Panasonic Toughbook CF-LX3 - Featherweight Toughbook

Overview

Panasonic is well known for its range of fully rugged, waterproof, dustproof and shockproof toughbook devices. However, the Japanese company also builds a line of slightly less tough 'business rugged' notebooks, which do away with the IP55 water and dust resistance (while retaining some degree of shock-resistance and protection against drops) in favor of lighter, more portable builds. In Japan, these business rugged notebooks are part of Panasonic's colorfully named 'Lets Note' series - over here, their designation is far more mundane, with the latest addition to the lineup given the humdrum model name: CF-LX3.

Before we start, let's take a look at the CF-LX3's key specs:

Design

The CF-LX3 is billed by Panasonic as the world's lightest business rugged notebook (although, to be fair, there's not much competition in that field) and weighs just 1.20kg with the standard 3-cell battery, or 1.43kg with the more expensive 6-cell battery configuration which includes a built-in optical drive. Our review unit is armed with the built-in optical drive, but only has the 3-cell battery (a SKU that is available in Japan, but not in Singapore), but still comes in at a featherweight 1.29kg. For perspective, this makes it lighter than most 13-inch Ultrabooks, which tend to weigh around 1.3kg without an optical drive.

Having said that, while the CF-LX3 is undoubtedly light, with or without the optical drive installed, the drive bay for it remains, and unfortunately this makes the CF-LX3 rather fat. Its chunky 24.5mm profile actually excludes it from falling under Intel's stringent Ultrabook specification requirements, which states that 14-inch Ultrabooks must be less than 23mm thick. Its other major shortcoming that keeps it from being called an Ultrabook is its 250GB 5400RPM HDD (Ultrabooks require a 3 second startup from hibernation) - but we'll talk more about that later.

Aesthetically, fans of Panasonic's other toughbook notebooks should have no complaints with the CF-LX3, with its familiar styling and no-nonsense matte silver finish, however, those not won over by the toughbook branding may find that the thick profile, and older-style keyboard and trackpad make the notebook look a bit dated.

Like all toughbooks, the CF-LX3's lid features Panasonic's signature shock-absorbing ridge design, which helps give the notebook drop resistance up to 76 cm (roughly table height), and pressure resistance up to 100kg.  

Display

The CF-LX3 is armed with a 14-inch 1600 x 900 pixel resolution matte LCD display. While the LX3 runs on Windows 8.1 Pro, the display itself isn't touch capable. For those that prefer Windows 7 Pro, an optional OS downgrade is available.

In usage, the display is passable, but doesn't fare well compared to some of the higher resolution IPS displays we've been seeing on newer Ultrabooks. It's quite bright, and clarity is reasonable, but you can easily make out the outline of pixels - especially when looking at text. The display also has rather poor viewing angles, but we do like the matte finish, which helps to reduce reflections.

As with many business notebooks, the lid hinge on the CF-LX3 can be tilted back a full 180 degrees so that the display is lying completely flat, which prevents any accidental damage from opening the notebook too far. Having said that, unlike the magnesium alloy lid, the screen bezel on the CF-LX3 is silver plastic, and as a result it's fairly easy to twist and flex the display which is a bit worrying.

Keyboard

The CF-LX3 has an unusual keyboard, which seems to combine chiclet-style keys with a traditional keyboard construction. Rather than individual island keys as seen on other chiclet keyboards, the CF-LX3 has one big block of keys (like a pre-2009 keyboard), but with each key sporting a raised chiclet-style shape protruding from the top of it. This design is likely to allow Panasonic to more easily drop in a different language keyboard.

Unfortunately, the chiclet-shape on each key isn't really enough to make the keyboard feel like a chiclet keyboard, and we actually would have preferred the slightly concave finger-cupping profile found on most older-style keyboards. The keys themselves have plenty of travel, but there's also a fair bit of flex evident, and as the keys are all made from rubber, they're also a bit soft and squishy, which doesn't result in the most satisfying typing experience.

