through a copy of the Washington Post with the supplied newspaper reader, and there’s no lag at all while zipping around the front page and zooming in and out.

The tweaked home screen gives the little Galaxy Tab a touch of individuality, and Samsung’s keen to make a big splash on its four Hubs. The Game, Music, Readers and Social Hubs are pretty self-explanatory, but the Social Hub appears to be by far the most useful, aggregating email, contacts, calendar and friends across multiple social networks, it’s the perfect addition to such a temptingly portable tablet.

In fact, the only issue we noticed during our time with the Tab 7.7 was that its metal back became noticeably warm to the touch. After around 15 minutes of surfing the web, it was warm enough to start making our hands feeling fairly sweaty: obviously, squeezing a dual-core 1.4Ghz processor into such a tiny chassis has its downsides.

Still, the Galaxy Tab 7.7’s specifications are nothing to complain about. The presence of 5GHz 802.11n is a welcome – especially so given the congested state of today’s 2.4Ghz spectrum – and as channel bonding is supported, streaming or transferring gigabytes of music or movies will be swift and speedy.

There’s nothing lacking elsewhere: GPS and Bluetooth 3.0 make the grade, and the 3-megapixel front-facing camera is partnered with a 2-megapixel one at the rear. And, in contrast to some of the competition, Android 3.2 is installed as standard.

In fact, there’s only one major problem that Samsung has to deal with, and that’s the Galaxy Tab 7.7’s likeness to a shrunken iPad. Going by the message in the picture below, our German chums might have to wait patiently until the Galaxy Tab 7.7 finally arrives on Amazon.de.

The first thing that strikes you about the machine is its incredible build quality. Jobs made much of Apple’s new manufacturing process – pioneered with the MacBook Air – where the main part of the chassis is hewn from a single block of aluminium, and it certainly makes for a very robust-feeling machine. The original Pro was no pansy in this regard, but if that was solid as a rock this is positively granite.

Try to twist the base and you’ll meet firm resistance. Try to flex the lid and there’s no give at all, no showthrough, nada. No matter how hard we pressed we failed to produce the merest hint of a ripple.

The other big news is the huge glass multitouch trackpad. This measures 5in from corner to corner, but the size is only part of the story. There’s no longer a button below it; instead the entire trackpad is clickable. This is no standard tap-to-click pad, though – it’s mechanical. Push it down and after a millimetre or so, it clicks. Time will tell how intuitive this is – it certainly feels a bit weird at first – but it gets around the accidental cursor activation that plagues so many Windows-based machines.

The other part of the trackpad story is that a few new gestures have been introduced. You can now perform a ‘four fingered swipe’ up, down, left and right to activate various features. Placing four fingers on the pad and pulling down clears the screen; swiping them back up, puts your application windows back where they were.

And Apple has now introduced a way of activating the context menu without having to use a keyboard shortcut. A two-fingered tap pops up the context menu, or zones can be set up at the bottom right or left of the trackpad to do the same job.

Apple has ditched the traditional silver-coloured keyboard in favour of trendy, black scrabble tiles, which looks odd, but it feels perfectly pleasant to use. And the screen looks good, too – a 15.4in widescreen with a 1,440 x 900 pixel native resolution and LED backlight, with a glossy glass front that stretches right out to the edges of the lid.

There’s dual graphics here, in the shape of Nvidia’s 9400M integrated graphics and its 9600M GT discreet chipset – you can switch between the two depending on whether you want high performance or longer battery life. And, in an interesting departure for Apple, you can now access the hard drive and battery by removing just the one cover.

Elsewhere, typical Apple design touches abound: the battery gauge has moved from the bottom of the case to the side, so you can see what your battery level is at a glance; there’s an ambient light sensor to dim the screen and light up the keyboard.

All in all, it’s a very luxurious-feeling machine. To see if it stacks up in the performance or value stakes, though, you’ll have to wait for our full review later in the week.

The raw specifications, just to recap are as follows, with two models available initialy: 2.4GHz or 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors, 2GB or 4GB of RAM, 250GB or 320GB hard disks (SSDs optional), DVD writer (no Blu-ray), Nvidia 9400M / 9600M GT dual graphics with either 256MB or 512MB of dedicated graphics memory, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire 800, Mini DisplayPort, 2 x USB, ExpressCard/34, Mac OS X