Panasonic CF-W5 Toughbook Grange-over-Sands
The Toughbook CF-W5 demands a very particular kind of owner, but at £1680 very few are going to be able to afford its specialised array of talents.
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Panasonic CF-W5 Toughbook
If you find yourself so attached to your laptop that it travels with you wherever you go, then you're probably pretty protective of it, maybe fiercely so. That's understandable though, as laptops are expensive to buy and a life on the road is a hard one, especially for all the delicate components crammed into a laptop's chassis. But no matter how careful you are it's inevitable that its going to take the odd knock, drop, scratch or spill in its lifetime. Even buying an expensive carry case offers no guarantee that you won't drop your laptop while you're using it.
If your laptops often find their way to an early grave, then maybe you need to consider buying one that's a bit tougher. What you're after is a laptop that's been specifically designed to shrug off the rigours of being bundled about and can even withstand the odd drop or sharp impact. The seven models in Panasonic's Toughbook range are designed to put up with abuse that would stop most laptops in their tracks. However, while some of the 'fully-ruggedized' models would happily survive in Rambo's knapsack and stop a few bullets into the bargain, others don't give away their hard-knock resilience with a brawny exterior.
Rugged, not rough
Ignore the Toughbook logos emblazoned on the CF-W5 and you'd be hard pressed to guess that this was actually one of Panasonic's new range of 'ruggedised' laptops. It's dainty and rather pretty silver frame puts it firmly in the ultra-portable category and at just 1.2kg, you could easily forget it was in your hands, let alone your bag. Despite its light weight and delicate good looks, the CF-W5 is classed as a 'semi-ruggedised' laptop. This means that while it lacks the waterproof, bullet-proof build of its beefier cousins it can still withstand being dropped onto hard ground from 30cm. That may not sound like much, but try that with most laptops and you'll end up looking at a repair bill. Even more impressive is that with the lid closed, the CF-W5 can take 100kg of pressure without being damaged - that's equivalent to a 16 stone rugby player standing on it, albeit without rugby boots.
What's particularly refreshing is that the Panasonic's tough guy credentials don't compromise its usability, nor its attractive frame. Many ultra-portables are hamstrung by keyboards and trackpads that have been miniaturised with scant regard for ergonomics. Not so the CF-W5 - its keyboard may be small, but it remains comfy and accommodates even the fattest of fingers. Equally praiseworthy is the trackpad. Its circular shape takes a little getting used to, but happily avoids the problem of accidentally moving the cursor with a thumb while you are typing.
Another neat feature is that Panasonic has managed to squeeze a DVD writer into the CF-W5's tiny frame. However, rather than using the usual side-loading model, the Toughbook's DVD writer is placed just below the right-hand side of the keyboard under a neat button activated flap. This isn't just fancy design for the sake of it - leave a side-loading DVD tray open and you could easily break it, whereas you'd have to be really determined to damage the Toughbook's. Better still, if you don't need the DVD drive, you can flick a little switch on the front edge of the laptop and turn it off completely, thus saving valuable battery life for when you need it.
Long-life
Unless you're planning to jet off on regular long haul flights or spend days away from a mains socket, you won't need to worry about conserving the Toughbook's power reserves. In our tests, the CF-W5 racked up a lengthy 5 hours and 28 minutes before giving up the ghost, and even playing DVDs only reduced its battery life to a still very reasonable 3 hours and 45 minutes.
The Toughbook's exceedingly good battery life is helped by the use of an energy efficient processor - the Intel Core Solo U1400. This is a single-core processor, which runs at a modest 1.2GHz. But while it isn't much of a powerhouse, it draws a sixth of the electricity that a Core 2 Duo dual-core processor would require.
Obviously the downside of such frugality is that this comes at the cost of performance and the Toughbook only managed 53% in our benchmarks - substantially less than we'd expect from a laptop costing this much. It's still 5% better than the Evesham Lightbook, which is probably due to the Panasonic's faster hard drive. A measly 512MB of DDR2 memory doesn't help matters though. With 1GB at its disposal the CF-W5 would perform a lot better.
Another component in serious need of an upgrade is the hard disk, which at 60GB is a little underwhelming. Frankly, we'd expect something a little bigger on a laptop with a price tag as high as the Touchbook's. With Windows XP and a handful of applications installed, there was only 48GB left and if you want to store an extensive collection of music and video, you'll just have to take an external USB hard disk with you wherever you go. If you only use the Toughbook for storing office documents and surfing the net then the hard disk will be ample, but it's definitely on the small side.
Faint praise
As you'd expect for an ultra-portable laptop the CF-W5s display is a typically petite 12.1in. However, while we're seeing more and more ultra-portables with widescreen displays, the Panasonic sticks to a standard 4:3 ratio screen with a native resolution of 1024 x 768. If you work with one application at a time, you won't find this too restrictive, but open a couple of documents or applications at once and the screen will soon become cluttered. Image quality is acceptable thanks to the panel's ample brightness and solid colour reproduction, but it's not perfect. The screen wasn't very evenly lit and displaying a solid black screen revealed faint backlight leakage along the bottom of the panel.
The Toughbook CF-W5 demands a very particular kind of owner, but at £1680 very few are going to be able to afford its specialised array of talents. Those who really need an ultra-light, highly resilient ultra-portable laptop are fairly few and far between and even if you are sure you do need one, you could forgo the ruggedised Panasonic and buy two or three better-specified laptops for the same price.
