Features and Design

The R7 is a sub-notebook, and as such it’s designed solely to offer amazing battery life while still being useable for day-to-day tasks, unlike a handheld PC or similar. It comes in 11 different colors and numerous configurations are available. 

Basic Specs

Despite its teeny, tiny footprint the R7 is actually packing a decent amount of power for a notebook of this size. It’s a Centrino notebook, so it has an Intel chipset, CPU and wireless. The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo processor at 1.2GHz, and it’s the low-voltage type that sips battery juice. It comes with 1GB of RAM, 80211.G wireless and a 160GB hard drive.

Small, Yet Rugged

It might seem like an oxymoron, but just because a notebook is small doesn’t mean it can’t handle the rigors of daily life. Though Panasonic doesn’t make any guarantees regarding the R7’s ability to withstand specific punishment, it does claim that an R7 in its test lab was able to withstand 110lbs. and an 11.8” drop. The hard drive is also shock-mounted to help prevent a head crash in case the notebook is dropped.

Who says a Toughbook can’t be cute? The R7’s offered in several different colors.

Expansion Options

As a mega-portable notebook, the R7 does sacrifice some expandability to the gods of portability. The biggest drawback is that it lacks an optical drive, which is common for notebooks of this size. However, it does offer two USB ports, VGA-out, Gigabit Ethernet and it has an expansion slot.

Upgrades

The model that was sent to us for review is just one of many different configurations available. Not only can you get more hard drive space, but you can also get an R7 with a bigger hard drive, a slightly faster CPU and Vista Business instead of XP Pro (though we wouldn’t recommend it unless you upgraded to 2GB of RAM.