Capacitive touch has changed everything—Until the iPhone, almost every smartphone and tablet used either a resistive touch screen or one with some sort of active stylus. Apple changed all that with projected capacitive multi-touch technology that allowed effortless tapping, swiping, pinching and zooming. This poses a problem for devices running Windows (which wasn't designed for capacitive touch) and for anyone wanting to use their device with gloves on or in the rain (capacitive touch can't handle that). There are hybrid solutions that use both capacitive touch and a pen, but Winmate decided to go all the way and offer a pure capacitive touch screen, like the iPad's.

Size, shape and weight matter—In the new world of iPad-class media tablets, size and weight matter. The iPad's 9.7 inch screen size, conventional 4:3 aspect ratio, and roughly pound-and-a-half weight have remained the gold standard. Wider formats and smaller screens have been tried, but so far have not met with great acceptance. This Winmate tablet has an iPad size screen, and despite its somewhat larger footprint it mostly feels like a toughened-up iPad. At 2.3 pounds it weighs almost a pound more, but somehow it seems to weigh less than that.

Operation and battery life—Here again the iPad has set the gold standard with effortless performance and 10+ hour battery life. That's tough for any Wintel device to match. Windows just wasn't designed for effortless touch performance. And even Atom-based netbooks rarely got more than six hours from their battery. iPads, of course, don't have fans either and they still don't get hot, and users will expect no less from a rugged Windows tablet.

The ruggedness issue—iPads are sleek and light, but they also break quite easily. People have posted plenty of broken iPad videos on YouTube, and here at RuggedPCReview.com, all of our iPads have protective cases. But a wimpy portfolio case is not always enough. In the real world, tablets do get dropped, and they get rained on. So the ability to withstand a 4-foot drop and survive a downpour should be expected, and that's what Winmate offers here (though they are not very consistent in their descriptions, sometimes using "rugged," other times "semi-rugged").

• The right side shows the power button and a SIM Card slot.

• The top features two small speakers and four buttons for volume-up, volume-down, accessing a programmable function, and bringing up on screen menus for brightness, volume, battery status, and one-click access to turning the various wireless radios as well as the camera on/off (see screen shot to the right).

• The bottom has the power jack, an audio in/out jack, an edge connector that supports either HDMI or LAN via cable, a standard USB 2.0 port, and a surface mount docking connector. Note that all but the surface mount connectors have hinged protective rubber doors.

• The left side is unadorned.

One of the principal design elements of the M970D are the four black bumpers that protect the corners of the tablet. In some tablets, such bumpers are either optional or look like an afterthought, but that's not the case in this tablet. Winmate fully integrated the bumpers into the design while making sure they can easily be replaced. Each bumper consists of two layers, a very tough piece of plastic and then a black rubber layer molded onto it. These bumpers definitely provide good edge protection. They also extend a bit out front, and that adds some protection if the tablet falls on its face.

We usually open and sometimes disassemble products that come to our lab for full reviews. In this case we decided to just take a peek inside because we did not want to risk destroying the somewhat inaccessible ribbon cable connectors in the process.

The tablet's slender housing consists of two plastic halves held together by the same four screws that also attach the corner bumpers. Sealing between the two halves is via a slim rubber tongue-and-groove type O-ring pressure seal. Inside, a flat sheet of aluminum serves as both chassis and heat sink. The large, flat battery sits underneath it. The battery is obviously not field replaceable or field serviceable. The circuit board lies underneath the metal chassis. There are no visible expansion slots or connectors. There is also no fan.

So, interestingly, while the somewhat fragile iPad has a metal housing with a tiny logic board attached to it, the in all likelihood much tougher Winmate tablet has a plastic shell with the internal guts mounted onto a metal plate. But whereas the overall design approach is different, the iPad and the Winmate tablet both have massive and very flat batteries that are not user-replaceable. That's the price to be paid in return to their sleek, slender design.

The picture above shows the tablet's single RAM module slot, which in our unit had a 2GB DDR3 800MHz module. For storage there is a 16GB SATA solid disk drive. For now, Winmate's data sheet doesn't show availability of more RAM or larger storage modules, though both will likely become options. The device contains a combination 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth module. 3G and GPS are optional. While increasingly powerful dual cameras are now pretty much standard issue in almost all smartphones and media tablets, the M970D only has one camera, a rear-mounted 2-megapixel unit. Since conferencing and documenting are popular tablet functions, we'd have liked to see more in this area, and with higher resolution.

