Hands-on with the £1,500 Windows 8 Pro Panasonic FZ-G1 Toughpad

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The Panasonic FZ-G1 Toughpad is not aimed at you. Well, it is if you're in charge of your company's IT budget and have a team that often works in challenging outdoors environments, but if you're the average user just looking for something to watch iPlayer on, you're not the FZ-G1's target audience.

The device is Panasonic's first Windows 8-based tablet, and its first Toughpad to run the OS (the company's two previous Toughpads, the CF-D1 and CF-H2, ran Windows 7 and the latter had more than a passing resemblance to an Etch A Sketch).

The FZ-G1 is actually one of three new tablets from Panasonic, but is the only one to sport the full Windows 8 Pro operating system. The other two tablets — the FZ-A1 and the JT-B1 — run versions of Android instead and come with 10-inch and 7-inch screens, respectively.

If for some reason you'd rather the tablet ran Windows 7 instead of Windows 8 (not an option I'd go for considering Windows 7 performance on a touchscreen) you can request a downgrade.

Given its Toughpad moniker, you'd expect the FZ-G1 to be able to take a bit of a beating and keep on running. While I didn't subject it to anything too extreme (mostly drop tests, some accidental) it certainly kept on working despite the knocks it received. Panasonic says it will withstand drops of up to around four feet — 120cm, to be precise — thanks to its rugged shell and rubberised corners.

That said, I'd have expected the FZ-G1 (Panasonic is sticking with the immediately forgettable and confusing naming scheme for its Toughpads) to come with slightly better 'tough' credentials. While it will withstand a light shower and has dust ingress protection, it most definitely isn't waterproof and shouldn't be submerged in liquid. That's particularly surprising given Sony managed to make its Xperia Z tablet dustproof and fully waterproof for submersion up to 30 minutes — and nothing about that device screams tough.