Review: Panasonic Toughbook CF-W7 notebook computer

We’ve stood on, dropped, and poured water on Panasonic’s business Toughbooks in the past and they’ve always handled this abuse with aplomb.

The CF-W7, tough-guy sequel to the CF-W5, can withstand the same 100kg weight on top of the ribbed LCD backing.

We only drop-tested the CF-W5 at 30cm but thanks to shock absorbers, magnesium housing and what looks like extra corner padding, the CF-W7 can withstand a 76cm drop without damaging the 80GB hard disk.

As before, it has a 12.1in screen. It’s a bright display, with no glossy coating and just a small amount of backlight bleed from the bottom, possibly because Panasonic shaves 1mm off the glass to make it lighter.

The integrated pop-up DVD writer weighs one-third of regular notebook drives, which is why the whole device only tipped our scales at an incredible 1.256kg.

We’ve previously had issues with the performance Toughbooks offer, but the CF-W7 comes with all the Santa Rosa trimmings, including a Core 2 Duo ULV U7500, Intel GMA X3100 graphics and a disappointing 1GB of DDR2 533MHz Ram. PCmark05’s score of 2,144 was below par but this is the trade-off required to accomplish six hours and 56 minutes in our battery test.

Three well-spaced USB ports, Draft-N Wifi and Bluetooth are all impressive features and we love Panasonic’s innovative round trackpads for continuous scrolling action.

Our machine came with Windows XP Professional, but units will ship with Vista Business and combined with the three-year warranty this is very good value for money.

While traditional number-crunching performance may not be great, it’s a worth while sacrifice for long battery life and a strong yet lightweight notebook.

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This article is part of a group test, see also:
1 Introduction
2 The great weight conundrum
3 Acer Travelmate 6292 review
4 Advent 8112 review
5 Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P7230 review
6 Hi-Grade Notino D2200 review
7 HP Compaq 2710p review
8 HP Pavilion TX-1260ea review
9 Lenovo Thinkpad X61 review
10 MSI PR200-064UK review
11 Panasonic Toughbook CF-W7 review
12 Samsung Q45-A007 review
13 Toshiba Portégé R500-10U review
14 Performance graphs, page 1 of 2
15 Performance graphs, page 2 of 2
16 Replacement battery costs
17 Conclusion and awards

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