How much panasonic toughbook

In other words, it's overkill if you're just worried about coffee spills. While it's very definitely made for professional use, we're not talking conference rooms and PowerPoint presentations. It's targeted at police, emergency services, government agencies, defense, field service workers, maintenance and service technicians.

However, just because something's made to be protected from drops doesn't mean you're supposed to go out of your way to do so. But we did. A lot. We were completely careless. We treated it roughly and dropped it many, many times. We dropped just the tablet and we dropped it attached to its premium keyboard. We also sat it out in the rain and put it under a running faucet.

You can actually use the screen with it wet or when wearing gloves. Outside of a couple scratches on the chassis, the tablet and keyboard continued to work like nothing happened.

These are obviously limited tests compared to what they're expected to survive day-in, day-out in actual use. We didn't do that to this Panasonic Toughbook, although we have taken out another computer this way. The price tag is a pause, but we think it's likely justified for what you're getting in terms of construction. For the right buyer, with the right needs, this is a good working machine.

The Panasonic Toughbook 55 has features, including a back lit keyboard, for working at night. The laptop designed to handle heat, inclement weather and being bashed about on the road.

Like GearBrain on Facebook. February 05 Show Comments. What works with Google Home. What works with Philips Hue. What works with ADT. Your Email Subscribe. Trending Topics. In the standard box along with the computer, you get a single mAh battery that must be installed before it will run. The battery fits into one of two slots on the front left and right, and you can use either one.

That not only allows for dual batteries, but Panasonic has three other modules design to add fingerprint reading, a Smart Card slot or an RFID reader into the same receptor.

Panels on the underside allow easy access to the RAM slots and the single NVMe storage module, enabling those to be easily swapped out for larger capacity parts. For those IT staff concerned, if so much access to the internals would be a good thing for their users, Panasonic engineers cleverly included holes for security bolts to be installed to stop the curious from unfettered exploring.

Overall, the FZ is a very impressive piece of industrial engineering that delivers a highly useable solution that might interest many different sectors. Ports: 2 x USB-A 3. A key selling point for the Toughbook 55 is that it's user-expandable, via three easily accessible bays. The 'front expansion area' on the right front edge of the chassis can accommodate a second battery, a fingerprint reader, a contactless smartcard reader or a standard smartcard reader.

The 'rear expansion area' at the back can house a number of different ports and connectors grouped together. The ports and slots are all protected by hinged covers.

All of the hinged covers are a tight fit -- it's quite tricky to open them -- and should provide a reliable seal. The keyboard uses Panasonic's distinctively shaped key tiles with their opposing corners either rounded or squared off. Keys require a very light action and I had no problem touch typing at my normal speed. Typing is noisy, though, with a lot of click on both the downstroke and bounce-back.

The touchpad is disappointingly small as it's squeezed into a rather small space between the keyboard and the large mouse buttons. As a result, navigating the screen is harder than it should be. Panasonic also says it will withstand drops from up to 91cm -- that's higher than the average desk, but lower than the roof of a car, for example.

It's always tempting to try to break a rugged laptop, and my US colleague Tiernan Ray achieved this feat with little more than a cup of coffee. Still, Tiernan's experience is a salutary lesson in what rugged ratings mean in the real world. VAT and came with a 1,by pixel panel.