Today, Panasonic is announcing the TOUGHBOOK S1, its latest fully-rugged Android tablet. Fully rugged means that it can take a beating, with IP65/67 dust and water resistance, MIL-STD-810H certification, and the ability to withstand a five-foot drop onto concrete. It can also withstand extreme temperatures from -20 to 50 degrees Celsius.

“The TOUGHBOOK S1 is purpose-built for mobile workers in the most challenging environments and conditions, especially in transportation and logistics, manufacturing and field services where efficiency and reliability are essential for getting the job done,” said Craig Jackowski, GM of Product Management, Panasonic System Solutions Company of North America. “Building on the TOUGHBOOK legacy of productivity and ruggedness, the TOUGHBOOK S1 comes at a time when our customers demand reliable

technology solutions to support digital and mobile operations.”

Panasonic TOUGHBOOK S1 bottom with barcode scanner

As you'd expect from a TOUGHBOOK, it pulls out all of the stops. The 500-nit 1,280x800 screen has a variety of modes that can be used in different kinds of conditions. There's the glove touch mode for if you're working in a field that requires gloves, and there's rain sensing mode. Indeed, this tablet's screen can sense whether it's water touching the screen or your finger.

The battery is warm-swappable. As opposed to hot-swapping, which requires to batteries, this has a removable battery and a small internal battery. That means that you can pull out the battery and you've got about 30 seconds to get a new one in there before the device shuts down. It's a TOUGHBOOK, which means that the removable battery comes in different sizes. If warm swapping isn't best for your use case, you can also just get a higher capacity battery.

Panasonic TOUGHBOOK S1 side view with sealed ports

Naturally, the Panasonic TOUGHBOOK S1 also comes with 4G LTE support, including Band 14 FirstNet. If you're not familiar with FirstNet, that's the dedicated band for first responders. Indeed, that's the type of market that this is geared toward, along with other types of workers that are out in possibly harsh conditions.

Other notable specs include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 chipset, which is one of the company's SoCs with long-term support, and it has 4GB RAM and 64GB of storage. It ships with Android 10, which is no surprise since businesses aren't as focused on feature updates as consumers are. These types of devices are more made to run specialized software. Panasonic did confirm that it will update the software to a newer version of Android at some point.

As always, if you want to get your hands on a TOUGHBOOK S1, you can contact your Panasonic sales representative.