Expensive, the Panasonic Let’s Note also known as ToughtBooks laptops are among the most impressive PCs available on the market. Dedicated for those of you who fancy performance, durability and strength rather than Style, the Let’s Note Series of laptops mean business and nothing else.

Panasonic Let’s Note S9
- Intel Core i5-520M vPro @ 2.40GHz
- 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM (Max 4GB)
- Intel QM 57 Express Chipset
- 250 GB HDD @ 5400rpm
- 12.1” LCD with a 1280 x 800 resolution

First Impression
The S9 is not what you can call slim and sleek. Sony for example has better and more design-oriented alternative if you are more interested in look. But the first things that will stun you with a S9 is, despite its quite bulky look (Bulkier casing than its direct competitors) it is in fact extremely light and despite its DVD Burner, 12.1” screen and strong casing (Shock resistant, Waterproof Keyboard…) our S9 just weighs 1.32kg.
On the downside, when you get used to play with a MacBooPro for example, the plastic touch of the S9 is not the most thrilling experience ever, but on the other hand, an aluminum casing will add weight to our computer and will definitively not sustain deformations as easily as the S9 plastic one.

Everyday Usage.
The first things that we tried to test on this computer was to check the manufacturer’s battery life claim of 14h, something that any one of us would love to get on any “Powerful” PC running an i5 CPU. And what a better test than to simply use the computer as we would normally use it with a 75% brightness. So we fired-up our preferred web browser (Basic Surfing), kick-in MSN, IRC, start PhotoShop working on some design while listening to music, then took a break and started watching a 2h30 movie stored on the S9 HDD. Nothing too fancy or demanding too much power, except maybe the video part, but still we managed to get 6h30 of battery life out of this experience, and we could get even more if we just used the S9 as a minimalistic Office-oriented tool as well as using Panasonic Power management tools.

Now when you are working with a more “Power Hungry” software, this could be in our case PhotoShop and handling heavy images or PSD, as well as encoding or ripping videos on the fly, we have to admit that Panasonic’s choice of CPU, a i5-520M vPro @ 2.40Ghz that was blasting our 2.40GHz Core 2 Duo installed on 2 of our MacBookPros where one was running Boot Camp with Windows 7 for the occasion. Yes, the advantage of the i5 CPU over the Core 2 Duo is without a doubt its capacity to over-clock itself to 2.93GHz when needed thanks to its Turbo Mode.

Now for sure you would love to get some benchmark, but well, to be very honest with you, those data will just look ridiculous, indeed the S9 is an Office-oriented PC with its 5400rpm HDD and its Intel Video chipset. But you will have to take our word for it and yes, while you may not be able to enjoy playing 3D video games with this S9, you will on the other hand get better experience with this i5 powered PC than you can on an actual Core 2 Duo with the same CPU Speed.

Conclusion
Light, a good battery life, great CPU and capable of resisting to the worst treatment thanks to its “tough” body, the S9 is the Japanese equivalent for us to an IBM Thinkpad, yep the good old ones before the Lenovo era. Unfortunately expensive mainly due to its “Tought” pedigree, the S9 however includes a “Crap” free experience, by that we mean that no useless and additional software will be installed by Panasonic on your PC including the addition of a WiMax module in Japan.

So if you have been disappointed by Lenovo’s poor material choice lately, the Panasonic Let’s Note S9 series or Toughbook S Series are something worth checking.