Panasonic’s Toughbooks are arguably better known, but Getac has been making rugged laptops since the early 1990s. The S410 G4 (starts at $1,599; $3,695 as tested) is the fourth generation of its 14-inch semi-rugged notebook, rated to survive a three-foot drop and with IP53 ingress protection that means it’s proof against dust, rain, and sprays of water (though not pressurized jets or immersion). Its operating (not storage) temperature range is -20 to 145 degrees F, and the configuration options include a barcode reader and three batteries. Fully loaded models cost a fortune, but if you’re heading into harm’s way, the S410 G4 has got your back.
Bouncing Back From Bumps and Bruises
First responders and field workers can choose among several 14-inch systems when answering the call. The Panasonic Toughbook 55 Mk2 and the Dell Latitude 5424 Rugged have the same three-foot drop rating as the Getac. The Durabook S14I can fall four feet.
Fully rugged models can take even more abuse, but they’re even heavier and more expensive. As is, the S410 G4 dwarfs your average business laptop at 1.5 by 13.8 by 11.5 inches (HWD) and 5.25 pounds, coming in between the Toughbook (4.9 pounds) and the Latitude (6.8 pounds). Mostly made of sturdy polycarbonate, the Getac has a carrying handle and a wide-bordered screen that latches shut. Hinged doors cover all the ports except the AC adapter connector.
The 6th Generation Intel processor has been replaced by an 11th Generation chip, but one thing hasn’t changed since we reviewed the first edition of the S410 five years ago: The standard screen has low 1,366-by-768-pixel resolution. Fortunately, our test unit had the optional full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) display with capacitive touch technology, rated at an outdoor-viewable 1,000 nits of brightness.
It also had a quad-core, 2.4GHz Core i5-1135G7 processor with Iris Xe integrated graphics, plus 16GB of RAM, a 256GB NVMe solid-state drive, and a single battery pack. (An empty bay on the right side accommodates a second.)
The top CPU choice is Intel’s Core i7-1185G7, and the memory ceiling is 64GB. Storage can be expanded to two 1TB SSDs; the second, with a slightly slower SATA interface, goes in the modular bay that can also hold a barcode reader, a third battery, a DVD or Blu-ray drive, an Nvidia GPU, or even an antique ExpressCard or PCMCIA slot. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth are standard. Our S410 also had the optional 4G LTE mobile broadband.
Sliding latches on the bottom let you swap batteries or remove the SSD. The right edge holds a tethered stylus pen, a USB 2.0 port, an audio jack, a Thunderbolt 4 port, and the power connector. Along the back are two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, an HDMI video output, an Ethernet jack, and a security lock slot. When ordering you can configure another I/O array (seen in our photos) with a DisplayPort or VGA port, a third USB-A or second Ethernet port, and a serial port.
The Harder They Fall
I didn’t push the S410 G4 to the limits of its endurance, but I knocked it, open and running, from my lap to a carpeted floor several times, then dropped it (closed) from about three feet before reopening it and continuing work without a hitch. I then put in the kitchen sink and doused it at length with the sprayer. It ignored these indignities.
Our model included a face recognition webcam for Windows Hello logins, but no fingerprint reader. The camera has a sliding privacy shutter and 1080p resolution instead of the usual 720p; it captures well-lit and fairly colorful images with just a bit of static. Sound from the bottom-mounted speaker is soft and distant, with no hint of bass or overlapping tracks. Realtek software gives you a faux surround-sound effect and an equalizer with muted dance, pop, rock, and other presets.
The extremely dimly backlit keyboard offers an agreeable layout with dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys. It has a tolerable, somewhat rattly feel. Our test unit required slightly firmer or more careful typing than I’m used to—with my usual light touch, it occasionally skipped letters.
A pair of customizable buttons above the keyboard can launch apps or change system settings. The two-button touchpad is on the small side but worked perfectly, unlike several I’ve encountered on rugged laptops that are designed for gloved use and sometimes ignore a bare hand.
Speaking of bare hands, a supplied G-Manager utility gives you convenient access to various settings, including finger, glove, or pen optimization for the touch screen and individual activation for Bluetooth, cellular data, and Wi-Fi. The display provides wide viewing angles and great contrast, as well as outstanding brightness and crisp white backgrounds. Colors are mediocre—they’re a bit flat or washed-out instead of popping like poster paints—but fine details are sharp.
Performance Testing the Getac S410 G4: Speed Isn’t a Priority
Besides the S410 G4, two other rugged PCs have completed our new benchmark regimen: Panasonic’s Toughbook 55 Mk2, a direct 14-inch laptop competitor, and the Panasonic Toughbook G2, a 10.1-inch detachable keyboard-plus-tablet combo. That left two comparison slots, which I filled with non-rugged 14-inch Core i5 laptops, the Asus VivoBook S14 and the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i 14. You can see their basic specs in the table below.
Productivity Tests
The main benchmark of UL’s PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric applications such as spreadsheet software, video calling, web browsers, and word processors. We also run PCMark 10’s Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a laptop’s storage. (See more about how we test laptops.)
Three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
Our final productivity test is workstation maker Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s famous image editor to rate a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension (not compatible with M1 Macs at present) that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks such as opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image, and applying filters, gradient fills, and masks.
Rugged laptops aren’t built for office duty, but the Getac cleared the 4,000 points that indicate excellent Microsoft Office or Google Docs productivity in PCMark 10 and delivered satisfactory, if not stellar, CPU test results. First responders don’t spend much time with Photoshop, but the S410 G4 narrowly won that benchmark anyway.
Graphics Tests
We test Windows PC graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark: Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
We also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines such as texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.
An Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 is one of the options for the Getac’s modular bay, but even with it installed, the laptop wouldn’t pretend to be a gaming rig, nor would any of the others here. It’s possible that a user might pass some time with Solitaire or streaming video back at the barracks after a job, but rugged PCs are basically all work and no play.
Battery and Display Tests
We test laptops’ battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of SteelTears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
Our S410 G4 had the shortest runtime in the group, but its 10 hours of video playback indicate more than enough stamina to get through a shift or a mission. If you want to triple that, you can outfit the system with three power packs. We briefly tried a system with three batteries, and it lasted for a record 32 hours and 50 minutes in our rundown test.
We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its software (Windows only) to measure a laptop screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
None of these portables showed the kind of color range or fidelity that will satisfy designers and prepress workers, but the Getac and the two Toughbooks came close to their 1,000-nit rated brightness, making them far more legible in outdoor sun than the Asus and Lenovo (which are on the dim side even by consumer laptop standards).
Verdict: Not Just a Fair-Weather Friend
The S410 G4 doesn’t unseat Getac’s 13.3-inch B360 as our Editors’ Choice winner among ultra-sturdy laptops, because the fully rugged B360 can survive higher drops and rougher treatment (as can the Durabook S14I). Coming at it from the other direction, the Acer Enduro N3 is less tough but considerably cheaper than the S410 G4.
But the S410 G4 is an impressive, versatile platform for emergency responders and field workers, with configuration options that can handle just about any scenario. It goes toe to toe with the Toughbook 55 Mk2 or just about anything else out there.
