The first time you use a Panasonic Toughbook, you might be simultaneously impressed and disappointed. These legendary rugged laptops ooze durability, from their rock-solid display hinges to the physical doors that protect all of the ports from water and debris. But many also use dim, low-resolution screens and enormous chassis that make them look laughably retro, like you’ve just opened a laptop from the mid-1990s. The Toughbook 55 Mk2 (starts at $2,524; $3,104 as tested) combats the latter problem with a modern, lightweight chassis and the latest components, many of which can be swapped out in the field. It’s not the most rugged design on the market, but it is one of the most user-friendly laptops to bear the Toughbook name.
What’s a Semi-Rugged Laptop?
Police departments, ambulance squads, and many other government agencies seek out semi-rugged models like the Toughbook 55 for their combination of value, durability, and flexibility. Models are rarely updated, and Panasonic supports them for years longer than typical non-rugged business laptops, in part because their durability lets them last a lot longer, and in part because many customers buy them on cycles that last five or more years, instead of the two-year lease that is common in the corporate IT world.
This year’s Mk2 (for “Mark II”) Toughbook 55 is the first update to the model, which was introduced in 2019. Yes, that’s only a two-year interval, so no, current Toughbook 55 users probably shouldn’t be looking to upgrade. But if you’re looking to replace an older semi-rugged or even fully rugged laptop, the Toughbook 55 is an attractive option.
The machine is a conventional clamshell laptop, with a hinge that opens 180 degrees and a permanently attached keyboard. The Toughbook 55 is not the detachable tablet that many customers are now seeking; for that, you’ll need to look to the Toughbook G2 or similar offerings from the likes of Dell and Getac. But the clamshell design holds plenty of promise for a wide variety of scenarios, such as if your vehicle fleet already has laptop docks installed. The Toughbook 55 is backward-compatible with most Toughbook laptop docking stations.
The laptop measures 1.3 by 13.6 by 10.7 inches and weighs 4.9 pounds in the configuration we’re testing. Weight can vary depending on the configuration options you choose (more on that below), but all things considered, this is remarkably svelte and lightweight, as rugged laptops go. Consider that the Getac B360, one of the Toughbook 55’s closest competitors, is 1.4 by 13.4 by 11.1 inches and weighs 5.1 pounds.
Panasonic does make some compromises to achieve the smaller chassis, the most notable being that the Toughbook 55 isn’t quite as rugged from a pure ratings perspective. Its ingress protection (IP) rating of 53 means that it can withstand some dust and water sprays, and it’s rated to survive drops of up to 3 feet (MIL-STD-810H). The Getac B360, meanwhile, has an IP66 rating, which means it can withstand more water and dust (but not complete submersion), and is designed to survive drops of up to six feet.
As most rugged laptop makers do, Panasonic publishes the results of third-party tests to verify durability ratings. You can find the results summary for IP and MIL-STD testing on the Toughbook 55’s product support page or by downloading the Certifications PDF document, which has links to the relevant reports from the non-profit Southwest Research Institute. We don’t test these certifications ourselves at PC Labs.
Ports (and Modules) of All Sorts
If you can abide the Toughbook 55’s semi-rugged certifications, as opposed to more demanding ones, then you’ll likely enjoy not only its relative portability, but also the extensive array of add-in modules that let you configure the laptop to perform a wide variety of duties in the field. The modules, which Panasonic refers to as xPAKs, can fit into one of three slots on the chassis.
The rear slot can be configured with a combination of VGA, serial, Ethernet, and USB ports, including an optional Fischer-style circular USB port for harsh conditions. (Fischer ports are sealed and have IP68 ratings, higher than the laptop itself.) Note that the Toughbook 55 comes standard with USB and Ethernet ports, so adding them to the rear expansion slot gives you additional ones.
Meanwhile, the front slot can be configured with a fingerprint reader or a reader for SmartCards, of either the contactless or insert-able variety. The final expansion slot for xPAKs is mostly useful if you want to add a second SSD for additional storage (512GB or 1TB modules are available), but this large slot on the bottom of the chassis can also accept a DVD drive or even a barcode reader, which is a new option for the Toughbook 55 Mk2.
