Review: Panasonic's Toughbook Y7

In an effort to address the market of business travelers who want a portable computer with extra durability, but also have a budget and the modern-day obstacle course of business travel to consider, Panasonic has refreshed its lineup of "business rugged" notebooks. The CMP Channel Test Center reviewed one of these units, the Toughbook Y7, and found it to be as impressive as earlier offerings from Panasonic.

With a weight of 3.7 pounds, Panasonic is touting the Y7 as the world's lightest laptop with a 14.1-inch display. Like all Toughbook notebooks, it is drop and spill-resistant, has a strong, magnesium alloy case and chassis, a shock-mounted hard drive and LCD, and flexible internal connectors. In addition, the Y7 has a range of embedded wireless options including 802.11 a/g and Bluetooth 2.0. Optional, high-performance built-in 3G mobile broadband solutions from AT&T (HSDPA), Sprint or Verizon Wireless (EV-DO Rev A) are also available.

At first glance the sleek, silver Toughbook has a clean, uncluttered look. The optical drive, a Test Center favorite on previous Toughbooks, is a pop-up DVD drive that resides to the right of the touchpad, with the right wrist rest doubling as the door of the drive. Compared to the typical, slide-out drives, this design makes the laptop a pleasure to work on when using it in a cramped, chaotic workspace.

Unfortunately, the pleasure of this well designed optical drive comes with a cost. In this case, that price is real estate, and the touchpad pays for it. Although it looks nice, the touchpad on the Y7 (and the other Business-rugged Toughbooks) is a circle approximately 2 inches across. It is responsive, but the small size makes it slightly aggravating (a "3" on an aggravation scale of 1 to 10) to continually have to stroke the cursor across the screen. The right and left mouse click buttons are located at the 5 o'clock and 7 o'clock positions relative to the touchpad. This placement forces you to bend your thumb in an awkward, uncomfortable position. In addition, the HDD, Cap Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock LEDs hug the top of the touchpad's ring. The location of these indicators along with their tiny size, make them difficult to see and renders them almost useless. With all that out of the way, the convenience that the DVD drive brings to the table outweighs the negatives it forces upon the touchpad.

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Along the sides of the Y7 are many ports which are nicely laid out and labeled. The left side houses the AC adapter jack, a vent for the internal fan, a standard VGA connector, a connector for a mini dock box replicator, microphone and headphone jacks, and slots for a PC card (type I or II) as well as an SD card. The right side is reserved for the Ethernet and modem jacks, along with two USB ports; while the front of the case has the display release, switches to turn the power, wireless networking, and optical drive on and off (the optical drive automatically powers down after three minutes to conserve the battery).

In testing, the Y7 held up well. With a Geekbench score of 1780, it falls a little below others with the same processor (Intel Core 2 Duo L7500 at 1.60 Ghz) but, considering it had half the memory of the other units (1Gb versus 2Gb), this was not a drastic difference. During two days of testing, the Y7 showed itself to sport a bright display with vivid colors. It's more than suitable enough to watch a movie or two during a long flight.

Speaking of battery life: Panasonic rates the lithium ion battery life of the Y7 at five hours. With normal usage and settings, the unit should come reasonably close. We left a movie in Windows Media Player running repeatedly; with all the power saving and management settings turned off and got 3 hours, 40 minutes before the unit died. In addition, the specs claim the battery charging time is five hours with the power off and 6.5 hours with it on. After charging for 2 hours with the unit on, the completely drained battery was already half charged. It seems that Panasonic underestimated the Y7 on this claim.

Before describing our testing, a note is in order. Panasonic's business-rugged line is not tested, nor rated to the same military spec as the fully-ruggedized line. The unit has a solid feel with hardly any give when trying to flex the case. The hinges are built with a sturdy fit and finish, and feel like they can take whatever is thrown at them.

For testing, we dropped (OK, threw) the Y7 off a desk from a height of about three feet. The display was closed, but the laptop was still on. After two falls, the only sign of impact was a loose battery lock switch that moved from the locked to the unlocked position. Next we placed weight on the top of the closed laptop. Although the small, bubble-like top of the unit dented under the pressure; the damage was purely cosmetic and everything continued working fine.

After being powered on overnight (with the AC adapter plugged in and all power saving settings off), most of the case measured a relatively cool 83 degrees, while the battery itself measured 117 degrees Fahrenheit. The most notable heat though were the areas above and below the power/charging circuit in the upper left quarter of the device. This measured 97 degrees and, although it probably wouldn't cause any burns, it could be uncomfortable if literally used as a lap top. This heat was also felt when typing in the upper left quadrant of the keyboard, but it was more of a temporary distraction than a nuisance.

Testers were also impressed with the noise level (or lack thereof). With the fan setting set to High, there was barely a whisper coming out of the vent slots. At the default standard fan setting, which adjusts the fan as needed based on the internal temperature, the Y7 is extremely quiet. With a sound meter positioned directly in front of the exhaust vent, the High speed was measured at 79 db, while the standard setting measured 70db. At the Low setting, the reading was below the threshold of our meter (60db).

The bottom line: the Panasonic Toughbook Y7 lived up to everything it is designed for. It is a capable business laptop that can tackle the day in and day out obstacles a road warrior will throw at it. With specs and features that every typical, or even not so typical, business traveler would need; it can stand up to any challenge.