What Would You Say To A 7-Inch Windows 8.1 Tablet With A Haswell Processor?

Things on the Windows powered tablet front are slowly starting to heat up, as hardware vendors around the globe are creating both horizontal and vertical solutions to grab their slice of the pie.

Panasonic, for instance has targeted the vertical market — specialized solutions for business and professional usage like its massive 4K slate. And now the company is back with what is the world’s smallest (yet fairly powerful) Windows 8.1 Pro tablet in a 7-inch form factor.

The rugged device is powered by an Intel Core i5 Haswell processor, though featuring drastically reduced power consumption.

Dubbed the Toughpad FZ-M1, this mobile unit houses a Core i5-4302Y vPro processor that consumes just 4.5W of power. Memory choices hover between 4GB DDR3 as default and 8GB optional. Same goes for storage, with a 128GB solid state derive standard and a 256B choice optional.

Other hardware features are standard enough, with a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen with 1280 by 800 pixels resolution, a 2 megapixel front camera and 5 megapixel rear one — though an 8 megapixel back snapper is also available for those that want enhanced imaging capabilities.

The slate weighs 540 grams, though being of the rugged variety, comes with 18mm thickness.

Keeping in mind the fact that the device is targeted for businesses, enterprises or outdoor field usage, the company has also developed some custom accessories for this tablet. Oh, and battery life is not too shabby either with reported 8 hours usage time on a 2 hours charge.

Be prepared to part with mucho dinero, however.

The Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 starts at a magnificently high $1947 — excessive for consumers, but the company has also promised a lite cousin later this year that features an Intel Celeron chip.