If you don’t opt for any of these expansion ports, the laptop will come with port covers held in place by tiny Philips-head screws. Removing the covers to install xPAKs later is easy enough to do when you’re indoors with a flat surface, though beware that the screws aren’t captive, so I wouldn’t try it under harsh field conditions.
In addition to the xPAK slots, several other slots on the Toughbook 55’s chassis are covered with doors, held in place, and easily accessible for repairs, swaps, or upgrades. They include the dock mounting port, the main SSD used as the laptop’s boot drive, and the memory slots. And of course the removable batteries—an essential feature on a rugged laptop—are even more easily accessible, held in place with locking tabs that require no tools to open. If you configure the Toughbook 55 with both batteries, you can hot-swap them to keep the laptop in continuous use away from a power outlet.
Our review unit comes with a single battery and no xPAKs, as well as an Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor with vPro support, 16GB of memory, and a 512GB SSD. Other options include an Intel Core i5-1145G7 (also with vPro), up to 64GB of memory, and a 1TB or 2TB SSD.
Opt for the Bright 1,000-Nit Screen
The Toughbook 55 unit we tested also features an upgraded 14-inch full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) touch-enabled display. This is “upgraded” because even though a full HD resolution is fairly standard for 14-inch business laptops in general, that isn’t the case for rugged laptops, whose screens must withstand more abuse. The entry-level Toughbook 55 comes with an HD (1,366-by-768-pixel) screen; we recommend avoiding this low-resolution option if your budget allows.
The upgraded full HD screen also adds a more powerful backlight to make it usable outdoors. It achieved close to its extraordinary 1,000-nit rating in our tests, and I found that it is easily viewable outdoors on a sunny day at maximum brightness. The brightest non-rugged laptops typically have screens that max out at around 500 nits of brightness. On the other hand, the Toughbook 55’s screen isn’t great at displaying colors accurately, achieving just over 70% of the sRGB color gamut in our tests. That’s par for the course for rugged laptops, though other business laptops can typically display the entire sRGB gamut.
The upgraded screen also features a capacitive touch layer, which means you can interact with Windows 10 using a gloved or bare fingertip, as well as the included passive stylus. When not in use, the stylus slides into a nifty slot on the right edge.
The Toughbook 55’s backlit keyboard is comfortable, with plenty of travel distance and no discernible flex in the keyboard deck when you strike forcefully. (Of course, there shouldn’t be any flex on a rugged laptop.) You can even assign a backlight color—red, green, white, or blue—using a pre-installed Panasonic settings app. The keyboard is designed to withstand spills, as is the cramped but accurate electrostatic touchpad. While you can easily replace the keyboard by removing the three screws at the top edge, the touchpad and its twin buttons are not user-serviceable.
An Excellent 1080p Camera
Whether or not you configure the Toughbook 55 with a fingerprint reader, you can always take advantage of the excellent webcam with IR sensors to enable Windows Hello face-recognition logins. In addition to supporting face recognition, the camera also features a top-notch 1080p video resolution, and output appeared free of noise and other annoying artifacts in my testing in a brightly lit room.
In addition to the optional xPAKs, the Toughbook 55 comes with an extensive array of standard connectivity options. There’s a USB Type-C port with Thunderbolt 4 support, two USB Type-A connectors, a microSD card slot, an HDMI 2.0 output, a gigabit Ethernet connector, and a 3.5mm audio jack. All of these connectors are shielded from the elements behind fold-down doors that snap closed when nothing is connected.
The Toughbook 55 also comes with extensive wireless connectivity options in addition to the standard Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.1. Configured with an optional 4G LTE modem, the laptop can access the FirstNet dedicated network that Verizon and AT&T offer, as well as CBRS band 48. There’s also an optional dedicated GPS module, as well as a passthrough for a dual high-gain antenna to boost signal strength. There’s no 5G support, but the laptop is dual-SIM capable using both the nano SIM card slot as well as an eSIM.
Panasonic accurately notes that the Toughbook 55’s speakers are crisp and powerful, rated for 92 decibels of output. They’re not particularly enjoyable to listen to, though, with tinny audio and hardly any hint of bass.
