Panasonic Toughpad FZ-R1 Mobile POS Tablet

Panasonic announced their latest Toughpad FZ-R1 tablet yesterday, as what the company calls the first all-in-one mobile POS with EMV payment technology for retail, running Windows 8.1.

So as you can imagine, this tablet is not built or shaped as solid as the regular Toughpad's that are manufactured for the construction industry and other hard hat industries. But a consumer tablet this is not. It's simply another tablet that replaces the terminals of before, with a somewhat more intuitive tablet user interface, much in the same way that Samsung Galaxy Tab Active was built to do.

Then there's the price. You can get four iPad's for the price of one FZ-R1, meaning a entry price of $1799 when it's launched the coming spring.

Tabletmonkeys

The high price doesn't come from the 7-inch 1280 x 800 display, the Intel Celeron processor, or the 2-4GB RAM, but rather from the enterprise-grade security features like Trusted Platform Module, integrated EMV reader with PIN pad, encrypted magnetic stripe reader, optional POS cradle, barcode reader, and the many configuration options that makes it possible for retailers to build a Toughpad that suits their specific needs.

– Tom Bowen