In terms of size and weight, the Winmate M970D has a 10.5 x 8.25 inch footprint, is 0.87 inches thick, and weighs 2.3 pounds as tested. The 3rd generation iPad, by comparison, measures 9.5 x 7.3 x 0.37 inches and weighs 1.44 pounds. Yes, while size and weight suggests that the iPad is a smaller and much lighter unit, the Winmate tablet actually feels very iPad-esque in actual use.

Atom's predicament was always that the chips had to be inexpensive enough to make possible inexpensive devices such as netbooks, but without being powerful enough to eat into the Core processor market. The initial Atoms offered surprising speed in netbooks even with Windows 7, but graphics performance was lacking and video playback virtually impossible. Intel addressed the graphics issue somewhat in the second generation "Pineview" netbook processors that had an integrated graphics GPU. In our testing we frankly didn't see much graphics improvement in Pineview-based systems.

The third generation of "netbook" processors, however, seems an entirely different story. It's the first Atom family to use 32nm process technology instead of the older 45nm, making for smaller, more efficient packages. All members of the Cedarview processor family are dual-core systems whereas before only desktop-oriented versions had two cores. Graphics performance benefits from a different design and much faster clock speed, resulting in Intel claims of 2X graphics performance compared to the second generation Atoms. And integrated hardware-accelerated video decoding finally enables smooth full HD (up to 1080p) video playback.

In essence, the progression was from the limited N270 that was nonetheless capable of powering all those netbooks, to the N450 with integrated graphics, and now to the dual-core N2600 with twice the L2 cache, twice the graphics clock speed, and faster DDR3 memory. Processor clock speed never changed from the 1.6GHz range, and the N2600 still uses the Intel NM10 Express chipset already used in the second generation. Thanks to the 32nm process technology and additional power conservation measures, the N2600 has a maximum thermal design power of just 3.5 watts, considerably less than the 5.5 watts of the N450. The NM10 Express chipset is miserly as well, with a TDP of just 2.1 watts, making for a combined CPU/chipset maximum draw of just 5.6 watts. As a result, Intel's promo materials predicted "up to 10 hours of battery life on portable devices."

To check for ourselves, we used PassMark's BatteryMon to check power draw under various operating conditions.

With "Power Saver" mode engaged in the Windows Power Options control panel, screen brightness set to minimal, and all radios (WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G, GPS) turned off and the camera as well, power draw was between 10 and 11 watts, making for a run time of up to 5.5 hours.

With backlight brightness set to maximum, power draw increased to 14.5 watts, which corresponds to a theoretical runtime of 4.1 hours. We then engaged High Performance mode in the Windows control panel and turned all radios on. This increased power draw to 16.5 watts, good for 3.6 hours of runtime.

This means the observed power draw is higher than we expected. We generally see Atom-based systems have minimum draws between 5-8 watts, and even low voltage first and second gen Core systems often draw no more than 10-12 watts. While the Winmate tablet met its stated battery life, it should be able to do much better, and we suspect that our pre-production model had not been fully optimized yet.

For now, no one has a display like the latest iPad with its incredible 2048 x 1536 quadruple XGA resolution, and you wouldn't expect a rugged tablet to come anywhere close to that latest iPad. Yet, amazingly, Winmate accepted the challenge and came up with a screen that is far, far better than it has any right to be. In fact and everyday use, in most applications it looks every bit as good as the vaunted new iPad that has quadruple the resolution. If that sounds unbelievable, well, take a look at the pictures below.

The first picture shows the Winmate M970D and the new iPad side by side outdoors on a bright California mid-morning. Both have their brightness cranked up to the maximum. It's hard to tell a difference. Unfortunately, however, the Winmate tablet's screen shares a quality of the iPad display that we're not too fond off, the high gloss.

We always do test pictures from angles to check for reflections or deterioration of display viewability. In this case, both display surfaces reflected, but the picture stayed bright and clear, without any color shifts or aberrations.

Far too many displays suffer from narrow horizontal or vertical viewing angles that has users forever hunting for the right angle to get the best viewing experience. That's simply not an issue on the Winmate M970D. For all practical purposes, this display has a usable viewing angle of 180 degrees in any direction. Winmate describes their screen as an "IPS LED" panel. IPS stands for In-Plane Switching, a technology where the liquid crystals stay parallel to the panel as opposed to twisting at angles. This requires twice as many transistors and generally a stronger backlight, but results in those perfect viewing angles and complete lack of color shifts.

