Panasonic releases sturdy modular 14″ laptop

Panasonic introduces the Toughbook 55, a sturdy 14″ laptop with a housing that contains various interchangeable modules. In this way, the GPU can be replaced, an extra battery or SSD can be added and the connections can be adjusted.

The Toughbook 55 has a universal bay on the right. That is a removable module that can hold a DVD player, Blu-ray player, SSD, AMD Radeon Pro WX GPU or smart card. On the left side of the housing there is room for a module with an extra battery or extra SSD. This module can also contain a fingerprint scanner. At the back of the housing is a module with which the connections can be exchanged. There are three options, and they all offer a VGA port and serial connection; the third connection is, depending on the module chosen, a usb 3.1 port, ethernet connection or reinforced Fischer USB connection.

According to Panasonic, the Toughbook 55 is a ‘semi-rugged’ laptop. The housing is 3.3 cm thick, can withstand a fall from a height of 91 cm and is splash-proof. At the top is a handle and the whole weighs about 2.1 kg. There will be variants with full-HD screens with a maximum brightness of 1000cd/m². The cheapest variant has an HD resolution of 1366×768 pixels and an undisclosed brightness. Panasonic builds in four microphones and the webcam is equipped with a cover.

Panasonic equips the Toughbook 55 with a Core i5-8365U vPro processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. The memory can be expanded up to a maximum of 64GB. All versions have an LTE modem and a chip for satellite navigation via GPS, Glonass, Beidou and Galileo. Panasonic will release the modular laptop this month. The cheapest model costs 1988 euros.