The Panasonic Toughpad: A Tough Tablet With Options

By Sarah Howland, Editor In Chief, Field Technologies

In early 2013, Panasonic introduced the expansion of its Toughpad tablet line. The original Toughpad, the FZ-A1, became broadly available at the end of 2012. The Toughpad FZ-A1 is a 10-inch, Android-based, rugged tablet (I first wrote about the Toughpad FZ-A1 after the product launch, which you can read here). Panasonic is expanding the Toughpad product line with the announcement of the Toughpad FZ-G1, a Windows 8 Pro-based 10-inch tablet, and the Toughpad JT-B1, an Android-based 7-inch tablet. I recently spoke with Kyp Walls, the director of product management at Panasonic, about the Toughpad family and it’s fit in the tablet marketplace.

Why did Panasonic decide to expand the Toughpad family? What need do you feel the Toughpad family addresses in the marketplace?

Panasonic is a long-time provider of tablet computing solutions, in both slate and convertible form factors, but when Apple brought out the iPad, it really caused people to look at the tablet form factor in a new light. Because Apple does a nice job of making the iPad very accessible to a wide variety of users, a lot of people suddenly were a lot more focused on what we now are just referring to as tablets (what we used to refer to as slate tablets).

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