Review: The Algiz 10x Rugged Tablet Capable But Pricey

It's getting increasingly difficult to leave the office these days without tripping over a rugged device; sturdy laptops and tablets seem to be available for every industry and market. Helping to spread that trend has been the Handheld Group, a Scandinavian company that started life in 1997 as a rugged-device distributor and now manufactures and distributes its own line. The CRN Test Center recently received one of Handheld's latest -- the Algiz 10x -- and was impressed with its performance, design and utility as a customizable platform for Windows-app deployment. But its pricing leaves a giant opening for competitors.

As its name implies, the 10x is built around a 10.1-inch LCD that melds the 1,366-x-768 pixel LCD panel, resistive single-touch screen and antiglare layer into a single monolithic slab that the company claims is stronger and brighter than competitive products. And at 600 nits, the Algiz 10x is the brightest tablet we've ever squinted at. The next closest device we've tested was the Samsung Galaxy S5 and its superbright 450 nits.

But all those nits come at a cost to battery life. To counter, Handheld includes some pretty aggressive screen-dimming algorithms, which slash brightness to 25 percent at the slightest activation of its ambient light sensor and are enabled by default. With brightness at maximum, auto-dimming disabled and the battery fully charged, we yanked the power cord and looped a media file continuously until the battery died. In this mode, the 5300 mAh Lithium Ion battery delivered just two hours and 34 minutes of continuous video playback. There's also a 10,600 mAh battery available.

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The Atom N2800 CPU inside the Algiz 10x performed well in its own right. Intel's efficient two-core, four-thread processor turned in a high Geekbench score of 1,527, nearly twice that of the last Atom-based tablet we tested, which had a single-core, dual-thread Oak Trail Z670. More importantly, Windows and the apps we tested performed quite well under the dual-core Atom CPU, and multimedia files played back smoothly and with minimal jaggies. The tested system was equipped with 4 GB of RAM and a 128-GB solid-state drive.

Physically, the Algiz 10x measures about 11 inches long by 7 inches wide and is 1.2 inches thick. With its thick rubber corners and a wide rubber bumper on its leading edge, it looks and feels like most other ruggedized tablets we've tested. Its front panel sacrifices symmetry for a set of buttons on its right-hand side for controlling power, menu and navigation. There also are three programmable buttons near the bottom and LEDs at the top to indicate power, battery, storage, Wi-Fi and GPS. For wireless communications, the base unit includes Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0; GSM and CDMA are optional. It weighs 2.9 pounds.

The included stylus is retained by a curly lanyard and can be stored in a slot on the unit's underside. The other end of the stylus incorporates a magnetized Philips screwdriver head that happens to fit the radio-service and expansion-slot doors -- a nice touch. All remaining screws require a Torx driver. A pair of rubber doors on the unit's left side protect the DC input, VGA output serial and USB 2.0 ports, all of which remain waterproof while uncovered. These doors open by pulling on a protruding rubber tab that's too short to be grabbed easily. The right side is home to SD and SIM card slots (with a screwed-on rubber cover) and Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 port and headset jack. Also built in is a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash.

The tested unit included a Velcro-adjustable hand strap that could be affixed to either side and also used as a carry handle. The Algiz 10x is MIL-STD 810G and IP-65 rated, and is well-suited to indoor or outdoor applications that put computing devices at risk of physical harm or damage from weather or other extremes. List pricing starts at a relatively high $2,849.

PUBLISHED DEC. 22, 2014