The Japanese consumer electronics giant Panasonic unveiled two new military-grade durable tablets, Toughpad A1 and B1. Panasonic’s Toughbook lineup (rugged, all-weather notebook and laptops) was the inspiration of these two new rugged tablets. These two new slate will be joining the Android tablets group as both tough tablets will be powered by Android 3.2 Honeycomb. Like the Toughbook, the Toughpad tablets are suitable for mobile outdoor users.
First one is the Toughpad A1 with 10-inch display having 1024 x 768 pixels in 4:3 aspect ratio. The display was reported to have anti-glare for outdoor use and is also stylus-ready. This tough slate runs with a Marvell 1.2GHz dual-core processor paired with 1GB of low-power DDR2 and a 16GB internal storage, expandable thru microSD card up to 32GB. Aside from being tough and durable, this tablet also includes LTE or WiMAX connectivity with a battery juice extending up to 10 hours of operation. Your hands won’t hurt on this 2.13 pounds durable tablet. Similar with many Android tablets, the battery is user replaceable.
Another durable tablet from the Toughpad line up is the 7-inch display B1. Other features and specifications on Toughpad B1 was not yet released in detail, but reports says that it will be similar to A1.
Panasonic’s Toughpad A1 will go on sale in Spring of 2012 for $1299. The ruggedness and durability of this tablet caused the price a bit higher, but consumers can still wait for the “probably” cheaper 7-inch version, Toughpad B1. So start saving some bucks to buy this tough and durable slates next year.
