Panasonic has always been known for building rugged tablets that can withstand harsh conditions, but it has only made Windows tablets before, which as we all know are pretty unusable as far as a tablet goes. So Panasonic’s best chance to remain relevant in the new touch world was to build some Android tablets, too. This is how they came up with 2 tablets, the Panasonic Toughpad A1 and Toughpad B1.
The Panasonic rugged tablets have lived up to their name of Toughbooks before so go ahead and use them in rain, sleet, mud, dust, sand, or whatever else. The design of the tablets is pretty much the same, so don’t expect the same kind of thinness as on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 or an Asus Transformer Prime.
The larger 10.1″ Panasonic Toughbad is the one that also has a stylus, a feature that has been characteristic to Panasonic tablets and would be needed by their target customers. Plus, that can only improve if it ever gets updated to Android 4.0 to get its more advanced stylus related API’s. It also has 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage, and is powered by a dual core 1.2 ghz processor made by Marvell. You can add LTE or Wimax to it, too.
The Toughpad A1 runs Android 3.2 and adds more security related features such as software encryption, dual-factor authenticatoin, and other “business-oriented safeguards.” The Toughpad B1 is basically the same device, but in a smaller 7″ size and very similar, if not identical, specs.