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Speed Demon Top 10: Rugged Tablets

Performance matters. And here are the fastest rugged tablets to ever make it through RuggedPCReview's benchmark testing
(by Conrad H. Blickenstorfer)

By and large, performance matters in computers as much as it does in vehicles and a lot of other machinery and items we use in our daily lives. Performance, of course, isn't everything. Unless you're a race car driver and need so and so much performance to be competitive, the extra cost of the highest possible performance is a luxury rather than a necessity. What it boils down to is getting as much performance as is needed. Or, depending on the application, perhaps a bit more than is needed, as long as there's still an acceptable balance between cost and performance.

With mobile computers, there must always be a balance between performance, cost, battery life, and size and weight. Some devices are designed to be as affordable as possible and exactly powerful enough to do the job. Others are designed to handle much more demanding jobs, or they are designed to handle whatever may come their way. The latter cost more and may also be bigger and weigh more (though not necessarily).

So on this page we're listing the "speed demons" among the rugged tablets we've tested over the past several years. Hundreds of devices make it through the RuggedPCReview.com testing lab, and these are the fastest tablets of them all. We can't actually say "all" as we cannot possibly test every major rugged tablet on the market (or the manufacturers have not sent us their products for testing).

The Top 10 listings with gold, silver and bronze honors below are as of the end of December 2016. We'll update them as new speed demons come along. And note that being in the Top 10 is pretty excellent; we're testing A LOT of tablets.

PassMark Overall — Every Windows-based rugged device that comes to RuggedPCReview's lab for detailed testing must pass Passmark Software's PerformanceTest software that includes about 30 tests covering CPU, 2D graphics, 3D graphics, memory, and disk and then computes scores for each category and an overall PassMark score. Since benchmark software changes all the time, we've standardized on version 6.1 so as to make scores as comparable as possible (the problem with this approach, of course, is that old tests may not be able to pick up performance enhancements they may not be able to detect or measure). Each machine runs through the full benchmark suite three times, with the best overall result used for publication.

RuggedPCReview Lab: Top 10 Tablets PASSMARK OVERALL
Rank Company Model Year OVERALL PASSMARK Chip Class Chip Model
1 Xplore iX104C6 2014 3,081.7 Intel Core i5 4300U
2 Xplore Xslate R12 2016 2,657.2 Intel Core i7 7500U
3 Xplore Xslate B10 2015 2,364.7 Intel Core i5 5350U
4 DT Research DT301 2016 2,266.2 Intel Core i7 6500U
5 DT Research DT311 2016 2,216.8 Intel Core i7 5500U
6 Getac F110 2015 2,140.1 Intel Core i7 5500U
7 Getac F110 2013 2,061.6 Intel Core i5 4300U
8 GammaTech DURABOOK R11 2016 2,026.7 Intel Core i5 5200U
9 RuggON PX501 2016 1,985.1 Intel Core i5 5350U
10 Panasonic Toughbook G1 2013 1,953.5 Intel Core i5 3437U

PassMark CPU — CPU type, clock speed and expected performance play a bit role in many purchasing decisions, especially with Intel marketing their i3/i5/i7 Core processors as "good/better/best." For the most part, however, there is often not much of a difference between i5 and i7 chips (with i3 chips there is, because they do not have the "turbo" mode) and it's just a matter whether certain features available only in a higher end chip are actually needed. Of much greater importance for performance is the thermal design power (TDP) of a processor. If the chip is allowed to draw more wattage, it will be more powerful. Mobile system designers, therefore, must decide what tradeoff between speed and battery power is optimal for their clients' use and applications.

RuggedPCReview Lab: Top 10 Tablets PASSMARK CPU
Rank Company Model Year OVERALL PASSMARK Chip Class Chip Model
1 Xplore Xslate R12 2016 4,940.7 Intel Core i7 7500U
2 DT Research DT301 2016 4,277.1 Intel Core i7 6500U
3 DT Research DT311 2016 4,135.1 Intel Core i7 5500U
4 Getac F110 2015 3,864.1 Intel Core i7 5500U
5 Xplore DTXSlate B10 2015 3,845.5 Intel Core i5 5350U
6 RuggON PX501 2016 3,821.2 Intel Core i5 5350U
7 Getac RX10 2015 3,664.4 Intel Core M 5Y71
8 Motion R12 2014 3,569.1 Intel Core i7 4610Y
9 GammaTech DURABOOK R11 2016 3,545.6 Intel Core i5 5200U
10 Winmate M133W 2016 3,538.4 Intel Core i5 5200U

PassMark Disk — PassMark's disk test benchmark runs a variety of tests exercising a tablet's mass storage subsystem. Most people think that CPU performance and clock speed is most important when assessing a tablet's overall speed. While CPU certainly matters, the type and performance of the mass storage subsystem is as important and often more so. A current issue is that rotating disks are much slower than solid speed storage, but the latter still costs much more per gigabyte. Also note that there are significant performance differences between different types and makes of solid state disks.

