Below is a look at the backside of the tablet. On the left as is, and on the right with the battery compartment cover and the access door to a module expansion slot removed. Note the four hand strap anchors in the corners and the snap-mount anchor for quick insertion and removal into mounting systems. And also note the programmable F1 and F2 hardware function buttons that provide one-push access to often-used commands or operations while holding the tablet in one's hands.

As far as its construction goes, the xTablet T1190 consists of a black 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 rear part is reinforced with a steel plate that probably also serves as a thermal heat spreader. The corner bumper guards are integrated into the design.

If the tablet needs to be opened for maintenance, upgrades, or repairs, undo ten small Philips screws and separate the halves. With the exception of the small 1.1 watt-hour hot-swap battery that plugs into the motherboard, there are no cables or ribbons between the two halves. Below you can see what the xTablet T1190 looks like inside:

Sealing between the two parts of the housing is accomplished with a slender tongue-and-groove design, with a hard plastic lip on the front part of the housing pressing against what looks like a sticky sealing substance sitting inside a groove around the perimeter of the backplate.

The very slender 1/4-inch 36.5 watt-hour rechargeable Li-Ion Polymer battery of the T1190 measures about 4.5 inches square and has a diagram printed on it that shows how to install the battery. That's a good idea as the battery must first be placed flat into its place and then slid sideways to snap it into place and make contact. The battery compartment cover goes on top of that and the whole thing is then secured via three levers. The tablet won't start unless those three lever locks are secured.

That's perhaps a bit complex of a solution, and the battery cover is not easy to be put in place. On the other hand, the battery, which is replaceable, is unlikely to ever come loose during operation.

When we evaluated another of MobileDemand's 10.1-inch rugged tablets — the xTablet T1180 — last year we commented how remarkably clean and tidy it looked inside. The T1190 is busier and looks more like a typical PC with all of its components and wires and modules and switches in plain sight. The strong, intricate magnesium chassis impresses and is the foundation of the strength of this overall design.

There's a half-size mini PCIe slot for a mobile broadband module. Antennae and their wiring is already pre-installed. WiFi and Bluetooth are handled via a tiny Intel Wireless-AX200 module. Almost all I/O is edge-mounted on the motherboard, with the surface-mount docking connector the sole exception.

The complex interior layout is visually dominated by various wires and miniaturized ribbon cables that connect the motherboard to all the antennae, cameras, speakers, and other things mounted inside the T1190. The two speakers, the optional 1D/2D barcode scanner and the camera module all have their own separate cubbies on the magnesium chassis of the tablet. Impressive.

The colorful pictures below were taken with our FLIR ONE Pro thermal camera. It shows the thermal situation inside the xTablet T1190, with darker areas the coolest and bright yellow the hottest. Since the xTablet T1190 doesn't have a fan to remove heat, good thermal management is essential.

As can be seen, the area where the xTablet T1190's processor resides is hottest. In our PCMark10 performance benchmark testing, we measured a maximum surface temperature on the front of about 88 degrees Fahrenheit and just 81F in the back — not even human body temperature.

The tablet's 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 protective layer that goes around the entire perimeter of the tablet, and also mounting points for optional screw-on corner bumpers. 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 is a close-up of the xTablet T1190's surface-mount I/O area with, again, from left to right, the SIM and micro-SD car slots, the micro-HDMI port, the USB 3.1 port, a USB-C port, the power jack, and then the RJ-45 LAN jack.

What can one expect from this processor? Overall, Intel has two families of CPUs for mobile devices. On the higher end it's the complex and expensive "Core" processors, on the lower end the simpler and much less expensive "Atom" processors. The Celeron N4120 used in the xTablet T1190 is from the Atom side, but it is not a low-end chip. Intel offers a large selection of processors both on the Core and on the Atom side, with a wide range of performance. Within the Atom lineup, Celeron-branded models are usually mid-range, and the N4120 is part of that. It is designed to use as little power as possible when it's just idling along or doing routine work, but it is also capable of reaching a respectable "burst frequency" of up to 2.6GHz for complex work.

So it's no surprise that the xTablet T1190 has a very good display. Measuring 10.1 inches diagonally it works nicely with Microsoft Windows, something that's an issue with smaller tablets. It offers 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution in 16:10 wide-format. 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 T1190 uses 10-point projected capacitive multi-touch for effortless tapping, panning, pinching and zooming. To this day, capacitive multi-touch and Microsoft Windows are an uneasy partnership that even careful tinkering with font and icon sizes can only improve that much. Touch-optimized apps, of course, work just fine, but anything that uses the legacy parts of Windows, of which there remain plenty, will likely hook up a mouse whenever possible. The mesh stylus that came with our early-version xTablet T1190 was marginal, but MobileDemand has a much better one in the works.