The picture below shows the worst case scenario any computer display faces outdoors: that of facing the sky directly in bright sunlight. That's a real challenge for transmissive screen designs where the backlight easily gets overpowered by the sun, resulting in a loss of most contrast. This is not the place for a long discussion of the various indoor/outdoor display technologies. As is, the Winmate display is too good indoors to be a transflective design, yet in direct sunlight it does retain acceptable contrast. That usually means optical filters and polarizers, but looking at the display through a polarizing sunglass lens does not change the picture when the glasses are rotated whereas the iPad's display goes black. Winmate says the display does not use filters or polarizers, which makes its display qualities even more amazing.

The final picture below shows the Winmate tablet in broad daylight, but with reflections blocked with a piece of cardboard. The picture itself is completely unretouched, demonstrating just how bright and vibrant the display is.

While Apple makes no specific claims to being sunlight-readable, iPads are actually gratifyingly bright, but not quite as bright as Winmate's M970D tablet. Its listed brightness is 350 nits, which compares to between 150 and 200 nits for your average consumer notebook. Reflections, on the other hand, are an issue. When we recently reviewed Winmate's 5.7-inch handheld/tablet, we commented that its glossy surface had anti-reflective optical treatments that virtually eliminate distracting reflections outdoors. That unit, however, had a resistive touch screen, and perhaps capacitive touch is sufficiently different to preclude those anti-reflective treatments.

A hot key pop-up utility lets you assign the sole F1 physical function key on top of the tablet to perform two different tasks or functions via a short or long press. In addition, hot tab can be used to quickly put the machine into one of four different power modes via the "Config" function.

For data entry, the Microsoft Input Panel's pop-up keyboard can be sized and placed to the user's preference, and it can also be configured for standard or extended mode (which includes Home, PgUp, PgDn, End, Insert, Pause, PrtScn and ScrLk). You can, of course, also use an external USB or Bluetooth keyboard.

The picture below shows another useful utility, the Windows Mobility Center that provides one touch access to often used functions and menus.

Windows 7, of course, is not a touch/tablet operating system and using it with a capacitive touch screen requires a bit of getting used to. It is also a good idea to optimize some of the display settings. To do that, go to the Personalizations control panel, click on Change Windows Glass Color, and then "Advanced Appearance Settings" to get to the old Windows size controls. Here you can change scroll bars and other items to be large enough for touch.

• Operating temperature is 32 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit (0 to 50 degrees Celsius). That's good enough for most business and field environments, but not for extreme deployments such as commercial freezers or desertlike climates.

• The M970D can handle a drop from four feet to concrete. No further details are available, but four feet is about what you'd expect from a ruggedized tablet. Winmate documentation says the tablet was designed for semi-rugged shock and vibration protection. We'd like to see more detail.

• IP54 sealing, which means it's protected against dust, and it can also handle water spray from all directions, though with limited ingress permitted for both (we never like to hear that).

What that means is the general size and weight of the iPad, though the extra ruggedness necessarily means a bit more size and weight. It means capacitive multi-touch although Windows 7 isn't designed for it and the tablet needs custom software to really benefit from the effortless tapping, panning, pinching and zooming capacitive touch technology is famous for. Capacitive touch, though, means the device is Windows 8 ready, and that's the OS required to really make this design shine.

On the hardware side, Winmate's tablet convinces with a fantastic 9.7-inch display with perfect viewing angles. It's bright and sharp enough to look good even next to a 3rd gen iPad (albeit with the same propensity for reflections as the iPad). Powered by an Intel Atom N2600 processor, the tablet feels quick and responsive, easily handles HD video, and provides excellent OGL performance. It can get hot, however, and the stated 5 hour battery life is less than we'd like to see in a rugged tablet.

The handy and very attractive M970D is (and looks) tougher than today's consumer market media tablets, but perhaps by not as much as we'd like to see. We like the 4-foot drop spec, but would like a wider operating temperature range, sealing in the IP65 range, and more detailed ruggedness specs. Since there is no SD card or other card slot, we'd also like to see larger storage options.

In fairness to some of the items we feel still need to be addressed (battery life, heat, fit and finish), our review unit was still pre-production and the final version will likely have resolved those issues. But even as is, this tablet's elegant design, superb display, convincing implementation of capacitive touch, and good performance make it an interesting proposition for anyone who wants that effortless, elegant tablet functionality, but in a more rugged package and with Windows.

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