The difference between a plain vanilla consumer design and rugged machinery is already evident in the pictures below. While most of today's consumer tablets can't even be opened anymore, the xTablet T1150 has no fewer than four externally accessible openings that allow customization with various modules and components. The battery, too, can easily be replaced. And there's a snap-mount anchor to quick insertion and removal into mounting systems.

In terms of construction, the xTablet T1150 consists of a polycarbonate plastic housing with an internal magnesium chassis that's screwed onto the front part of the housing. Mounted on the chassis are the LCD on one side and motherboard, components and modules on the other. The front part of the housing is implemented as a shallow open box. The flat rear part is coffered in many areas for reinforcement, and the majority is painted silver.

Below you can see what the xTablet T1150 looks like inside:

Sealing between the two parts of the housing is of a tongue-and-groove design, with a hard plastic lip on the front part of the housing pressing against a replaceable o-ring seal sitting inside a groove around the perimeter of the backplate.

The 40 watt-hour rechargeable Li-Polymer battery of the T1150 fits flush into its compartment. The battery has its own friction seal, which is necessary as the battery compartment includes not only the battery terminal openings into the interior of the tablet, but also openings for the unit's microSD and micro SIM slots.

The battery is secured in place with a spring-loaded lever that can be locked in place. The battery, which is hot-swappable, is unlikely to come loose during operation.

Unlike the interior of many Windows tablets, which are jam-packed full of electronics, the T1150 looks remarkably tidy inside. The main body of the motherboard measures a mere 3 x 4 inches, though it has a peninsula extension with the card slots and various ribbon cables emanating from it.

There's a full-length mini PCIe slot. No other modules are in sight. Almost all I/O is edge-mounted on the little motherboard. This is a very highly integrated and very professionally executed design.

The interior layout is visually dominated by various miniaturized ribbon cables that connect the small motherboard to all the antennae, cameras, speakers, and other things mounted inside the T1150. What's impressive is that all these ribbon cables have their own shallow channels carved into the magnesium chassis. Even the tiny industrial-grade 1D/2D barcode reader has its own custom-cut nook in the metal chassis, and so have both the tiny documentation camera and its accompanying LED illuminator.

The colorful picture to the right was taken with our Flir One infrared camera. It shows the thermal situation inside the xTablet T1150, with darker areas the coolest and bright yellow the hottest. Since the xTablet T1550 doesn't have a fan to remove heat, good thermal management is essential. As can be seen, the area where the xTablet T1150's processor resides is hottest. In our performance benchmark testing, we measured a maximum surface temperature of about 94F, not even human body temperature.

As for as protection goes, each of the tablet's peripheral port openings has its own separate protective door with a friction seal. These individual port covers are actually all cut from one single piece of rubbery material, which can easily be replaced. For drop/bump protection, the plastic housing itself has a rubbery protective layer that goes around the entire perimeter of the tablet, and also has small integrated corner bumpers. These bumper areas contain anchors for larger protective bumpers that screw on. If the extra protection afforded by the heavy duty anchors is not needed, they can be taken off and the tablet can be used without them, making for a smaller footprint.

Shown below are a couple of interesting details of the xTablet T1150. On the left the tablet's tiny camera and LED illuminator snuggly sitting in their own cutouts in the metal chassis. In the middle the two-part protective corner bumpers that are individually replaceable. On the right a closeup of the T1150's tiny 1D/2D industrial grade barcode reader. Sure, there are smartphone apps that can read barcodes with the phone camera. Having a dedicated scanner is much faster and much more accurate.

The details below: On the left the slots for the tablet's micro SIM and micro SD card. So the battery must be removed to get at those slots ad they represent additional openings to the interior. Not ideal. On the right detail of the sealing design between the two housing halves. The seal is replaceable, not too complex, and should work well.

Where does the X5 prefix come from? That's because having used the i3/i5/i7 prefixes in their more expensive Core processors to indicate good/better/best, Intel apparently wanted to apply that system to their Atom processors as well. So the X5-8550 chip in this xTablet would be a mid-range offering with more capabilities and features than an X3 CPU, but not quite as much as an X7-class processor.

