Panasonic Toughbook CF-53

When you leave the comforts of the office for the rougher environs of the street or the great outdoors, you don't want your laptop to fail you when the ride gets bumpy or when things get messy. For anyone that works from their car or out in the field, Panasonic has the Toughbook line of semi-rugged laptops. The Toughbook CF-53 is a 14-inch laptop that can take a beating without missing a day's work, making it your ideal companion when you need a laptop that's as reliable as you are.

Design and Features
The Panasonic Toughbook has all the trappings of past Toughbooks, like the Panasonic Toughbook CF-31, from the inside and out magnesium alloy construction to locking port covers. Both the keyboard and touchpad are sealed to protect against moisture, and the hinges are both dust- and water-resistant. It's built to meet MIL-STD-810G certification standards for shock and vibration, extremes in temperature, and resistance to dust and moisture. The result is a laptop that can handle everything from a sloshed drink on the keyboard to a drop from waist height. Whether you're in the cab of a police cruiser, parachuting out of a C130, or off-roading to a remote construction site, the Toughbook CF-53 should shrug off whatever abuse it encounters.

As a result of all that rugged construction the Toughbook CF-53 isn't the slimmest or lightest laptop on the market. Its 2.2-inch thickness is equivalent to three ultrabooks stacked one atop another, and the beefy 2.2 by 13.4 by 11.1 inches (HWD) build makes for chunky weight, tipping the scales at 5.8 pounds. To help make it a little easier to tote around, it also sports a briefcase-style handle.

The Toughbook CF-53 has a 14-inch display, and while the 1,366-by-768 resolution won't be winning it any awards, it is readable in direct sunlight, and a preinstalled film protects the display from scratches and is replaceable by the user. The native brightness may be great in sunlight, but indoors you may want to dial it down for the sake of your eyeballs. The spill-resistant keyboard offers a fairly comfortable typing experience, but the touchpad is small (2.0 by 3.2 inches) and the right and left mouse buttons are rubbery and stiff.

Even the AC adapter cable for the Toughbook CF-53 is ruggedized, with four inches of ribbed reinforcement on the plug end (most laptops use a half inch). Along the back and sides of the Toughbook CF-53 are several locking covers which conceal two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, outputs for HDMI and VGA, a LAN connection, a Serial Port, and a card reader (SDXC). A case lock slot lets you physically secure the laptop, and a tray loading optical drive lets you read and burn DVD-RW discs and CDs. On the right, behind a locking cover, is an empty ExpressCard slot, while on the left, secured with screws, is a cover for an optional Smart Card slot.

The 500GB 7,200 rpm hard drive inside is shock mounted to cushion it against drops and vibration, and it uses a flexible connection so that force isn't transferred between the drive and the system board, protecting it further from damage. It's a larger capacity than the 320GB drive found in the HP EliteBook 8460p, but we actually might have preferred the faster solid-state drives seen in the Dell Latitude E6420 XFR and Dell Latitude E6430 ATG, which are smaller (128GB and 256GB, respectively) but more rugged by virtue of having no moving parts. Internally, the Toughbook CF-53 is equipped with 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a SIM card slot is available for optional 3G Gobi/4G LTE mobile broadband, with data available through AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon (pricing varies).

Built for business and government use, the Toughbook CF-53 is bloatware free, and comes with the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Professional already installed. Panasonic covers the Toughbook CF-53 with a three-year warranty.

Performance
Rugged laptops generally follow a much slower product cycle than the average consumer systems, and since the last rugged laptop we've reviewed we revamped most of our tests, but we can still compare the most pertinent aspects of performance.

The Toughbook CF-53 is outfitted with a 2.6GHz Intel Core i5-3320M with 4GB of memory. This processor is part of Intel's Ivy Bridge model-line, which already places it ahead of systems running older CPUs. For example, the Toughbook CF-53 scored 2,801 points in PCMark 7, while others, like the HP Elitebook 8460p (2,065 points), and the Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 (1,386 points), had lower scores due to their older processors. The Toughbook CF-53's Core i5 processor couldn't top the quad-core processors found in the Dell Latitude E6430 ATG (5,021) or the Latitude E6420 XFR (4,035 points).

Similar results were seen in Cinebench R11.5 speed tests, where the Toughbook CF-53 scored 2.88 points, ahead of the HP 8460p (2.44) and the Panasonic CF-31 (1,91), but fell behind the Dell E6430 ATG (3.43) and the Dell E6420 XFR (3.0 points).

The Toughbook CF-53 utilizes Intel's integrated graphics rather than a discrete GPU, but the performance should still be sufficient for moderately demanding graphics performance. It won't support high-end 3D gaming or modeling software used by engineers and architects, but for more basic applications, it should be more than enough.

Where the Toughbook CF-53 really stands out, however, is in battery life. When measured in our video rundown test, the T CF-53's 9-cell, 69Wh battery lasted an impressive 9 hours 6 minutes. Though the numbers aren't directly comparable between tests, when using our older MobileMark benchmark, the Panasonic CF-31 (6:08) and the Dell E6420 XFR (4:56) both fell well behind. Regardless, the test indicates that you'll be able to use the Toughbook CF-53 for hours on end without worry as to when you'll encounter an AC outlet.

For a rugged laptop that won't falter under the stresses of the great outdoors or the factory floor, the Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 is a solid performer with a full selection of armored ports and all-day battery life. Though it does stand out, it doesn't quite top the Dell Latitude E6430 ATG, which remains our Editors' Choice for rugged laptops due to its faster quad-core processor.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 with several other laptops side by side.

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