Panasonic Toughbook CF-C1 Review
Panasonic Toughbook CF-C1 Evaluation
Panasonic’s Toughbook range have the powerful picture of a pair of Stubbies. Not a few of glass bottles of beer, but the rather iconic men’s work shorts assortment, in that they’re never genuinely the most visually appealing laptops you could purchase, but even a cursory glance at them suggests that they can take much more than a handful of knocks that would leave far more “boutique” patterns in a pile of shattered glass and plastic.
The Toughbook CF-C1 carries on this custom with a reliable but largely understated style appear. The largest transform in this specific convertible tablet’s design is that the trackpad is circular, with the two mouse buttons at the base, comparable to the Panasonic Toughbook CF-W7.
The circular rim of the trackpad does permit for scrolling, but it’s not usually a sleek operation. Total, a circular trackpad is an oddity that we’re even now not very confident of from a useful viewpoint, but it definitely tends to make the Toughbook CF-C1 stand out.
The actual design and style surprise with the Toughbook CF-C1 is not the circular trackpad, or the reality that it can be a convertible slate-type tablet, but the carrying bodyweight. We’re very used to ruggedised notebooks coming with the penalty of extra heft, but the Toughbook CF-C1 bucks that certain trend. At 1.47kg, the first time you decide on up the Toughbook CF-C1 you might be tempted to wonder if Panasonic’s only sold you an empty shell of a notebook, and forgotten to place in any circuitry within.
Attributes
The innards are, as with most rugged notebooks, much more suited to company (and organization in the subject, at that) than they are to play. An Intel Core i5 M520 2.4GHz handles processing responsibilities along with Intel’s GMA High definition graphics remedy, a 250GB difficult generate and 2GB of RAM. The Toughbook CF-C1 makes use of a twelve.1-inch 1280×800-pixel multi-touch-capable show. There is no optical drive existing, but you do get a single Sort II Personal computer Card slot, 3 USB 2. ports, gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.one and VGA port.
On the software facet we were a little disappointed to be aware that the model of Windows 7 Skilled that Panasonic pre-loads onto the Toughbook CF-C1 is only the 32-bit version 64-bit would be preferable. Panasonic also pre-loads a assortment of utilities on the Toughbook CF-C1, which includes handwriting recognition computer software.
As with most ruggedised notebooks, an crucial portion of the specs sheet has to concern itself with just how hard the Toughbook CF-C1 in fact is. It can be aspect of what Panasonic refers to as its “Company Rugged” line, which signifies it is not fairly as robust as its entirely ruggedised brethren, but that also implies it is lighter and significantly less covered in hefty rubber port flaps. Panasonic states that it will survive drops of up to 76cm, can stand up to foot strain of up to 100kg and can drain off up to 170ml of water spilled onto the keyboard even although energetic. We definitely wouldn’t try those tests with an normal notebook.
Overall performance
The Core i5 processor in the Toughbook CF-C1 is not best of the line, but it really is no slouch both, and our benchmark scores mirrored that with a score of 5421 in PCMark05 and a somewhat much less extraordinary 1365 in 3DMark06, but that is not also surprising presented the use of Intel’s very low-assortment integrated graphics remedy. The show display seems a minor washed out in typical light, but this provides it outstanding viewing characteristics in brilliant sunlight. If your function atmosphere is mainly outside, this would make the Toughbook CF-C1 a quite wise selection, despite the fact that with the default battery you might not want to shell out too a lot time out there. We examined the Toughbook CF-C1 with our standard battery check, which consists of disabling all battery conserving functions, turning the screen brightness up to complete and operating an XviD video clip until finally the battery is exhausted. The single battery solution lasted a instead weak two hrs and 21 minutes right up until it gave up. You ought to get far more use in real-entire world solutions, but the out-of-the-box Toughbook CF-C1 isn’t really a battery monster, despite the fact that it does help dual batteries as an option with hot-swapping support.
Conclusion
The Toughbook CF-C1 delivers a very strong business bundle at a rather excellent cost. We say exceptional not in that it’s a discount, but just that many businesses will baulk at the asking price of AU99. If you work in environments that are not really hazardous adequate to warrant the full toughbook position but that would still deliver a standard notebook to its grave inside of minutes it might be a worthy investment, however.
