Toughbook CF-W5

PC World

  • Review
  • Specs
  • Images
  • User Reviews
  • Buy Online
  • Broadband Plans

The toughest of the tough, Panasonic's Toughbook CF-W5 is one of the only notebooks where its ability to withstand torture takes precedent over power and style.

Pros

  • Notebook design, battery life, optical drive off switch, weight

Cons

  • Scroll wheel on the touchpad, cramped keyboard

Bottom Line

Although the Panasonic Toughbook CF-W5 is not the most stylish or powerful machine, it does offer some good battery life and should take a few knocks without any trouble. However, for the premium price it is short on ports and other features, a disappointment despite the advantages of its rugged design.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 3,599.00 (AUD)

Special Offers

Geared for people always on the go, the Toughbook CF-W5, unlike some other Toughbooks in the range, is less of a test dummy than a toughened business notebook. It offers good battery life in a small, lightweight (1.2kg) magnesium alloy chassis that's built to handle a few knocks. Despite its size the CF-W5 doesn't entirely skimp on features, managing to squeeze an internal DVD re-writer and an SD card reader into the minimalist notebook design and also includes some basic connectivity such as a VGA output and PC card slot.

Inside this little nugget is 1GB of DDR2 RAM and one of Intel's slightly older Core Duo U2400 1.06GHz CPUs, a low-end processor designed for less heat, reasonable battery-life, but slower performance. With these components we did not expect phenomenal results from our tests, but the Toughbook CF-W5 still achieved a reasonable score. There is only a 60GB hard drive in this model, so don't plan on storing all your movies, photos, MP3s and documents here along with any applications you plan to install.

In WorldBench 6 it achieved a total score of 43, well below the mark for power users, but still enough to do word processing tasks, surf the Web and check e-mails. In iTunes it took 179 seconds to convert 53 minutes worth of WAV files to 192Kbps MP3 files, while in Cdex it took 269 seconds. Neither of these results suggests the Toughbook CF-W5 is capable of any taxing workloads like heavy photo editing or CAD.

The battery test result was far more impressive, with the CF-W5 lasting 154 minutes in our DVD rundown battery test. This test is a worst-case scenario test, as it utilises the system's speakers, screen and optical drive among the other core components of the notebook. We expect the CF-W5 should last longer under normal workloads. The DVD drive can also be turned off with a hard switch on the chassis, which should help extend battery life even further.

The screen is a small 12.1in number with a native resolution of 1024x768. The brightness and contrast levels are good, but the viewing angle is quite poor in both the vertical and horizontal positions. We also found that the smaller and slightly squished keys were tricky to type on comfortably.

The touchpad is a circle, unlike most notebooks that use a square, but is fairly comfortable to use. What it does lack is a scroll bar, making it more difficult to navigate long pages quickly.

Keep up with the latest tech news, reviews and previews by subscribing to the PC World newsletter.

Be the first to comment.

Post new comment

Users posting comments agree to the PC World comments policy.

Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.

Most Popular

What's the difference between an Intel Core i3, i5 and i7?
Samsung’s 2013 Smart TVs: everything you need to know
How do I connect my TV to the Internet?
Laser vs. inkjet printers: which is better?
Windows 7 Home Premium vs. Windows 7 Professional

Compare broadband and save

Powered by

Need Help? Call 1300 123 935

Best Deals on PCWorld

NotebooksView all »
TabletsView all »
Desktop PCsView all »
Servers & StorageView all »
Software and ServicesView all »

Resources

Trend Micro Zone
Trend Micro SafeSync is an easy to use and good value cloud based backup service.
Broadband test
Is your internet really as fast as you think it is? Find out here.
Notebooks Product Finder
Find the product you're looking for with our Notebooks search tool.