Panasonic's Toughbook beats battle of the bulge
Written: Apr 07 '03
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Pros: Lightly weighted; longer battery life than most; excellent screen; good construction
Cons: 128MB SDRAM; 20 Gb hard disk drive; no optical drive; recessed trackpad
The Bottom Line: The bulk of notebook features are packed them into this tiny package. Longer battery life, excellent screen and good construction make this worth a look.
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| ozgamer's Full Review: Panasonic Toughbook R1 (CF-R1P82ZVQM) PC Notebook |
A growing problem with today's notebooks is the more features vendors include, the greater the overall weight. In fact, it's not uncommon these days to see notebooks weighing more than 8 lbs, and that's without the power brick to go with it. If the idea of a six-month gym membership is to carry your next notebook doesn't appeal, then take a look at the new ToughBook CF-R1 from Panasonic.
This small but full-function notebook weighs in at a tiny 2.2 lbs, making it the lightest notebook I've tested. It's also one of the more stylish with a ribbed aluminium look that has a hint of retro-1950s about it. Under the lid is a smallish 10.4-inch active-matrix LCD screen but with its 1024 x 768-pixel resolution, you still get big-screen performance. The screen itself too is as sharp as a tack and bright - it was one of the best I've seen in quite some time.
Under the bonnet, Intel's ultra law voltage (ULV) 800MHz Pentium III processor and 128Mb of SDRAM drive the engine room. The ULV version of this chip consumes less power and allows a smaller battery to last longer. However, 128Mb of memory isn't enough to enable the pre-installed Windows XP Professional to really hit its straps. I suggest that if you intend to buy this notebook get at least another 128Mb to improve performance. That said, office application performance isn't too bad. The CF-R1 was only 3 percent behind Toshiba's Portege 2010 on Office XP tests despite giving away a 66MHz clock speed vantage and an extra 128Mb memory head start.
Compared with full-size notebooks, office application performance is roughly 50 percent of what you'd get with some of the new Centrino-Pentium-M notebooks we've looked at recently. The screen is driven by Silicon Motion's Lynx3DM graphics chip, again used here for it's low power consumption rather than spectacular 3-D graphics performance.
Toshiba contributes its new slim 20Gb MK2020GLP hard disk drive. However, its capacity is comparably small as most other ultra-portable notebooks now offer 40Gb of hard disk space.
The downside with the CF-R1 is that it doesn't come with a huge stack of peripheral extras. There's no CD-ROM or other optical drive included, but there is a SecureDigital flash memory card reader built into the left-and-side of the notebook.
You only get one USB 1.1 port but V.90 modem and Fast Ethernet connections are included. A Type-II PC card slot should give you access to any other ports you're missing. While performance is often the first casualty when you start shrinking the contents of a notebook computer, battery life is usually not too far behind. Thankfully, Panasonic has done well here with the 7.4-volt, 4.4 amp-hour lithium-ion battery holding up for 188 minutes on my testing with all power management switched off. That's a great effort, particularly given the compact size of the unit, and should extend to four hours with Windows XP power management activated.
Although there's no way you'd suggest this as a content-creation solution, the CF-R1 is ideal as a little "runabout" when you need access to email or standard office applications where raw performance isn't so critical but size is. Despite being christened as part of the ToughBook range, the CF-R1 doesn't have the same rugged construction as other models in the group but, by the same token, it's still well built. The keyboard keys are about 90 percent of full size but still large enough to touch-type comfortably. What I found a little difficult was the recessed trackpad, which was obviously smaller than you'd see on most notebooks.
Intel's new Pentium-M processor is expected to turn up in everything from desktop replacement to ultra-portable notebooks, with many offering built-in wireless network connections. At this stage, for low-demand applications, the CF-R1 is still a good choice if for no other reason than 2.2 lbs is such a light load to carry. All up, a very good notebook just lacking a little performance and some extra ports but still definitely well worth a look for the traveling professional.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1,799
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 701-800
Screen Size: 11 inches
RAM: 128
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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ozgamer
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Member: Setzer
Reviews written: 60
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