LG has officially announced that its G Pad 8.0 is ready to start shipping this week in an LTE-enabled flavor.

The company unveiled its latest lineup of LG G Pad tablets a few months ago, introducing three new models with different screen sizes: the G Pad 7.0, the G Pad 8.0, and the G Pad 10.1. The slates were supposed to challenge Samsung's Galaxy Tab 4 family of tablets, which made their debut back in April. Samsung's tablets, however, were all LTE-enabled, whereas LG's slates were not.

LG is not launching LTE versions of all three tablets, but the LG G Pad 8.0 is ready to offer this connectivity option.

"In an effort to expand its leadership in LTE from smartphones to tablets, LG Electronics (LG) today unveiled an LTE version of the G Pad 8.0, offering blazing fast outdoor connectivity and portability for on-the-go media consumption," the company touts in a new press release on Thursday, Aug. 14. "The LG G Pad 8.0 LTE offers the right balance of performance and price competitiveness and comes preloaded with the best of the LG G3 smartphone's premium user experience (UX), delivering smooth multitasking capabilities and an immersive multimedia experience."

"With the G Pad 8.0 LTE, LG is setting a higher standard for connectivity in emerging 4G markets," adds Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile. "Today's on-the-go consumers demand speed and convenience wherever they are, at any time. If a 4G LTE infrastructure is in place, we want LG products to be first to take advantage of the fast network."

Aside from the addition of 4G LTE connectivity, the LG G Pad 8.0 remains unchanged compared to the original model. The tablet sports an 8-inch display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor clocked at 1.2GHz, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage capacity, a 5-megapixel rear camera, and a 4,200 mAh battery under the hood. Features borrowed from the flagship LG G3 smartphone, meanwhile, include the popular Touch & Shoot, Smart Keyboard, Gesture Shot, and Knock Code.

LG announced that its G Pad 8.0 LTE will launch in select European countries this week, while other markets across Central and South America, Asia and CIS would follow shortly afterwards.