Archive for the ‘Semi Rugged’ Category

Working in the field in direct sunlight has always been challenging. Most Tablet PC vendors now offer some sort of daylight readable display. Beware though, not all daylight displays are created equal.

Some hardware vendors try to pass off daylight readability in terms of brightness, and brightness is measured in nits. So you might see a claim like “500 nits outdoor display.”

We all love to measure things with numbers, but nits is not a good measure of daylight readability.

Simply cranking up the brightness with a stronger backlight on a display causes a number of issues:

1. Significantly reduced battery life
2. Washed out colours
3. Low contrast

The very best solution is actually a display that is readable on little to no brightness on.

In other words, the more readable it is with the least possible nits the better. To achieve the best outdoor readability, you need to address:

• Reflection – Minimising sunlight reflection with Anti-reflective screen coatings
• Diffusing – Reflective, transmissive and transflective technologies work to diffuse light out effectively
• Viewing angles – some achieve up to 180 degrees in all directions, so you can read the display easily at any angle
• Contrast – This is the true benchmark of daylight readability.

According to Rugged PC Review, the effective contrast of an outdoor display is:

1 + (emitted light / reflected light)

So if the reflected light is high, the emitted light needs to be higher just for the screen to be readable.

Getting reflection, diffusion, viewing angles and contrast right can mean that your display is readable outdoors with very little brightness to speak of.

The new motion J3400 is by far the best example of this. As we demonstrated in our product video, you can actually read this display in direct sunlight on the ZERO brightness setting.

That means that you can go out into the field and run much, much closer to the manufacturers claimed battery life of 7.5 hours.

The J3400 is actually the best outdoor readable screen that we’ve seen on a Tablet PC by far and it sports only 320nits. 

A display that has to run at 1000nits to be viewable will of course, not be so good on batteries. So if you have to sacrifice hours in the field just to be able to read the screen, how daylight readable is it really?

Motion Computing claim that their new J3400 has the best outdoor display on the market. That’s a big claim to make, so we had to check it out for ourselves.

Verdict: J3400 has the best outdoor display on the market.

How? Motion have adopted a technology called Hydis AFFS+ for the J3400. According to Motion, that creates a reflective and a transflective area in the display. So when you’re outside with the J3400, the sun is actually working for you, and not against!

Of course, the colour on the display do wash out when you’re in direct sun, but while other displays struggle, the J3400’s Ultraview Anywhere display is still extremely viewable.

What we found is that you do not have to have the display at full brightness to see the screen outside, and that allows you to significantly extend your operational battery life.

Example 1: J3400 compared to Toshiba M700 with anti-glare coating in direct sunlight.

Example 2: Compared to a gateway notebook PC:

These photos come from the comprehensive Rugged PC Review article. Here’s what they had to say about the J3400’s display:

“The J3400 display’s outdoor performance is simply superb. The perfect viewing angle from all directions means you never have to tilt and angle the tablet to see what’s on the screen. The display itself absolutely excels in eliminating unwanted reflection or diffusion. Where other displays appear matte or milky or are overcome with reflections, the J3400′s stays perfectly readable. In head-on, direct sunlight the display is still readable, here thanks to the inner reflectance of the Hydis LCD."

Conrad H. Blickenstorfer, Editor-in-Chief
RuggedPCReview – www.ruggedpcreview.com

Out tip: This is the biggest development in field computing since the Tablet PC came to market.

When you build a Tablet PC for use in the field like the new Motion J3400, it has to be built rugged.

Motion independently tested the new J3400 to IP52 and MIL 810F operational ruggedness standards.

They also filmed the tests so that you can take a look for yourself!

MIL 810F Drop Test

IP5x Dust Ingress Test

IPx2 Water Resistance Test

So there you have it… a field ready rugged slate Tablet PC.

Now whatever you do folks, don’t try this with your Tablet PC at home!

But… here’s what happens when you drop the Semi-Rugged Motion F5.

Most Tablet PC models are designed with shock absorbent bumpers to withstand a simple bump or a drop. For the average Tablet PC, you’re going to see some superficial damage, but the contents (the expensive bits) will remain intact.

In this case, as you can see, the F5 withstands a corner impact from over 1 metre. With it’s semi rugged design, the F5 will take more of a knocking than the average Tablet PC before it breaks.

As noted in the video though, there is no warranty that is going to cover you against dropping your Tablet PC, even with the Motion F5. So seriously, don’t try this at home.