Toughbook series of notebooks from Panasonic are known for their rugged performance. Panasonic has come up with three variants of Toughbooks namely business-rugged, semi-rugged and full-rugged. Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 belongs to the semi-rugged series and promises to offer a great balance between durability and performance. The machine has been designed for business professionals who work outside and can be subjected to bumps and drops. The notebook also boasts of great display and robust battery life but it is worth a steep $ 2449 price tag? Check out our Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 review to know what the machine has to offer you.

Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 Looks and Feel

CF-53 is quite a fat notebook. When you look it from outside it looks very much like a briefcase with a handle at the top. The exterior has crystallized silver finish and it gives the impression of an industrial notebook meant for rigorous usage.

The notebook is MIL-STD-810G certified which means that the machine can survive up to 3 inch drop along with shock, vibration and humidity resistance. The design of the notebook is quite appealing and the magnesium alloy chassis lends the notebook durability.

A major portion of the lid is covered with a textured silver aluminum finish and the interior sports a matte black plastic finish. The notebook is quite bulky weighing 6.4 lbs. Hence you cannot carry it from one room to another easily. However, the built-in-handle made it easy for us to transport the notebook from one place to another. At dimensions standing at 13.4×11.1×1.8-2.2 inches, the notebook can easily fit into a large messenger bag. CF-53 sports a tough and durable feel.

Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 Display

CF-53 has the distinction of becoming the first notebook from Panasonic which features a 1366×768 pixel resolution display. The display is extremely bright and thanks to the anti-glare treatment we were able to use the display under any lighting conditions. The 14 inch display popped up nice and vivid colors and viewing angles are also wide. A couple of friends sat and enjoyed watching a HD movie. But we witnessed a bit of graininess which made it a bit difficult for us to read the texts. The display also acts as a resistive touch-screen which gives you desktop navigation experience. It supports double taps for zooming but multi-touch gestures such as pinch-zoom were not present.

Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 Keyboard

CF-53 is equipped with an island style, spill-resistant keyboard which offered a comfortable typing experience. The keyboard is quite compact which restricts the amount of dust between the keys. The keyboard surface is quite strong and we did not notice any significant amount of flex. The keys have decent amount of space, but found that the space bar, Enter keys were bit undersized. But overall the keyboard is quite good and nice to use.

Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 Touchpad

The Synaptics touchpad offered great navigation thanks to the smooth, black matte surface of the touchpad. Our fingers glided across the surface of the touchpad and we faced no problems in accurately highlighting the texts. The mouse buttons however were a bit small, but they supplied a rigid feedback. The click keys can endure an occasional coffee spills.

Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 Features

Specs

• Processor: 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-2520Mv Pro
• OS: MS Windows 7 Professional
• RAM: 4GB can be upgraded to 8GB
• HDD: 320 GB
• HDD Speed: 7200 rpm
• Display Resolution: 1366×768 pixels
• Video Memory: 1GB
• Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Dimensions: 13.4 x 11.1 x 1.8-2.2 inches
• Weight: 6.4 pounds

Ports

CF-53 offers a nice combination of ports. On the right side you get a USB 2.0 port along with USB 3.0 port, SD card reader, ExpressCard, PC Card Slot and a power jack. On the left hand side there is a DVD burner while a headphone and microphone jack is there in the front. On the rear of the notebook you will find a couple of USB2.0 ports, Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, serial port and a secure-lock slot.

Software

On the software front, the laptop is a bit disappointing as Panasonic has packed the machine with few utilities. Some of the in-built software which you will find in the machine are:-

• Panasonic PC Information
• Adobe Reader 8
• WinDVD
• Windows Live
• MS Office Power Point 2007

Audio

We were quite impressed by the audio performance of CF-53′s speakers. At full volume, the sound came out pretty well and we did not witness distortion in sound. Unfortunately the speakers lacked the required amount of bass which could have further enhanced their performance.

Performance

The 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-2520M CPU along with 4GB of RAM performs quite well. The notebook is capable of performing any tasks thrown at it. The hard drive booted Windows 7 Professional in just about 50 seconds.

Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 Graphics

The notebook is equipped with an Intel HD 3000 GPU which allows you to enjoy HD videos and games. In our graphics test, the graphics scored reasonable benchmarks and the graphics performance is reasonable good.

Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 Battery Life

The battery life of CF-53 is quite impressive. In our laptop battery test, the battery lasted well over 8 hours which is quite commendable.

Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 Price

Price of the machine is on the higher side. You need to shell out approximately $ 2550 to purchase this beast.

If you are looking for a robust, solid and durable laptop then Toughbook CF-53 is just the right machine for you.