At last! We’ve been speculating for months about the new Apple gadget. The blogosphere has been rife with rumours about the name of the device (iSlate? iTablet?) and what it may or may not be able to do and now we finally have the answers…. straight from Steve Jobs himself.

The iPad is the brand new gizmo and at first glance you could mistake it for an oversized iPhone. It’s something of a step up when it comes to functionality, however. With a 9.7 inch touch screen and the ability to play HD Youtube videos, the Internet browsing experience will be undoubtedly superior to that of the iPhone. The much larger on screen touch keyboard will be a welcome feature for those who struggle with the smaller Smartphone version and there’s a whole host of new features too.

Perhaps most notably is the addition of an eBook reader and iBook Store. Could this possibly have Amazon’s Kindle quaking? Maybe, but it’s not just the e-readers that the iPad looks capable of competing with. Designed to ‘bridge the gap between the Smartphone and the Laptop,’ Jobs even went as far as to claim that the iPad is ‘better than a laptop and a Smartphone at browsing, mail, videos, music, photo, eBooks’.  And he’s not joking, either. The Photo app takes some of the features from the Mac’s iPhoto, making organising and browsing photographs on the iPad an absolute dream.

The iPad has anything between 16Gb and 64Gb of internal flash storage, depending on your budget of course. It’s Wi-Fi ready, has integrated Bluetooth and has a powerful battery, boasting up to a month of standby time.

The familiar features remain in place too; Safari, Mail, iTunes and the App Store. iTunes on the iPad, however, looks more like the full version you’d get on your PC, making for a much simpler music browsing experience than that on the iPhone’s version. Any Apps already available for the iPhone will function perfectly on the iPad too, with the whole device designed to be completely back-compatible.

Anyone hoping for Flash will be disappointed. Apple has no intention of incorporating Flash into its mobile devices and the iPad is no exception but that is, perhaps, the only thing we might have expected that it doesn’t have!

And of course, the crucial information – how much will it set you back? Jobs announced that prices for the standard models would range from $499 – $699, with a 3G version costing an additional $129. In British terms, this means we could be looking at about £400 – £600 with an added £100 for 3G. Whether or not it can realistically replace anyone’s personal computers remains to be seen, but this is a massive step forward for mobile browsing and looks set to sell incredibly well when it is released in April.