We’ve finally reached the point where the oft-rumoured rivals to Apple’s iPad have started to emerge and give the waiting world a bit of substance to match the undoubted style of their hype videos. The catalyst for this new wave of tablets is Android 3.0 – codenamed “Honeycomb” – which is the first version of Google’s operating system to be specifically designed for tablets rather than smart phones. With the early contenders – the Asus Transformer and the Motorola Xoom – reaching the high street it was time for me to go and have a play with them.

Of all the tablets I think the Asus Transformer is the one I most like the sound of. The gimmick is that it is a fully functioning 10 inch tablet but has a keyboard which clips on magically and turns it into a fully functioning laptop. As someone who does quite like the idea of writing on the move, a keyboard is a very attractive feature. Especially one that fits seamlessly onto the tablet. Apple does keyboards for the iPad but they are either totally separate Bluetooth devices (which means an extra thing to carry and you need a way of propping the iPad up while you type) or keyboard-dock combos which are bulky at the connector end and take up far more space than they need to. Unfortunately, Asus has taken the odd decision to launch the tablet-only Transformer a month before the full version. No doubt you’ll be able to buy a separate keyboard and marry the two together but it seems a waste to have a product with a unique selling point and launch it without that USP available. Especially when the USP is easily copied and won’t be unique for long.

The Transformer I played with didn’t impress me that much. The screen looks to be proper 16:9 which meant that it had the same diagonal width as an iPad but less overall screen area. The build quality seemed fine and it sat nicely in the middle ground where it feels well made and pleasingly heavy while being light enough to use comfortably. The Android 3 operating system felt much too cluttered after the simplicity of iOS. That’s probably just because you can do a lot more customisation in Android and waves of punters had taken the chance to mess around with the demo model. Apple is rumoured to be introducing something akin to Android's widgets in iOS 5 so we might be on the brink of more customisable iPads and other iThings and if we are, I can’t help but think that Apple will do it better. The widgets on the Transformer felt clunky and messy. Maybe I could tweak them to my own liking given an evening with my new toy but the first impressions simply aren’t as good as those you get from the iPad 2.

The Motorola Xoom doesn’t need a gimmick like the Transformer’s keyboard. It is a high quality, well spec-ed tablet with Android 3 and plenty of influential people to say how great it is. The screen area is slightly larger than the Transformer’s but everything looked and felt the same to me. Android is meant to be a universal operating system that isn’t tied to one manufacturer or company so comparisons between tablets running Android is closer to Dell vs Mesh, both running Windows 7 rather than Motorola vs Apple, each running different software. I found there was less that instantly impressed me in Android. Things were harder to find, there seemed to be less to do, the browser felt less smooth than it does in iOS and I found the display for Trend mobile security suite software placed next to the Android tablets a bit worrying. I know there have been a few scare stories of malware in the under-policed Android Marketplace but is it really so bad that you need anti-virus software on your tablet?

The next day I had another play on an iPad. Fortunately, my girlfriend is the sort of person who doesn’t mind a trip to the Apple Store as she too was drawn in by the beauty of the iPhone and has been hooked ever since. She has been trying to wangle an iPad from work because – obviously – she needs one to be a fully productive and dynamic member of the team (etc) but hadn’t really had a proper go on one until then. Apart from one foolish moment when she drew “MCFC” and a heart on the built in painting app (how can anyone misspell “MUFC”? It’s not hard – anyone would think it was deliberate) it was a successful few minutes. Everything on the iPad is awesome. Google Street View looks fantastic, the internet is a constant joy and the device just makes using it a nice place to be. We left the Apple Store just a little bit more in love with the iPad. I then bored her senseless with why there is no Flash on iOS and the various theories about why there really isn’t Flash on iOS.

I’ve not completely given up hope for the Asus Transformer. It is two devices in one and I want both of them. It gives me more than the iPad, the extra that it gives me is something I genuinely want and Android does offer more flexibility than iOS to make the device more personal and more useful. But the tablet is a device that doesn’t need to exist and I can’t ignore the way the iPad impressed us far more than anything else we’d seen. Apple does a lot of hype. There is an awful lot of style. But underneath it, overwhelming though the flim, flam and hyperbole may be at times, there is a lot of substance too. My head says get the Asus Transformer and buy a tablet and a laptop in one slender and fairly sexy package. But my heart still says iPad. And then my head nods and seems to accept that my heart is right after all.