Panasonic is adding a new rugged tablet to its Toughpad lineup. The Toughpad FZ-M1 is the smallest and lightest Windows-powered Toughpad yet, featuring a 7 inch display, measures 0.7 inches thick, and weighing about 1.2 pounds.The
Sure, that makes it a lot heavier than other small tablets, but this is a military spec-tested machine that can withstand shock, vibration, and falls from up to 5 feet.
The Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 is also more powerful than a typical 7 inch tablet, featuring an Intel Core i5 Haswell processor and up to 8 hours of battery life. Panasonic will also offer an optional high capacity battery with support for up to 16 hours of run time.
Panasonic also plans to launch a cheaper model with an Intel Atom Bay trail processor. That model should launch by this summer. Both versions will be available with Windows 8.1 Pro or Windows 7 Professional.
The tablet’s designed to be enterprise-friendly, and also for outdoor user. It has a 500 nit display which should be easier to read outdoors than a typical LCD. Optional features including a stylus, SmartCard reader, barcode reader, GPS, RFID, and Ethernet or serial ports.
The Toughpad FZ-M1 has a 1280 x 800 pixel display, up to 8GB of RAM, up to 256GB of solid state storage, a USB 3. port, WiFi, Bluetooth, an SDXC card reader, and optional 4G LTE.
A tablet with those features doesn’t come cheap — the Toughpad FZ-M1 is expected to launch this spring for around $2,099 and up.
Congratulations Panasonic! You win “the best pocketable computer award”! It’s pricey but nothing out right now can compete with this.
I’ve paid that much for a Windows tablet before (out of lust, not need) but I can’t see doing it again. On the other hand, if you use your tablet hard there aren’t that many options. It also looks like it’s customizable to whatever a vertical industry wants. From the press release:
Connectivity & I/O: Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC7260 Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth® v4.0 (Class 1), USB 3.0, micro SDXC card slot, docking connector, optional 4G LTE multi-carrier embedded wireless broadband. Other options include dedicated GPS, Barcode reader, Ethernet, serial port, and choice of near field communications (NFC), SmartCard reader, UHF radio-frequency identification (RFID) reader (up to 10 ft. range), or Magnetic Stripe reader
The full specs are at:
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/panasonic-introduces-the-toughpad-fz-m1-fully-rugged-7-inch-tablet-with-windows-81-pro-238909481.html
Hmm, tempting to hook this up with a OBD reader.
Random thoughts:
This will not be cheap.
I hope anyone using this tablet has good eyesight.
I wish more vendors offered extended use batteries.
I hope they offer a larger (10″) version with similar specs (but higher resolution screen).
You’re right… $2099 and up. It’s not really aimed at consumers, but it’s nifty so I wrote about it. 🙂
Yikes! I figured it was targeted to businesses with the options for a barcode reader & RFID. $2,100 is a pretty penny though. Not sure anyone is writing custom business apps for Metro yet. Trying to run a desktop application on a 7″ screen could be difficult to use.