Like the screen bezel, the wrist rest on the CF-LX3 is silver painted plastic, but to Panasonic's credit, they've done a good job matching the finish with the magnesium lid and base, which actually makes it quite hard to tell the difference between the materials.

 

Trackpad

While some of Panasonic's other toughbooks have funky circular trackpads, the CF-LX3 has a standard rectangular trackpad (although it does have rounded corners). Unlike the clickpads found on almost all Ultrabooks, the CF-LX3 has dedicated left and right click buttons, and the trackpad itself cannot be clicked.

Tracking was smooth and responsive, and gestures worked fine, but as we've become accustomed to clickpads it felt like a bit of a step backwards to get used to the old style of button clicking.

Connectivity

As expected for an enterprise-aimed notebook, connectivity on the CF-LX3 is fairly comprehensive:

As an enterprise device, the CF-LX3 is equipped with the standard TPM security chip, but surprisingly, is lacking a fingerprint scanner.

Benchmark Performance

The CF-LX3 is armed with a 4th generation dual-core Haswell Intel Core i5-4300U 1.9GHz vPro processor with 4GB RAM. vPro is Intel's enterprise-aimed technology, which adds a number of hardware-based security features to the processor, such as remote access management. On top of its extra security features, the i5-4300U processor is also a fair bit speedier than its consumer counterparts, with a 1.9GHz clockspeed, compared to the commonly seen 1.6GHz Core i5-4200U.

The most surprising entry on the CF-LX3's spec sheet is its 250GB 5400RPM HDD. Most notebooks are armed with either speedy SSDs, or high-capacity HDDs, however the CF-LX3's storage drive is neither, being both slow (5400RPM) and low capacity (250GB). Not only does this effect application load times, it also makes Windows 8 bootup times rather sluggish, at about 20 seconds from completely off, and 10 seconds from hibernation. Furthermore, while the HDDs on Panasonic's toughbooks are armed with shock absorbers that limit damage from drops, an SSD completely removes the need for shock absorbers, which seems like it would be the far better choice in any drop-proof device.

For our benchmarks, we will be pitting the CF-LX3 up against Sony's 13.3-inch Vaio Pro 13, which is armed with a similar Core i5-4200U processor and 4GB RAM, but utilizes a 128GB SSD, as well as ASUS' 11.6-inch Transformer Pad Trio, which has a higher spec Intel Core i7-4500U processor, but a similar HDD (albeit with a much larger 1TB capacity). 

PCMark 8

PCMark 8 is a synthetic benchmark that simulates everyday usage comprising of workloads testing web browsing, multimedia editing and document editing. The 'Home' benchmark has a general array of tasks, while the 'Creative' and 'Work' benchmarks are more specific, and test a system’s performance at specific workloads.

The CF-LX3 performed well in most tests, thanks to its speedy processor, which let it keep pace and actually outperform the ASUS' Core i7 processor in many situations. However, as expected, its 5400 RPM HDD scored very poorly (as did ASUS' HDD) in the Storage benchmark, and consequently let it down in the more intensive applications benchmarks.

3DMark 2013

3DMark 2013 is a synthetic benchmark designed to test a notebook's graphics and gaming capabilities. For a more indepth understanding of 3DMark 2013, please refer to our article "3DMark (2013) - Notebook GPU Performance Review". We'll be running our notebooks through two benchmarks:

• Cloud Gate is designed for integrated GPUs and utilizes a DirectX 11 engine limited to Direct3D feature level 10 (equivalent to DirectX 10) with a heavy emphasis on geometry, heavy post processing, particle effects, and volumetric illumination.
• Fire Strike serves as a showcase for DirectX 11 features, utilizing a grueling two-part test with extreme levels of tessellation and volumetric illumination, as well as complex smoke simulation using compute shaders and dynamic particle illumination.

