Daylight-visible, widescreen, LED-backlit touchscreen; good performance and battery life; plenty of configuration options and accessories available
No front-facing camera; no flash-card reader; weight could be an issue; option-heavy spec can get pricey
If you need a rugged tablet PC that can do a full day's work in the field, Motion's widescreen J3400 will prove a very satisfactory choice, although it's not the lightest tablet we've seen, and you can rack up a big price tag if you pile on the options
7.8 Very good
Reviewed by Charles McLellan
Tablet PCs haven't become the mainstream products that Microsoft hoped when Bill Gates introduced the company's version of the concept at Comdex in 2001. Nevertheless, a number of leading vendors, including Dell, HP, Fujitsu Siemens and Toshiba, offer tablet PCs. And there's definitely life in the tablet PC ecosystem because it also supports several specialist companies, selling mostly into vertical markets like healthcare, construction, education and the military. Perhaps the best known of these vendors is Motion.
The company's latest tablet is the rugged, 12.1-inch, slate-style J3400. The specification that we review here costs around £2,340.
Design
Motion's previous 12.1-inch tablet, which it will continue to offer, is the XGA-resolution LE1700. The new J3400 bows to modern tastes by providing a widescreen display with a native WXGA resolution of 1,280x800 pixels. The LED-backlit 'View Anywhere' touchscreen in our review sample combines relatively low power consumption with very good viewing angles and outdoor readability -- essential for this tablet's target market of users who need to 'walk and compute', often outdoors.
The wide-format screen makes the J3400 slightly less square than the LE1700 -- 323 by 231 by 23mm, compared to 296 by 245 by 22mm. The J3400 accommodates two 30Wh batteries, and weighs 1.63kg with one fitted and 1.81kg with both in place. It's not exactly lightweight, especially with both batteries, but it feels reasonably comfortable when held in the crook of an arm, and there are attachment points for a shoulder strap -- likely to prove necessary for anyone using the J3400 extensively on the hoof.
As mentioned above, the J3400 is a ruggedised tablet designed to cope with outdoor use in challenging environments. Specifically, it satisfies the MIL-STD-810F drop-test standard -- it can survive a 36-inch drop onto a plywood-over-concrete surface -- and reaches IP52 specifications for dust and moisture ingress. A '52' IP code signifies partial -- but not complete -- protection from dust and 'no harmful effect' from dripping water. The J3400 certainly feels solid, with a magnesium-alloy chassis and rubberised cladding on the rear.
With the system in landscape mode, the screen-side controls are on the right-hand side, sitting in the 3cm-wide bezel. From the top, they are: the microphone and ambient light sensor, camera button, 'QuickNav' button, 'Dashboard' button, 'Escape' button and four-way directional pad. QuickNav is a large stylus-friendly on-screen keyboard/application launcher, while Dashboard is a convenient utility for tweaking display, audio, pen and tablet, wireless, power and security settings.
On the left-hand side, behind protective hinged rubber flaps, are audio and Ethernet ports, a pair of quite closely spaced USB connectors and a VGA port. The power input is also on this side. At the top of the right-hand side is a slot for the chunky digitiser stylus. This is quite fiercely spring-loaded and, if you're not careful, you can launch the stylus quite some distance. Next there's a removable cover protecting an ExpressCard/34 slot and a Smart Card slot, followed by the power button, a fingerprint reader and, finally, a Ctrl-Alt-Del button and a battery-status LED.
At the back is a 2-megapixel camera, a connector for the optional docking station and a pair of battery bays, beneath one of which is a SIM-card slot for the integrated mobile-broadband/GPS module. The docking connector has a rubberised flap that matches the back of the system, but this isn't hinged or tethered in any way, and could easily be lost. We were also disappointed by the lack of a front-facing camera to complement the rear-mounted unit. Videoconferencing is something that mobile tablet users are likely to require, and front-facing cameras are routinely offered at relatively little extra expense by many smart-phone vendors.
