Panasonic held a bloggers’ event last week. It was to showcase their latest enterprise products, the Toughbook CF-LX3 and Toughpad FZ-M1. We had fun at the event with all the drop tests, screen resistance tests using watermelon, high heel and etc.

The picture above shows the Toughpad sitting on a slab of ice. I do not deny it. I went there because I had to take a look at the 7-inch Toughpad FZ-M1. It has the 4th Gen Intel Core™ i5 vPro processor in such a small chassis. And Panasonic managed to do away with the fan (which makes the device super compact and sealable) by dissipating the heat throughout the chassis.

Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1

Here is how small it is (see below pic). However, do note that FZ-M1 isn’t for everyone. If you are using it daily in a normal environment, you don’t need it. It is for industries that requires rugged devices.

I will jumped right to the tests. Here is a shot of the Toughpad after the “torture”.

Check out the video of all the other tests.

Some “interesting” moment during the tests.

At 540grams, it is not the lightest but you know you are holding on to a super rugged computer. It has front and rear camera.

Here is the back view.

Although rugged, it has an external battery that is hot swappable (if you install some other option to sustain the battery for a few minutes). In the picture below, the battery can be taken out (hot swappable) because the barcode reader has an internal battery.

Here are some other views of the Toughpad FZ-M1.

Bottom view

Top view

Side views

USB and Ear Jack Port

With protective cover opened.

Power connection point

With protective cover opened.

As mentioned earlier, you can configure the FZ-M1 with various options or accessories. Here is one of the accessories.

Here is how you hold it.

And here is a picture of the Toughpad with the Barcode reader.

Panasonic Toughbook CF-LX3

Moving on, they showed us the Panasonic CF-LX3. You cannot imagine how light it is for a 14-inch laptop. It is as though some internal “organs” are missing. Here is DK with it. See how light it is.

Although light in weight, it can still withstand 100kg of pressure on it.

I love the fact that the laptop can open up 180 degree (flat).

And to show how light the CF-LX3 is, check out this see-saw. On one end is the MacBook Air and the further end is the Panasonic Toughbook LX-3. It needs the extra weight of 2 oranges to balance it.

Some views of the laptop.

Front Left

Front Right

Keyboard is quite comfortable.

Battery

Side views

That is it for the coverage of the two devices. The starting price for Toughpad FZ-M1 is S$2,600 and if I remembered correctly, the Toughbook CF-LX3 starts from S$2,699

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