The CF-W5 is the baby of Panasonic's Toughbook range, a thin (268 x 210 x 44mm), ultra-portable laptop weighing in at a very creditable 1.4kg including the power adapter, but the protection comes at a price.

Part of Panasonic's business rugged range of notebooks, the Toughbook CF-W5 can withstand a drop of 30cm without it suffering any ill effect. Mind you, if you buy any decent notebook in the CF-W5's price range these days and it doesn't survive a drop like that then there is something wrong, but to give Panasonic its due, not many are this small and thin.

Style-wise it looks quite industrial, but in a good way. Finished in metallic silver the wrist pads have a corrugated finish, which sounds odd but makes the Toughbook CF-W5 stand out from the crowd, as does the ridged magnesium alloy lid. The keyboard has small keys which take a bit of getting used to, but the keys are well made and responsive, as is the oddly circular touch-pad.

Powering the CF-W5 is an Intel Core Solo U1400, an ultra-low voltage CPU running at 1.2GHz, which uses just 5.5W of power when running at full throttle. All of which means that although the CF-W5 won't move the earth with its performance, its battery life is stunning - of which more later.

Backing up the CPU is just 512MB of DDR2 memory, half of what you normally find as standard in a notebook these days, but there is a spare SO-DIMM slot so you could add up to a gigabyte of extra memory. It might be a wise idea to invest in extra memory as the integrated Intel graphics can swallow up to 128MB of system memory, so the more the better.

Although the Toughbook CF-W5 has badges on it telling you it has an optical drive, it takes a minute or two to realise where it is housed. Flicking the eject button on the front of the chassis opens up the whole right-hand side of the wrist pad to reveal a top-loading, dual format DVD burner - very clever, and a trick that Panasonic has used in some previous Toughbook models.

You'll be needing this optical drive to keep the hard drive free of clutter, as the CF-W5 only has a 60GB disk, which is perhaps a bit mean in this day and age. The 12.1-inch screen is also a little disappointing as its uses a standard 4:3 aspect ratio, not a widescreen format like many of its ultraportable competitors, so its native resolution of 1,024 x 768 pixels looks a little short of working area in comparison.

Back to the battery life of the CF-W5. As standard it comes with a 5,200mAh battery and, aided by the low-power CPU, it has some stunning battery figures; five hours while watching DVDs and a whisker under seven hours when using it for normal office work. Very impressive. If you want to use it on a journey to read an e-book then you will almost be able get through War and Peace, as it offers just under eight hours of life in this mode.

Expensive, yes, and lacking in some of the features its competitors have, but the Toughbook CF-W5 has a great blend of low weight and incredible battery life that makes it an ideal weapon for the mobile business user.