Panasonic gets tough with the H1 Field tablet

The Gadget Show  Thursday 11 February 2010

Panasonic's tough-guy tablet

While the iPad and its fellow tablet pretenders are all clamouring for the right to be called the slimmest, lightest or smallest slate in town, Panasonic is taking a different approach altogether with its H1 Field.

As part of the Toughbook range, it’s big and heavy, and proud of it. Panasonic says its shell is 20 times harder than the average laptop, and it will happily shrug off a 6ft drop, while temperatures anywhere from 20 deg C below freezing to 60 degrees above won’t cause it any issues either.

But Panasonic’s tough tablet isn’t just hard, it’s clever too, and comes with high-end tablet-friendly features in abundance. An Intel Atom Z540 processor gives plenty of power for a portable chip, and you get 2GB or RAM and a 64GB solid state drive.

The screen is a 10.4in XGA panel designed for outside use, and it responds to both stylus and finger control. Then there’s full wireless-N Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and security-focused features like a fingerprint reader and RFID reader.

The Toughbook H1 Field is good for six hours away from the mains, and the battery can be hot-swapped so you can work away uninterrupted.

This mix of high-end features and hard-as-nails construction doesn’t come cheap, however, and you’ll need upwards of £2,000 on hand for your very own invincible slate when it goes on sale next month.