So it's no surprise that the xTablet T1150 has a very good display. Measuring 10.1 inches diagonally it seems better suited to serious Microsoft Windows-based work than 7 or 8-inch tablet. It offers 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution in 16:10 wide-format. That's three times as many pixels as the 1024 x 768 XGA format that was commonly used in rugged tablets (even ones with larger screen sizes) for many years, and is still being used today.

On a 10.1-inch tablet screen, 1920 x 1200 translates into 224 points per inch (ppi), which is in the same range as Apple's"retina" MacBooks. That means even small text looks very sharp and crisp on the display. The xTablet T1150 uses 10-point projected capacitive multi-touch for effortless tapping, panning, pinching and zooming. While we've never been fans of capacitive touch on small screen Windows tablets, that's much less of an issue on a larger display like the T1150's, and Windows 10 is significantly better suited to capacitive touch than its predecessors.

In everyday use, the display works very well. The spec sheet claims 470 nits luminance. To put that in perspective, most standard laptops offer around 250 nits, iPads are generally in the 400 nits range, and displays specially built to use in sunlight may have over 1,000 nits. Subjectively, the T1150 screen is nice and bright, and very vibrant indoors. Outdoors, of course, perceived brightness depends on how bright it is outdoors on any given day and working condition.

The three pictures below show what you can expect from the T1150. The picture on the left was taken on a bright sunshiny day in the shade. That way, the display looks bright and offer very good contrast. The middle picture shows the impact of refection. Like almost all modern tablets, the T1150 has a glossy display surface. Depending on how the tablet is positioned, there will be reflections. The picture to the right shows the tablet reflecting the blue sky.

We cannot overemphasize how important a wide viewing angle is for a satisfying, non-disruptive viewing experience. Older and lesser display technologies are prone to often dramatic color and contrast shifts when viewed from different angles, something that we don't consider acceptable anymore. The xTablet T1150's display is immune to such shifts, which makes it a pleasure to use.

Cameras integrated into handheld and tablet computers have historically underperformed compared to even low-end dedicated cameras and, more recently, the cameras available in virtually every smartphone. Things have gotten better on the built-in camera front, but usually not enough to eliminate the need of taking along a dedicated camera or smartphone if photo or video documentation is needed on the job. This remains a concern given that the cameras in leading smartphones are now capable of excellent picture and video quality.

As has already been the case during several recent tablet reviews, we couldn't fully examine the capabilities of the xTablet T1150 cameras. That's because the Windows 10 default imaging app only offers the most basic functionality, and so we couldn't test all the usual settings integrated cameras are doubtlessly capable of. System integrators and most customers will likely want more comprehensive software with all the usual settings.

In our testing, still images defaulted to 3264 x 1836 pixel, and video to 1920 x 1080 pixel in nominally 30 frames per second. In still photography, auto-focus worked fine, images were surprisingly crisp and sharp, and the camera does not over-compress images. Video was sharp enough for almost all purposes and did not lag behind. It pays to take time shooting pictures as there's a slight lag between pressing the shutter and the image being taken.

The front camera, though capable of 2-megapixel images, defaulted to 1280 x 720 pixel (720p). It worked more than well enough for conferencing.

Below are pictures shot with the xTablet T1150 documentation camera in 3264 x 1836 pixel resolution. That's less than 6 megapixel, but it is one of only two image sizes the (exceedingly basic) Windows 10 camera app provides. To see a full-size image of the compilation, click on the picture.

Like we already found in our testing of MobileDemand's T1550, the T1150's integrated documentation camera is suitable for most documentation tasks, both in still shots and in video. It's nice to have the big 10-inch screen as a viewfinder. Pictures actually come out a lot sharper than they appear on the screen.

We'd love to see MobileDemand include a more comprehensive camera app to truly bring out all the capabilities and features of the integrated cameras. Whether that still matters in this era of ubiquitous smartphones with their superior apps is up for discussion.

Mounting and docking options