Samsung made a significant set of announcements at the IFA trade show in Berlin on Wednesday, Aug. 29, including a new Windows RT tablet with an amazingly light form factor. As expected, the ATIV Tab is very similar to Samsung's Android tablets, and comes as a slim, well-made slate with a tactile brushed aluminum rear panel.

Powering the ATIV Tab is a speedy Qualcomm S4 processor clocking at 1.5GHz, paired with 2GB of RAM; no word is available yet on a Windows RT slate powered by Samsung's own Exynos chips. As with the ATIV Smart PC and ATIV Smart PC Pro, the Windows RT tablet sports both rear- and front-facing cameras. The front-facing camera, however, has a rather poor quality.

Meanwhile, the ATIV Tab's biggest drawback is the lack of a stylus. Samsung has packed its S Pen with the Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy Note 10.1, and the two Windows 8 tablets, enabling note sync across all of them, but the ATIV Tab is left with 10-point multi-touch instead of a stylus. For many tablet users this may not even be an issue, but those expecting the S Pen may find its absence disappointing.

Nonetheless, the Samsung ATIV Tab is shaping up as a solid contender among Windows slates. Screen quality is comparable to the rich, color-saturated models in Samsung's Android range of tablets, and the Snapdragon processor delivers impressive speeds. The ATIV Tab also packs a useful range of ports, including micro-HDMI output and USB for plugging in a mouse and a keyboard.

There are no details yet on pricing and availability, but Samsung will likely opt for a competitive price in order to compete with Apple's market-leading iPad, as well as the host of other tablets currently on the market.

ATIV is Samsung's new brand of Windows products, and consists of Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Phone devices. According to the company, the name ATIV is the backwards spelling of "Vita," which means "Life" in Latin.