Review: Panasonic Toughbook CF-W5 notebook PC

The CF-W5 is Panasonic's latest attempt to woo the corporate elite and those with deep pockets into buying a tougher than normal ultra-portable laptop.

Unlike the fully 'ruggardised' CF-74 we reviewed a few months back, it isn't an ugly laptop covered in awkward rubber bits. Instead the silver plastic casing is subtle and attractive.

Panasonic brands the CF-W5 'semi-ruggardised', which means it should withstand a 30cm drop. Additionally, the hard disk has air-bag type cushioning, which means your data should be safe even when dropped from a height of up to 76cm. Panasonic also states it can withstand a 100Kg mass on top of the laptop due to ribbed casing on the back of the LCD without the unit being damaged.

Take a look at our video drop test of the CF-W5.

At the heart of the laptop lies an ultra low voltage Intel Core Solo U1400. It consumes as much as five times less power than a mobile dual core processor from Intel. The downside is that, unlike the newer Core Duo models, it only has a single core ticking along at a rather lethargic 1.2GHz.

At the time of writing, the CF-W5 was having problems with running our Sysmark 2004 SE and PCmark05 benchmarks. We're currently looking into this and will post an update as soon as the problem is rectified. However, the slow processor, uninspiring 1GB of DDR2 Ram and a 60GB hard disk indicates it's certainly not going to set the world alight in terms of performance.

With such limited power, the laptop doesn't need any fans to aid cooling, which means it is near silent during operation – all you're likely to hear is the hard drive whirring away.

The choice of processor also has the benefit of increasing battery life. In our Mobilemark productivity test, which simulates typical usage, the CF-W5 managed to keep going for an exceptionally impressive six hours and 22 minutes.

As well as standard features like 802.11g Wifi and two USB2 ports, the laptop houses an unusual, but superb, circular trackpad below the keyboard that functions just like an iPod click-wheel.

We were also surprised to see an internal DVD rewriter in a laptop of this size. The internal DVD rewriter only weighs 58g, much less than the standard 200g we usually expect.

The screen is a 12.1in affair with a rather limiting native resolution of 1,024x768 pixels. Its backlight is uneven and with noticeable bleeding from bottom. The end result is unwanted colour gradients; something we've commented on in our Test Bed blog in the past.

Panasonic informed us it uses third party LCD screens in all of its products. Before fitting them to its Toughbook laptops, Panasonic fits a brighter backlight, shaves 1mm off the glass to make it lighter and thinner, and then puts the whole thing back together again. This process may well be the cause of the quality issues.

With the exception of the LCD, the whole laptop is very well built and is remarkably solid for such a nimble device. We certainly enjoyed using it, but despite the relatively low specification, its rugged nature pushes the price to a stomach-churning £1,680.

If you do a lot of travelling and fear for your laptop's safety you might consider the Toughbook CF-W5, but there are other ways of preventing damage, such as tough laptop cases. In short, the Toughbook CF-W5 is a laptop for those that don't need performance and don't mind paying over the odds.

Also consider:
Panasonic Toughbook CF-74
It has a Business Ruggedised badge, but just how tough is it?

Rock Pegasus 665-T56
Good build quality and reasonable pricing make this an attractive option

Dell Latitude D420 HSDPA
Heaps of features and a built-in HSDPA high-speed internet module

All notebook reviews

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!