Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 review

When Panasonic unveiled the Toughpad FZ-M1 at this year’s CES, we came away mightily impressed. Arriving as a stablemate to last year’s 10in Toughpad FZ-G1, the Toughpad FZ-M1 delivers the same burly, ruggedised design in a diminutive 7in tablet.

Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 review: Design

At 18.8mm thick and weighing 540g, the Toughpad FZ-M1 is hefty by compact-tablet standards. It would be churlish to hold its heft against it, though, as it’s purpose-built to flourish in the kind of environments that would spell doom for most devices. The hardened exterior is cast from metal and hardened plastics, and a strip of black rubber encircles the tablet’s edges, flaring out to protect the corners from accidental drops. The rubber edges offer a decent amount of grip, and their rounded profile makes the Toughpad FZ-M1 comfortable to hold in the hand.

It also has the credentials to match its tough-nut physique. Just like its bigger brother, Panasonic has tested the Toughpad FZ-M1 to MIL-STD-810G standards, and this means that it’s able to survive drops of up to 5ft, as well as exposure to shock, vibration, humidity and extremes of temperature. It also boasts an IP65 rating for water- and dust-resistance thanks to its sealed design – its single USB 3 port, 3.5mm headphone jack and 19V PSU input are safely hidden away behind thick rubber flaps, and the microSD slot and SIM slot are sealed behind the battery at the rear.

Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 review: Touchscreen & display quality

Much like the chassis, the Toughpad FZ-M1’s 1,200 x 800 touchscreen is designed to take outdoor use in its stride. The matte IPS panel is lit by an LED backlight that tops out at a gleaming 492cd/m², and as a result the display remains legible on even the sunniest of days. Image quality isn’t exemplary, but while colours are lacking in vibrancy, the panel’s contrast ratio of 705:1 is wide enough to dredge up plenty of detail in shadows and highlights.

The Panasonic’s touchscreen is supremely versatile. It supports ten-point touch input as standard, but Panasonic’s Dashboard application gives access to touch, stylus or gloved-touch modes, and a “water” mode for using the touchscreen in bad weather. Our review unit was supplied with the optional capacitive stylus, which worked well in our testing, providing enough accuracy for scribbling notes and writing onscreen. The stylus also comes in handy for navigating Windows 8 with gloves on, and provides pinpoint control even in fiddly desktop applications.

Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 review: Performance

Panasonic have squeezed a highly capable roster of hardware into the FZ-M1’s compact chassis. Underneath all that metal and rubber is a passively cooled 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-4302Y CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 128GB mSATA Samsung SSD. In our suite of Real World Benchmarks, the Toughpad’s low-voltage CPU acquitted itself fairly well, managing a serviceable Overall score of 0.47. The 128GB SSD does its bit to keep Windows 8 feeling snappy, and helped the Toughpad cold boot in a whisker less than 8 seconds. It’s not the fastest mSATA SSD we’ve encountered, but it’s quick enough for most purposes: in the AS SSD benchmark the SSD achieved a sequential read score of 490.23MB/sec and sequential write score of 138.06MB/sec.

Battery life is competitive. With the screen dimmed to 75cd/m², the Toughpad FZ-M1’s 22Wh, 3,220mAh battery lasted for 9hrs 14min in our usual light-use battery test. Panasonic also offer a long-life 7,100mAh battery option, as well as an optional ‘bridge’ battery that lasts for around 30 seconds – long enough to swap battery packs without powering down Windows.

Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 review: Features & optional extras

Just like its big brother, the Toughpad FZ-M1 is packed with handy features. Even the most bare-bones model comes with dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4, and IT departments will appreciate additions such as the TPM 1.2 security and Intel vPro support. The front-facing 0.9-megapixel camera pairs up with a serviceable 8-megapixel sensor at the rear, and the rear camera is also equipped with an LED flash.

There’s also a wide variety of optional extras. It’s possible to add anything from integrated GPS, 4G mobile broadband or pass-through connections for an external high-gain Wi-Fi antenna, to a selection of plugin modules that provide barcode, magnetic stripe and RFID readers. The Toughpad FZ-M1 is about as flexible as Windows 8 tablets get.

Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 review: Verdict

As ever, the Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1‘s talents come at a considerable price but, like its predecessor, it easily lives up to its name. It’s supremely well designed, and for those who need a tablet that can withstand the kind of abuse that would ruin any other device, the tiny Toughpad FZ-M1 gleefully stomps all over the opposition.

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