We were able to get some quality hands-on time with the Panasonic Toughbook F8, and found that this thin-and-light business laptop delivers some hits, as well as a few misses. The Toughbook F8 falls in Panasonic’s business rugged line; it’s rated to withstand a drop (onto its base, not an edge) from 2.5 feet and a liquid spill onto its keyboard of 6 ounces or so. It also features a shock-mounted hard drive and a light-but-strong magnesium alloy case.
The Toughbook F8’s black-and-silver chassis looks bulky for a thin-and-light, and it measures a not-so-thin 1.75 inches at the rear. But picking up the machine by its integrated front handle, we were surprised how light it is. Panasonic specs the Toughbook F8 at just 3.7 pounds, and says it’s the lightest laptop on the market that includes a 14.1-inch screen, optical drive, and built-in wireless broadband connectivity. The sides of the chassis sport the expected ports and slots: three USB, Ethernet, modem, VGA, PC Card, memory card, and a port replicator connector. But we were surprised not to see eSATA and HDMI connectivity on this refresh, nor a fingerprint reader or Webcam.
The 14.1-inch 1280x800 widescreen is bright, though the anti-glare coating does rob some shrpness when viewing small text. Computing power comes from a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 3GB of RAM, and integrated Mobile Intel 4 Express graphics chipset (so forget about 3D gaming). You also get a 160GB hard drive, a multi-format DVD burner (uniquely, tucked under the keyboard palm rest) and either Windows XP or Windows Vista Business preloaded (and we like that Panasonic includes recovery discs for both in the box, should you change your mind).
Perhaps the only thing not to like about the Toughbook F8 is the price. At $2,499, it’s almost $1,000 more expensive than the similarly configured business notebook Toshiba Tecra R10-S4401 we recently tested. So you’re paying quite a premium for the Toughbook cachet.
