Panasonic Toughbook 54 is the best semi-rugged laptop in the world

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Panasonic has made a name for itself in the rugged laptop market, and the Japanese electronics giant’s Toughbook 54 is a living testament to it. While nowhere near as beefy as Panasonic’s earlier rugged notebook Toughbook 31, the Toughbook 54 packs a punch to help get your job done in tough environments.

The Toughbook 54 finds wider adoption in construction sites and hospitals, where operations can get extra demanding for a PC. It is one of the best all-around laptops in the market, though it is not the most rugged in that category. Nonetheless, you have the luxury of choices when it comes to configuration. The Toughbook 54 offers plenty of choices for an optical drive, storage, CPU, and connectivity.

Panasonic Toughbook 54 shows off a robust design and performance without sacrificing elegance. The rugged laptop can endure a drop from altitudes of up to three feet and withstand spills, humidity, and extreme temperatures. The 14-incher Toughbook can disguise itself as a suitcase, though it does not necessarily add a lot of bulk to your travels.

Toughbook 54’s Lite configuration barely reaches 4.2 pounds. That means the Toughbook 54 is 2 pounds lighter than most of its rivals. As Panasonic puts it, the laptop is the world’s “lightest and thinnest semi-rugged” notebook. It is also half an inch thinner than the competition, with a thinness of 1.2 inches.

Panasonic Toughbook 54 Key features

However, if you are a hardcore gamer, the laptop is not for you, though it includes up to 16GB DDR3 RAM and two storage slots for a 1 terabyte mechanical disk and 256GB solid state drive. Panasonic also slapped Intel’s fifth-generation architecture called Broadwell into the laptop. The Toughbook 54 also packs Core i5-5300U vPro and the Intel integrated graphics inside.

On the connectivity aspect, the notebook includes HDMI, USB 3.0 support, multiple Ethernet ports, 4G LTE, an SD card, Kensington cable lock slot, fingerprint reader and TPM security chip.

Toughbook 54 boasts a screen resolution of 1,366 x 768 on the Prime and Lite versions, and 1,920 x 1,080 on the Performance and Gloved Multi-Touch models. You can also select between Windows 7 Professional and 8.1 Pro for the laptop. The battery can also juice up the rugged laptop for up to 11 hours.

The laptop can be had for $ 1,395 from MooringTech while the lite version is being sold for on Amazon.

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