It's a real shame that the CF-W5s go-anywhere credentials aren't matched by an equally capable and resilient specification. It's a cleverly thought-out bit of kit, and considering its light weight and size, it is impressively sturdy. However, even when set against the great looks and incredible battery life, the price tag begins to look a little absurd.
If your laptops often find their way to an early grave, then maybe you need to consider buying one that's a bit tougher. What you're after is a laptop that's been specifically designed to shrug off the rigours of being bundled about and can even withstand the odd drop or sharp impact. The seven models in Panasonic's Toughbook range are designed to put up with abuse that would stop most laptops in their tracks. However, while some of the 'fully-ruggedized' models would happily survive in Rambo's knapsack and stop a few bullets into the bargain, others don't give away their hard-knock resilience with a brawny exterior.
Rugged, not rough
Ignore the Toughbook logos emblazoned on the CF-W5 and you'd be hard pressed to guess that this was actually one of Panasonic's new range of 'ruggedised' laptops. It's dainty and rather pretty silver frame puts it firmly in the ultra-portable category and at just 1.2kg, you could easily forget it was in your hands, let alone your bag. Despite its light weight and delicate good looks, the CF-W5 is classed as a 'semi-ruggedised' laptop. This means that while it lacks the waterproof, bullet-proof build of its beefier cousins it can still withstand being dropped onto hard ground from 30cm. That may not sound like much, but try that with most laptops and you'll end up looking at a repair bill. Even more impressive is that with the lid closed, the CF-W5 can take 100kg of pressure without being damaged - that's equivalent to a 16 stone rugby player standing on it, albeit without rugby boots.
What's particularly refreshing is that the Panasonic's tough guy credentials don't compromise its usability, nor its attractive frame. Many ultra-portables are hamstrung by keyboards and trackpads that have been miniaturised with scant regard for ergonomics. Not so the CF-W5 - its keyboard may be small, but it remains comfy and accommodates even the fattest of fingers. Equally praiseworthy is the trackpad. Its circular shape takes a little getting used to, but happily avoids the problem of accidentally moving the cursor with a thumb while you are typing.
Another neat feature is that Panasonic has managed to squeeze a DVD writer into the CF-W5's tiny frame. However, rather than using the usual side-loading model, the Toughbook's DVD writer is placed just below the right-hand side of the keyboard under a neat button activated flap. This isn't just fancy design for the sake of it - leave a side-loading DVD tray open and you could easily break it, whereas you'd have to be really determined to damage the Toughbook's. Better still, if you don't need the DVD drive, you can flick a little switch on the front edge of the laptop and turn it off completely, thus saving valuable battery life for when you need it.
Long-life
Unless you're planning to jet off on regular long haul flights or spend days away from a mains socket, you won't need to worry about conserving the Toughbook's power reserves. In our tests, the CF-W5 racked up a lengthy 5 hours and 28 minutes before giving up the ghost, and even playing DVDs only reduced its battery life to a still very reasonable 3 hours and 45 minutes.
The Toughbook's exceedingly good battery life is helped by the use of an energy efficient processor - the Intel Core Solo U1400. This is a single-core processor, which runs at a modest 1.2GHz. But while it isn't much of a powerhouse, it draws a sixth of the electricity that a Core 2 Duo dual-core processor would require.
Obviously the downside of such frugality is that this comes at the cost of performance and the Toughbook only managed 53% in our benchmarks - substantially less than we'd expect from a laptop costing this much. It's still 5% better than the Evesham Lightbook, which is probably due to the Panasonic's faster hard drive. A measly 512MB of DDR2 memory doesn't help matters though. With 1GB at its disposal the CF-W5 would perform a lot better.
Another component in serious need of an upgrade is the hard disk, which at 60GB is a little underwhelming. Frankly, we'd expect something a little bigger on a laptop with a price tag as high as the Touchbook's. With Windows XP and a handful of applications installed, there was only 48GB left and if you want to store an extensive collection of music and video, you'll just have to take an external USB hard disk with you wherever you go. If you only use the Toughbook for storing office documents and surfing the net then the hard disk will be ample, but it's definitely on the small side.
Faint praise
As you'd expect for an ultra-portable laptop the CF-W5s display is a typically petite 12.1in. However, while we're seeing more and more ultra-portables with widescreen displays, the Panasonic sticks to a standard 4:3 ratio screen with a native resolution of 1024 x 768. If you work with one application at a time, you won't find this too restrictive, but open a couple of documents or applications at once and the screen will soon become cluttered. Image quality is acceptable thanks to the panel's ample brightness and solid colour reproduction, but it's not perfect. The screen wasn't very evenly lit and displaying a solid black screen revealed faint backlight leakage along the bottom of the panel.
The Toughbook CF-W5 demands a very particular kind of owner, but at £1680 very few are going to be able to afford its specialised array of talents. Those who really need an ultra-light, highly resilient ultra-portable laptop are fairly few and far between and even if you are sure you do need one, you could forgo the ruggedised Panasonic and buy two or three better-specified laptops for the same price.
It's a real shame that the CF-W5s go-anywhere credentials aren't matched by an equally capable and resilient specification. It's a cleverly thought-out bit of kit, and considering its light weight and size, it is impressively sturdy. However, even when set against the great looks and incredible battery life, the price tag begins to look a little absurd.
System Specifications
Intel Core Solo U1400 (1.2GHz)
512MB DDR2
60GB hard disk
Verdict
The Panasonic is strong, light and gorgeous, but the high price tag is hard to swallow.