RuggedPCReview Lab: Top 10 Tablets PASSMARK DISK
Rank Company Model Year OVERALL PASSMARK Disk Manufacturer Disk Model
1 Xplore iX104C6 2014 8,780.7 Toshiba THNSNH128GMCT
2 Xplore Xslate B10 2015 4,946.9 Toshiba THNSNJ128GMCU
3 Panasonic Toughbook G1 2013 4,682.4 Toshiba THNSNF128GMCS
4 Xplore Xslate R12 2016 4,438.2 SanDisk SD8SN8U256G1122
5 Getac F110 2013 3,943.7 LiteOn LGT-256M6G
6 GammaTech DURABOOK R11 2016 3,901.1 Transcend TS256GMTS400
7 Xplore Xslate R12 2016 3,845.0 SanDisk SD6SN1M128G
8 Getac F110 2015 3,790.4 Plextor PX-128G7Ne
9 DT Research DT311 2016 3,773.2 Phison SSEP128GTMC0-s10C
10 DT Research DT301 2016 3,740.1 Phison SSEP128GTMC0-s10C

One comment here on the stellar performance of Xplore's iX104C6 tablet. The test machine had dual mSATA 128GB solid state disk modules that were configured in RAID 0 block-level striping. "Striping" means that data blocks are written on different storage devices, in this instance two, instead of being sequentially written on just one physical device. This can result in quicker performance. Our PassMark disk test showed that, whereas the CrystalMark disk test did not.

PassMark 2D Graphics — PassMark's 2D test suite measures the speed at which lines, rectangles, shapes, fonts and text, and graphical user interface elements are drawn and handled. A high bottomline score in the 2D graphics tests generally means that the device is pleasant to use because the graphical user interface is quick and responsive and doesn't lag behind.

RuggedPCReview Lab: Top 10 Tablets PASSMARK 2D GRAPHICS
Rank Company Model Year 2D PASSMARK CPU Graphics
1 Xplore XSlate R12 2016 613.9 Core i7-7500U Intel HD Graphics 620
2 Getac F110 2015 514.7 Core i7-5500U Intel HD Graphics 5500
3 Getac RX10 2015 507.1 Intel Core M-5Y71 Intel HD Graphics 5300
4 MobleDemand T1200 2012 505.5 Intel Core i7-3517UE Intel HD Graphics 4000
5 Xplore Xslate R12 2014 501.6 Core i7-4610Y Intel HD Graphics 4200
6 Getac F110 2013 488.5 Core i5-4300U Intel HD Graphics 4400
7 GammaTech DURABOOK R11 2015 480.2 Core i5-4200U Intel HD Graphics 4400
8 DT Research DT301 2016 473.4 Core i7-6500U Intel HD Graphics 520
9 DT Research DT311 2016 468.6 Core i7-5500U Intel HD Graphics 5500
10 Winmate M133W 2016 461,3 Core i7-5200U Intel HD Graphics 5500

PassMark 3D Graphics — Passmark 3D graphics tests measure how well the system handles 3-dimensional shapes and their manipulation. 3D graphics exercise different parts and features of a computer's graphics subsystem. Considerable processing power and optimized algorithms are required for smooth 3D manipulation and, especially, frame rates sufficient for a given task. Note that this is an area where discrete graphics subsystems still have a significant advantage over Intel's integrated graphics.

RuggedPCReview Lab: Top 10 Tablets PASSMARK 3D GRAPHICS
Rank Company Model Year 3D PASSMARK CPU Graphics
1 Xplore XSlate R12 2016 568.8 Core i7-7500U Intel HD Graphics 620
2 DT Research DT311 2016 545.2 Core i7-5500U Intel HD Graphics 5500
3 DT Research DT301 2016 468.9 Core i7-6500U Intel HD Graphics 530
4 Xplore iX104C6 2014 460.8 Core i5-4300U Intel HD Graphics 4400
5 Xplore Xslate B10 2015 460.1 Core i5-5350U Intel HD Graphics 6000
6 MobileDemand T1200 2012 440.2 Core i7-3517UE Intel HD Graphics 4000
7 Motion R12 2014 410.1 Core i7-4610Y Intel HD Graphics 4200
8 Motion F5t 2012 406.8 Core i7-3667U Intel HD Graphics 4000
9 Getac F110 2015 399.1 Core i7-5500U Intel HD Graphics 5500
10 RuggON PX501 2016 392.2 Core i7-5350U Intel HD Graphics 6000

PassMark CrystalMark Overall — In addition to PassMark, we always run the CrystalMark benchmark suite on every machine that passes through our lab. We use CrystalMark as a crosscheck and also to get a better idea of particular strengths and weaknesses of a given system. CrystalMark, for example, produces separate results for ALU (arithmtic logic unit) and FPU (floating point unit), and also breaks down graphics performance into the GDI Microsoft Windows API, the 2D2 Windows 2D graphics API, and the OGL Open Graphics Library API.

RuggedPCReview Lab: Top 10 Tablets CRYSTALMARK OVERALL
Rank Company Model Year OVERALL CRYSTALMARK Chip Class Chip Model
1 Xplore XSlate R12 2016 241,510 Intel Core i7 7500U
2 DT Research DT301 2016 227,789 Intel Core i7 6500U
3 DT Research DT311 2016 215,622 Intel Core i7 5500U
4 Xplore iX104C6 2014 214,698 Intel Core i5 4300U
5 Xplore Xslate B10 2015 208,107 Intel Core i5 5350U
6 RuggON PX501 2016 198,703 Intel Core-i5 5350U
7 Motion R12 2014 196,819 Intel Core i7 4610Y
8 Getac F110 2015 191,811 Intel Core i7 5500U
9 Getac F110 2013 188,576 Intel Core i5 4300U
10 Motion F5t 2012 185,653 Intel Core i7 3667U