In everyday use, the display works very well. The spec sheet claims 800 nits luminance. We measured 750, the discrepancy likely due to transmission losses from the T1190's screen protector. To put that in perspective, most standard laptops offer around 250 nits, iPads are generally in the 400-500 nits range, and displays specially built to use in sunlight may have over 1,000 nits. Subjectively, the T1190 screen is nice and bright, and very vibrant indoors. Outdoors, of course, perceived brightness depends on weather and working condition.

As is, with its bright display the T1190 presents a combination of retail and restaurant POS features with a truly sunlight readable screen. That means the tablet can be used in outdoor drive-throughs, for curbside ordering, takeout and delivery.

The three pictures below show what you can expect outdoors from the T1190. The picture on the left was taken on a bright sunshiny day in the shade. That way, the display looks brilliantly bright and offer excellent contrast. The middle picture shows the impact of refection. Like almost all modern tablets, the T1190 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. The T1190 is bright enough to be quite viewable outdoors, but, just as with any modern handheld or tablet, one needs to avoid reflections.

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 T1190'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 the ever more impressive cameras in smartphones. Things have slowly improved over the past two or three years (especially in Android-based rugged devices), but mostly not enough to eliminate the need to take along a dedicated camera or smartphone for photo or video documentation. This concerns us — it's frustrating to have cameras in rugged tablets but then they are not good enough and you have to use the phone or a dedicated camera anyway.

One of the problems with cameras built into Windows-based tablets is not so much the hardware, but the software. The Microsoft Windows Camera app is basic to a fault and doesn't take advantage of what the camera hardware can do. And, unlike on the Android side where there are numerous downloadable camera apps if the already good default camera app won't do, there are very few such apps on the Windows side. The Windows Camera app version (2021.105.10.0) in the T1190 did offer a decent number of options — including a "pro mode" with exposure setting, white balance settings, and manual focus — but system integrators and many customers might still miss all the many features available in smartphone cameras these days.

The documentation camera offers seven different still image resolutions ranging from 0.4mp to the full 8.0mp, and users can shoot video in four resolutions ranging from 480p to 1080p, all at 30 frames per second. In still photography, auto-focus worked fine (albeit slowly), images were mostly crisp and sharp, and the camera does not over-compress images. Video was sharp enough for many purposes and did not lag behind. It pays to take time shooting pictures as there's a lag between pressing the shutter and the image being taken.

The front camera offers seven still image resolutions ranging from 0.03mp to 1.9mp, and video resolutions from 120p to 1080p. It worked well enough for conferencing.

Below are pictures shot with the T1190's documentation camera in 3264 x 2448 pixel resolution. To see a full-size image of the compilation, click on the picture.

Like we found in our testing of earlier MobileDemand rugged Windows tablets, the T1190's integrated documentation camera is suitable for some 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 sharper than they look on the screen.

For mobile Point-of-sale applications, MobileDemand's multi-payment module kit transform the tablet into a rugged mobile POS tool. The image shows what these look like, and MobileDemand says custom three-in-one payment module kits for Ingenico Moby/5500 and the MagTek tDynamo will be available.

The Moby/5500 is a compact card readers series that accepts all transaction types including EMV, magstripe and NFC/contactless such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. The MagTek tDynamo likewise is ideal for reading magnetic stripe cards, contact and contactless EMV cards, and NFC mobile wallets.

For fast and accurate barcode scanning, MobileDemand offers an optional integrated industrial-grade miniature scan engine from Honeywell. The extended read range N6703 1D/2D imager (see N670x info) is tiny, measuring just 0.27 x 0.93 x 0.64 inches and weighing barely more than a tenth of an ounce, which makes it fit even in very slim tablets such as the T1190.

As far as that kit goes, the extra protection that those optional bumpers can provide is substantial. Bumpers may be a low-tech solution and one that's not always needed. But when they are needed on a job to guard against damage from any and all eventualities, they can be invaluable. MobileDemand hasn't officially tested the exact height a tablet with the bumpers installed can survive, but it'll likely be quite a bit more than the already impressive five feet without the bumpers.

Bottom line: MobileDemand xTablet T1190