Testing the Toughbook 55: Intel ‘Tiger Lake’ Inside
The Toughbook 55 offers the latest Intel 11th Generation “Tiger Lake” processors and Intel Iris Xe graphics, so its performance is similar to what you can expect from a business-focused ultraportable laptop like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. While the Toughbook 55 is obviously bulkier than the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, much of that additional bulk goes to the customizable xPAKs and the ruggedization, so there isn’t a lot of room left over for innovative cooling hardware to eke out more performance from the CPU and other computing components.
As it stands, I noticed no sluggishness while installing apps, browsing the web, or performing other common PC tasks over the course of several days testing the Toughbook 55. To see how well this laptop benchmarks, let’s compare its results on our performance tests with a few key alternatives, including the Getac S410 G4, the Toughbook G2, and the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. We’ll also add in the Framework Laptop, which is similarly customizable to the Toughbook 55, but not ruggedized and aimed more at consumers and tinkerers. Here are all the specs of these laptops in the versions we tested for reference:
They’ve all got 16GB of memory and speedy SSDs, and with the exception of the Toughbook G2, they all have 11th Generation Tiger Lake Core i7 processors, so it’s unsurprising that they all perform roughly the same on our PCMark 10 test suite. While the Toughbook 55’s overall score and storage scores are at the low end of the ranges, they’re still comfortably above the thresholds we consider to represent excellent performance. (See more about how we test laptops.)
The Geekbench test is similar to the PCMark 10 overall score, but isolates the CPU’s contribution to performance, and the comparative results are largely the same. So too do we find similar results when editing photos in PugetBench’s Adobe Photoshop benchmark or rendering a 3D image in Maxon’s Cinebench R23 app.
The only performance outlier is the video render test, in which we use the open-source HandBrake to convert a 4K video file to 1080p. Here, both Toughbooks took a few minutes longer to complete their tasks. It’s possible that Panasonic’s thermal management system is requiring some CPU throttling during this sustained, intensive workout, which stresses all of the processing cores and threads to the max.
It’s hard to imagine a situation in which you’d want to play graphics-intensive games on a rugged laptop, but if you do, you can expect fairly low performance that’s typical of laptops without dedicated graphics processors. As it stands, the Iris Xe graphics processors in these laptops offer well below 60 frames per second (fps) on demanding game simulations like the GFXBench Car Chase and 3DMark Time Spy. Less-demanding titles may yet be playable on the Toughbook 55, as the 70fps result on the more forgiving Aztec Ruins test demonstrates.
Battery life is always difficult to measure, but it’s even more difficult for rugged laptops, which typically have two or even three batteries. I ran our standard video rundown test on the Toughbook 55 with one battery installed, and got a bit more than 11 hours, which is impressive for a laptop with such a bright screen, though not spectacular. Our test involves setting screen brightness to 50% and putting the laptop in Airplane Mode before playing a locally stored 720p video file until the battery conks out.
Panasonic claims that the Toughbook 55 is good for up to 38 hours of battery life with the optional second battery installed and the screen set to a brightness level of 150 nits, or 15% of its rated capacity. That’s definitely a best case scenario. As mentioned before, though, with the ability to hot-swap batteries, the budget to buy a lot of them, and the forethought to charge them all, you could run the Toughbook 55 away from an outlet indefinitely.
An Excellent Choice for First Responders
The Toughbook 55 is a semi-rugged laptop, a term that Panasonic itself uses to denote a machine that will withstand the stresses of a first responder’s daily routine, though can’t be submerged in water or used in a dust storm. Freed from the need to meet the ultimate rugged certifications, the Toughbook 55 instead sports a relatively compact chassis and oodles of customization options. For many buyers the similar Getac B360 will be a better choice, since it’s roughly the same size and has slightly better rugged certifications. The B360 therefore retains our Editors’ Choice award.
For organizations who already have Toughbook infrastructure like vehicle docks and who are able to negotiate favorable pricing with Panasonic, though, the Toughbook 55 could be a better choice. Add in easily swappable components (like a barcode reader) that many other rugged machines don’t offer, and you’ve got an excellent semi-rugged laptop.