All three of our notebooks are armed with Intel HD Graphics 4400 integrated GPUs, and as such we expected performance to be roughly equal. Surprisingly, the CF-LX3's slightly faster processor gave it an edge over the Sony Vaio Pro 13, showing a 15% performance gain on both benchmarks. ASUS' Transformer Book Trio proved the overall winner, thanks to its more powerful Core i7 processor.

Far Cry 2

For an idea of actual gaming performance, we put the CF-LX3 to the test at Far Cry 2, an older DX10 game, but one which can still challenge most integrated GPUs. Even running at a sub-optimal resolution, the CF-LX3 was unable to attain 60FPS at even Medium settings. The game is definitely playable, but it doesn't look very good, and there was some noticeable frame lag during big explosions and scenes with lots of fire. On the plus side, the CF-LX3's lumbering HDD didn't seem to make a difference here, although, obviously load times will vary from game to game.

Battery Life

The CF-LX3 comes with either a 3-cell 10.8V, 3550mAh battery, or a 6-cell 10.8, 7100mAh battery, depending on which SKU you select. Our version came with the 3-cell battery with its slightly under average 3550mAh capacity. 

To test battery life, we use Powermark, a synthetic benchmark which tests a device's battery life with a number of productivity and everyday usage scenarios. The CF-LX3 lasted 3 hours and 19 minutes, which was slightly worse than our other two notebooks, but falls in line with expectations due to its slightly larger screen size. Based on the 6-cell battery's double capacity, you should expect to get at least six hours of life out of the 6-cell model.

Portability

Our Portability score factors in battery life, weight and volume to give you an idea of how easy it is to carry each device around. Despite its light weight, the CF-LX3 scores quite poorly here, due to its thick profile and average battery life. The ASUS Transformer Book Trio also scored badly due to its heavy 1.7kg weight. On the other hand, the Sony's Vaio Pro 13's svelte figures easily gave it a notable advantage in this comparison.

Conclusion

The Panasonic Toughbook CF-LX3 is a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, it's incredibly light, weighing less than most 13-inch Ultrabooks. On the other hand, it looks rather dated, with its thick profile, built-in optical drive and older-style keyboard and trackpad - and its small capacity HDD also feels very sluggish, especially when compared to the almost instant bootup times of notebooks armed with an SSD.

We've seen other enterprise manufacturers like Lenovo and HP shift to a more consumer-style design with their enterprise products, but, with the CF-LX3 at least, Panasonic seems happy to maintain an older design and build. And while there may be a market for people who don't want change, we can't help but feel that if Panasonic's aim with the CF-LX3 was to make it as light as possible, it should have complemented that lightness with an ultra sleek and thin build as well - after all, as we've seen in our portability index, portability isn't just about weight.

Essentially, what we want to know is, why didn't Panasonic just make the CF-LX3 to Ultrabook specs? The trade off of an optical disc drive (that's only available on the more expensive SKU) just doesn't seem worth it, and there are absolutely no benefits to having a low capacity HDD.

It's not even a case of the 'business rugged' specifications being unable to co-exist with Intel's Ultrabook requirements, as Panasonic does actually make an 11.6-inch 'business rugged' CF-AX3 convertible Toughbook that fully meets all of Intel's Ultrabook criteria and also includes a host of modern features like a chiclet keyboard, clickpad, SSD storage, thin 18mm profile, and even a Full HD touchscreen display.

So maybe it's just Panasonic trying to offer better value by keeping costs down? Apparently not: the 3-cell battery model without the built-in optical drive retails locally for S$2,499, while the 6-cell battery model with built-in optical drive goes for S$2,699. Regardless, both versions make the CF-LX3 one of the most expensive enterprise notebooks out there - and honestly, for the specs and features you're getting, neither SKU is deserving of such a premium price tag. All things considered, unless you really want a lightweight drop-proof (up to 76cm) enterprise notebook, there are far better and more affordable options available.

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