Panasonic continues its Toughpad line of tablets as it unveils a 7-inch device for those looking for a rugged beast. It’s the JT-B1, and the tablet brings military-grade toughness in a package with decent specs.
You can look forward to the display boasting 1024×600 resolution, a TI OMAP 4460 dual-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, a 13-megapixel HD camera on the back with a 1.3-megapixel camera on the front, a 5,720mAh battery, Bluetooth 4, optional 4G LTE/3G radios, and more. You can expect Ice Cream Sandwich for the time being, though there’s a strong possibility we’ll see some form of Jelly Bean soon.
These devices aren’t sleek and pretty in the least bit, but you probably won’t find a tablet as good as this with natural protection anywhere else. The Toughpad is designed to withstand drops, spills, heat, cold, dust and more.
Panasonic is speaking more to the business and fieldwork crowd with this one, citing such uses as inventory control, eForms, field sales, field service, route delivery, eCitations, electronic medical records, inspections, mobile point-of-sales and GIS. We’d be surprised to see a typical user ask for one of these for Christmas or a birthday, but if you are interested, you’ll be happy to know that it’ll be available in February.
What won’t please you as much is its price — $1,200. For the specs you get, it hardly seems worth it, but the materials and engineering process used to make such a durable device might justify that for some.
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