Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M: A powerful yet rugged 7-inch Windows 8.1 Pro business tablet

Panasonic's Toughpad FZ-M1 is solid
in terms of both build quality and
performance, and it's also quiet thanks
to a reliance on passive cooling. Other
plus points include a bright display and
swappable components, which you may
need to take advantage of thanks to
lacklustre battery life. An enterprise
offering, it also comes with a business-
class price tag.

Like:
Powerful Core i5 processor; Well
protected; Display designed for bright
conditions;Quiet (fanless design);

Dislike:
Price; Battery life

Unveiled at CES 2014 , the Panasonic
Toughpad FZ-M1 is a rugged Windows 8.1
tablet that arrives in the mould of the
company's 10.1-inch FZ-G1 , only in a more
portable 7-inch package.
Like the much larger Toughpad 4K that sits
above it in the ever-expanding Toughpad
range, the FM-Z1 has been engineered for
durability. Aimed at enterprises and those
who need a robust tablet capable of taking
a few knocks and scrapes, its chunky
demeanor and higher price tag place it in
an altogether different category to lifestyle
devices such as the iPad Mini 2 with Retina
and Nexus 7 (2014) .

It's expensive too with a starting price of
GBP £1,183 or USD $2,099 (around AUD
$2,358). But, if you need both mobility and
toughened design in a small-screen tablet,
in addition to the abilty to run both legacy
desktop programs and Windows 8.1 apps,
it's the one to beat.

Design and display
The FZ-M1 isn't exactly glamorous, but
we've seen much less attractive rugged
tablets. It measures 18mm thick - around
the same as laptops that are a little too
chunky to be classed as Ultrabooks - and it
possesses a solid, muscular feel in the
hand. At 540g, it's lighter than you might
expect considering the level of
ruggedisation on offer.

The display is surrounded by two bezels.
The first is a magnesium alloy chassis on
the inside that houses the Panasonic logo,
the Windows logo (which accesses the
Start screen), a 720p front-facing webcam
(there's also a 5 to 8-MP rear camera) and
LED power and battery status indicators.
The second is a matte black outer bezel
that forms part of the protective outer
casing and holds the power and volume
buttons.

The display sports a pixel-resolution of
1280 x 800, which has proved a common
choice on many 8-inch Windows tablets
released in the past year. A pixel-per-inch
(PPI) ratio of 216 means that text is sharp
and clearly legible, but not quite on the
same level as Apple's iPad Mini with Retina
(326 PPI). For the FZ-M1's vastly different
intended use cases, this is to be expected.
Readability is helped by the display's high
brightness levels of 500 cd/2, which is
bright enough for outdoor viewing.

The display features 10-point multi-touch
which provides an alternative way of
interacting with apps and the desktop. The
screen is a little too small to prod at
desktop elements comfortably, and if that's
something you'll be doing often, you'll want
to opt for the optional Touch Screen Pen
that comes attached on a removable Tether
cord which provides pinpoint accuracy.

Specs and performance
Our model came with Windows 8.1 Pro (64-
bit) installed, which is available alongside a
Windows 7 downgrade option. Internally,
the FZ-M1 is powered by a dual-core Intel
Core-i5-4320Y vPro processor clocked at
1.6GHz that's backed up by 4GB of RAM
(upgradable to 8GB, which our test model
housed). The device is also available in
another version featuring a Celeron low
power CPU that runs standard Windows
8.1.

The FZ-M1's nippy 128GB SSD showed no
discernible slowdown as we prodded and
swiped our way through Windows 8.1's
charms and menus, opening apps and
streaming 1080p YouTube video. Usage
remained smooth even with video playing
in the background and 10 tabs open in
Google's Chrome Browser. After a fresh
install, 82.3GB is available on the device,
which may be a little on the small size
depending on your needs (a 256GB version
is also available).