Panasonic Refreshes Its Ginormous 20-inch Touchpad 4K Tablet, Chops Price In Half
There's nothing wrong with being an early adopter of new technologies and products, you just have to understand that inevitably something better, faster, and/or less expensive will follow whatever it is you just recently paid a premium for. Case in point is Panasonic's 20-inch Toughpad 4K tablet -- the revamped standard edition model now sports a 5th Generation Intel Core i5 vPro processor and costs half as much as first generation Performance SKU when it debuted earlier this year.
Less than a year ago, the Toughpad 4K was wielding an Intel Core i7 3687U vPro processor, a dual-core part clocked at 2.1GHz to 3.3GHz with Hyper Threading support and 4MB of cache. But now that Broadwell-U is here, Panasonic swapped the CPU out with a Core i5 3437U processor, a slightly slower clocked part (1.9GHz to 2.9GHz) with less cache (3MB), but based on a newer microarchitecture. Like the CPU it's replacing, the Core i5 3437U is a dual-core chip with Hyper Threading support.
Panasonic also added an HDMI 2.0 input to the Toughpad 4K, which joins existing ports and options such as USB 3.0, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, Ethernet, and mini DisplayPort. Other specs on the refreshed standard model include 8GB of DDR3-1333 RAM, 256GB solid state drive, NVIDIA GeForce GT 745M graphics, HD 720p front-facing camera with microphone, Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit, and various other bits.
Of course, the real treat here is the 20-inch 4K (3840x2560) display with multitouch support and LED backlighting. That might be a little on the large side for most home consumers, but it's business users that Panasonic is truly targeting here. A tablet like this can be used in a number of different fields, such as video editing, architecture, design, photography, and healthcare.
Panasonic says the refreshed Toughpad 4K tablet will be available in July for $2,999.
Less than a year ago, the Toughpad 4K was wielding an Intel Core i7 3687U vPro processor, a dual-core part clocked at 2.1GHz to 3.3GHz with Hyper Threading support and 4MB of cache. But now that Broadwell-U is here, Panasonic swapped the CPU out with a Core i5 3437U processor, a slightly slower clocked part (1.9GHz to 2.9GHz) with less cache (3MB), but based on a newer microarchitecture. Like the CPU it's replacing, the Core i5 3437U is a dual-core chip with Hyper Threading support.
Panasonic also added an HDMI 2.0 input to the Toughpad 4K, which joins existing ports and options such as USB 3.0, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, Ethernet, and mini DisplayPort. Other specs on the refreshed standard model include 8GB of DDR3-1333 RAM, 256GB solid state drive, NVIDIA GeForce GT 745M graphics, HD 720p front-facing camera with microphone, Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit, and various other bits.
Of course, the real treat here is the 20-inch 4K (3840x2560) display with multitouch support and LED backlighting. That might be a little on the large side for most home consumers, but it's business users that Panasonic is truly targeting here. A tablet like this can be used in a number of different fields, such as video editing, architecture, design, photography, and healthcare.
Panasonic says the refreshed Toughpad 4K tablet will be available in July for $2,999.
