Panasonic Toughbook CF-H2: Awful Tough

The Toughbook has always been a tough sell. It’s always looked like a cross between a robot turd and the chest-plate for dirt-bike armor. It looks like they’ve improved this design considerably this time, offering a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5 processor with 2GB RAM and 160 GB hard drive with an optional 128GB SSD.

This rugged laptop weighs 3.5 pounds and has a 10.5-inch display. It can last 6.5 hours on one charge and supports twin batteries. There is also a built-in fingerprint reader as well as integrated port flaps.

This thing is a tank, to be sure, and can be dropped from about waist height without breaking. I’ve run over one before, and aside from a surface crack, it survived quite nicely.

It is available this month for about $2,400.

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