Panasonic ToughPad FZ-M1, the first 7 inch fully rugged fanless tablet in the world is equipped with Intel Core i5 and Windows 8.1 operating system. The Japanese company presented tablet in Milan recently.
The tablet also comes with magnesium alloy body, with robust rubber seals along the perimeter. It is 18 mm thick and weighs 540 g. The device is resistant to shock, dust, making it perfect for mobile workers, technicians working all day in hazardous open environments. The multitouch 1280 x 800 pixels display, a maximum luminance of 500 cd/m2 together with anti-reflective coating, makes it suitable for such environment.
The ToughPad FZ M1 has an Intel Core i5-4302Y Haswell processor with vPro platform support, (a cheaper version with an Intel Celeron Bay Trail-T will be available within a year), 4 or 8 GB RAM and solid state drives (128 or 256 GB). The remaining specifications include a 2 MP webcam with microphone stereo, a rear 5 MP camera (8 MP also available) a full size USB 3.0 port, a microSD card reader, an audio jack for headphones, modules Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 4G-LTE.
Since the processor works at low wattage of 4.5 W, not much heat is produced and TouchPad uses a passive cooling system. Hence no internal fan is needed.
Of particular interest to professionals is the presence of a hot swap battery that can be swapped without causing tablet to shut down. The standard battery should allow a maximum range of 8 hours but there is also a second model with doubled capacity that is expected to reach the 16 hours on a single charge. Panasonic ToughPad FZ M1, the basic version costs $ 2199.