Many of you probably recall the very first reports stating RIM was working on a tablet device that should have been called the Cobalt or BlackPad, all these rumors now becoming official with the launch of the PlayBook, a BlackBerry 7 inch tablet.

Having a really strange name for what Research in Motion says is a “professional-grade” tablet, the device was unveiled during BlackBerry DEVCON together with almost complete specs and a video that demos PlayBook's operating system.

As we stated before this is indeed built by QNX and comes with a clean and intuitive interface as well as a WebKit Browser, HTML5, Flash support and hardware accelerated video for what seems to be a complete feature set.

Hardware wise things shape up equally good, since RIM went with a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor in its 7 inch PlayBook tablet as well as WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth and microHDMI conncetivity, future versions of this device also coming with 3G and 4G capabilities, opening the possibility of a carrier subsidized version of the PlayBook.

The 1024x600 multitouch touchscreen comes also as a much welcome addition together with 1080p HD H.264, MPEG, DivX and WMV video support.

Besting both the iPad and Samsung's Galaxy S, the latter being a much more worthy rival for the PlayBook, RIM's tablet comes with dual cameras, 3MP in the front and 5MP in the back, while 1080p HD video recording is also on the feature list.

“RIM set out to engineer the best professional-grade tablet in the industry with cutting-edge hardware features and one of the world’s most robust and flexible operating systems,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion.

“The BlackBerry PlayBook solidly hits the mark with industry leading power, true multitasking, uncompromised web browsing and high performance multimedia.”

This may be indeed true since the feature list is definitely impressive enough, the PlayBook surpassing all my expectations regarding a RIM based tablet, this coming in as a worthy rival for the Samsung Galaxy Tab, not to mention the iPad (although Apple fans definitely won't agree with me).

The real problem however for RIM is convincing developers and user alike to support their QNX built operating system, but if they succeed in doing so this may as well become one of the best tablet offering available.