The Toughbook and Toughpad products from Panasonic are made to endure the harsh environments that usually mean the death of normal consumer products. Whether its dust, fatal drops or water, the Tough-product line is made to survive anything. Until very recently, the products have always been Windows-based; however, Panasonic is now starting to offer a new line of Toughpad products – this time running on Android. In review is one such product,the JT-B1.

The JT-B1 is the smaller brother to the FZ-A1, another Toughpad Android tablet. Whereas the FZ-A1 packs a 10in display, the JT-B1 rocks a smaller 7in one. The display resolution is 1024 x 600 pixels, which is nothing to shout about considering the fact that 7in consumer tablets have 720p displays and up. The tablet is IP65-certified, rendering it capable of surviving water jets as well as having complete protection from dust. This is courtesy of flaps protecting the expansion ports and similar openings. The tough exterior gives it a significant increase in size, with a thickness of about 17.8mm. Despite that, the tablet weighs in at 544g -a true featherweight.

Toughbooks and Toughpads are known to survive quite a few hits so I decided to give the JT-B1 a quick test. I dropped it from waist height to see if it was still operational (it survived). I also dropped in it a pail of water for a few minutes, turning on the screen to see if it was working. It lived through the unplanned baptism though like most capacitive displays, you cannot use the touch display underwater.

Looking at the spec sheet, it doesn’t look like the Toughpad JT-B1 is going to beat its consumer cousins anytime soon. The slate runs on a Texas Instruments 1.5GHZ dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. The operating system that brings all the pieces together is Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Admittedly, it is a bit dated but considering the usage scenarios for this, I can’t fault it too much. A 13MP camera takes the back, with a 1.3MP front-facing snapper for video calls.

There had been no major sign of slowdown when I reviewed the Toughpad JT-B1 and you can even run the usual suite of applications on it without issue. What surprised me most is its battery life: A large 5720 mAh battery is tucked within and is user-replaceable to boot. Even when left on by itself, the slate still managed to survive a few days without requiring a recharge. If you’re on the field often, you might to consider bringing one of these with you.

Value: 8/10

Features: 10/10

Performance: 8/10

Design: 8/10

Usability: 9/10

Verdict: Singing Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” is

optional.

Total score: 8.6/10