Panasonic Toughbook CF-W5 review

Most notebooks never encounter an environment more hostile than an office desk, but some jobs require you to carry your notebook to more demanding locations, such as building sites, factory floors or the great outdoors.

Usually for these conditions, you'd choose a ruggedised notebook, but all that protection adds a lot of weight. Panasonic's Toughbook CF-W5 is described as a lighter semi-ruggedised alternative.

What this means in practice is an ultra-portable notebook with a metal case. The exterior of the chassis is made of a magnesium alloy that is supposed to better protect the internal components. Another advantage is the excellent thermal properties of the chassis; there are no air vents on the notebook. This helps protect it against dust and other contaminants.

The whole notebook, including the battery, weighs just 1.2kg. It's also very small and slender, so it will easily slip into a normal briefcase. Battery life is an impressive six-and-a-half hours, giving you nearly a whole working day away from the mains.

The 12.1in LCD is the first non-widescreen notebook display we've seen in a while. The native resolution is just 1,024x768 pixels, which is enough for office applications. It uses an anti-glare rather than gloss coating, so you'll be able to use it outdoors on sunny days. Unfortunately, it suffers from poor vertical viewing angles, so we had to constantly adjust the angle of the screen. The backlight is rather uneven, too, and the finish is a little grainy. It's not a great display, and we think even office users deserve better.

The keyboard looks cramped. The sizing of the keys is unusual, with small keys down the left-hand side, and the Return key and spacebar are too small for our liking. The keys also don't have much travel. The touch pad is small and an unusual circular shape. It doesn't match the rectangular display and our fingers regularly hit the edge of the touch pad before the cursor reached the corners of the desktop. It is accurate, however, and the buttons below work fine.

The optical drive is accessed by flipping up a door beside the touch pad. This positioning of the drive limits the depth of the keyboard. We were impressed that such a small notebook even included a built-in drive, though. There are all the ports you'd expect on a notebook, though only two USB2 ports are provided.

An Intel Core Solo Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) U1400 processor helps maximise battery life. It's not that quick, but it was fast enough for day-to-day tasks such as email and office applications. The 60GB hard disk has shock protection to keep data safe.

Sadly, we don't feel the CF-W5 is ideal. The price is very high, and we would rather have seen a notebook with a better keyboard and touch pad, even if that meant having a separate optical drive.