We received a couple of peripheral options with our review kit. The £100 J3400 Mobile Keyboard, which opens up to provide a stand into which the slate-style system unit slots, turns it into a more of a conventional notebook. To this end, the Mobile Keyboard includes a two-button touchpad. If you need to take the keyboard with you, it fits neatly onto the back of the system unit, held in place by magnetic areas in each corner. We wondered why it didn't attach to the front, to protect the screen in transit, but Motion expressed confidence in the display's durability as it stands.
The second peripheral is the £200 J3400 FlexDock, a tilt-adjustable docking station that provides four USB ports, a DisplayPort connector, an Ethernet port, a DVI connector and a pair of audio jacks. With a USB keyboard and mouse plugged in, and a network connection, this makes the J3400 a perfectly acceptable office-bound system should the need arise, although you can only dock the J3400 in landscape orientation. There's also a bay at the top of the FlexDock where you can recharge a third battery pack.
Features
Our review sample of the J3400 used the ultra-low voltage 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400, which has 3MB of Level 2 cache and a 800MHz front-side bus. It's also available with the slightly less sprightly 1.2GHz SU9300. All variants use the Mobile Intel GS45 Express chipset and its GMA 4500MHD integrated graphics. The operating system is Windows Vista Business, and our system came with the maximum 4GB of DDR3 RAM to drive it along at a decent clip.
Another speed-boosting component is the 64GB Samsung solid-state drive, which also makes sense for a rugged system that's likely to take a few knocks. If you need more storage, conventional hard disks with 80GB or 120GB of capacity can be fitted instead. These 1.8-inch, 5,400rpm drives are shock-protected and come with a DataGuard accelerometer that senses an impending impact and parks the drive heads safely.
Wireless connectivity is excellent, as you'd expect from an outdoor-bound tablet PC. Intel's WiFi Link 5300AGN provides the (802.11a/b/g, draft n) wireless networking, while short-range connections are handled by Bluetooth 2.1. Our review sample also had the mobile-broadband option, a Qualcomm Gobi unit that supports both HSDPA and GPS -- the SIM card slot is under one of the battery compartments at the back. Wired connectivity is provided in the shape of Gigabit Ethernet, but there's no modem.
There are two battery compartments at the back, for the pair of supplied hot-swappable 30Wh Li-ion battery packs. Both have indicator LEDs to show the amount of charge remaining. If you opt for the docking station, you can charge a third battery in the slot provided for a maximum of 90Wh of mains-free power.
Performance
Our J3400 review sample had a couple of things going for it as far as performance is concerned -- 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 64GB solid-state drive. Both are reflected in good component scores (4.9 and 5.9 out of 5.9 respectively) in Windows Vista's Windows Experience Index (WEI). The overall WEI score corresponds to the lowest component score, which was for graphics (3.2), with gaming graphics (3.3) close behind. The processor score (4.6) was more than respectable and, overall, we found the J3400 reasonably quick to boot -- for a Vista machine -- and responsive once up and running. The system's integrated graphics are unlikely to cause any performance bottlenecks for most tablet-usage modes.
Motion claims a battery life of 3.5 hours with one 30Wh pack fitted, and 7.4 hours with two. We measured the system's power consumption using a Voltcraft VC940 digital multimeter with the system in 'performance' and 'power save' modes, under a variety of conditions, and got results ranging from 10.4W (power save/idling) to 22W (performance/fully loaded, with Wi-Fi active). This translates to battery life (from two battery packs totalling 60Wh) of between 2.7 and 5.8 hours. This suggests that, if you want to be absolutely certain of a full 8-hour day's worth of battery-powered operation, you may need to invest in a third battery pack.
Conclusion
If you need a rugged tablet PC that can do a full day's work in the field, Motion's widescreen J3400 will do the job very satisfactorily. It's not the lightest tablet we've seen, and the specification reviewed here is expensive, at around £2,340. To that you may need to add £100 for the Mobile Keyboard, £200 for the FlexDock and £90 for the Work Anywhere Kit, consisting of a shoulder strap, tablet pouch and battery sleeve. The standard warranty is for one year, and you'll pay £200 for three years' cover, plus another £100 for a one-year display-protection plan. Clearly, you can rack up a big price tag if you pile on the options.
Additional editing by Charles Kloet
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