What general size class is B360? Its 13.3-inch display is right where rugged laptop screens have been for many years, though it is now wide-format instead of the traditional squarish 4:3, and the B360 has higher resolution. Its footprint of 13.5 x 11.1 inches is fairly substantial. Despite its ruggedness and sturdy build, it's just 1.4 inches thick and weighs, for a fully rugged laptop, an amazingly low 5.1 pounds. The table below shows where the new B360 fits into Getac's comprehensive roster of semi-rugged and fully rugged laptops:

Model	V110	B300	B360	S410	X500
Display size	11.6-inch	13.3-inch	13.3-inch	14.0-inch	15.6-inch
Ruggedness	Fully rugged	Fully rugged	Fully rugged	Semi rugged	Fully rugged
Resolution	1920 x 1080	1024 x 768	1920 x 1080	1366 x 768 or 1920 x 1080 1200	1920 x 1080
Pixels/inch	190 ppi	96 ppi	166 ppi	112 or 157 ppi	141 ppi
Aspect ratio	16 : 9	4 : 3	16 : 9	16 : 9	16 : 9
Luminance	800 nits	700/1400 nits	1400 nits	800/1000 nits	1000 nits
Size (inches)	12.3 x 9.4 x 1.5	11.9 x 10.4 x 2.4	13.5 x 11.1 x 1.4	13.8 x 11.5 x 1.4	16.1 x 12.6 x 2.5
Volume (cu-in)	173.4	297.0	209.8	222.2	507.2
Weight (lbs.)	4.4	7.7	5.1	4.9	11.4
CPUs	8th gen Core	8th gen Core	10th gen Core	8th gen Core	7th gen Core
CPU Code	Whiskey Lake	Kaby Lake Refresh	Comet Lake	Whiskey Lake	Kaby Lake
Max RAM	32GB	32GB	64GB	64GB	64GB
Max primary storage	1TB SATA SSD	1TB SATA SSD or HDD	1TB PCIe NVMe SSD	1TB SATA SSD	1TB SATA SSD or HDD
Std. Battery	46.6 whr	94.0 whr	46.6 whr	46.6 whr	94.0 whr
Operating temp	-6° to 140° F	-20° to 140° F	-20° to 145° F	-20° to 145° F	-4° to 131° F
IP rating	IP65	IP65	IP66	IP53	IP65

So to come up with an elegant, good-looking laptop that conveys toughness, competence, professionalism, and a unique brand identity, that's not easy. Yet, with the B360 Getac clearly has done just that. Colors, materials, textures, lines, corners, labels, everything looks, works, and fits just right. Every part is designed to fill a purpose.

The attention to detail on this laptop is more than impressive. Yes, form follows function, but form also contributes to ergonomics, ease-of-use, and also eye-pleasing visual design. Just like the Getac UX10 rugged tablet we reviewed a few months ago, the Getac B360 convinces on all levels. They may be just a tablet and a laptop, but they are both anything but generic.

And then there are the details. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once observed that that's where the devil is, in the details. Details — all the small little things that often get overlooked, and that, if not properly designed and attended to, will come back to haunt you.

A laptop has lots of details, and Getac quite obviously thought them through. Below are some of the details that showcase this impressive attention to every detail:

Clockwise and starting from the upper left, you can see:

1. The clasp that secures the LCD screen against the computer case with the keyboard is one of the most important parts of every laptop. You don't want for the screen to open up when it shouldn't, and you don't want a clasp/lock that's clumsy and hard to operate. Getac got it just right with a spring-loaded clasp that automatically locks, but also easily lets go with just a tap on the clasp.

2. If a rugged computer gets dropped (and it will), the screen must not be jarred open upon impact. Two steel bolts make sure that would never happen in the B360.

3. If you use a stylus with your laptop, it should be tethered and it should have a stylus garage in a convenient and easily located spot. The B360 has that. And it says "Getac" on it. Most of us have many styli. To know which one goes with which device is a very good idea.

4. Too many buttons are confusing, especially if they are poorly labeled. Getac gave the B360 just three, a good number. They are backlit and clearly labeled. A green power button and two programmable function buttons. Excellent.

5. Annunciator lights tell the user what the computer is doing. All too often such lights are poorly labeled and in hard-to-see places. On the B360 they are clearly labeled and where you can easily see them, as it should be.

6. The Getac B360's hot-swappable batteries are flush-mounted into the bottom of the computer case. It'd require a big seal to keep the entire battery compartment dry. So Getac used just an O-ring seal around the battery connector. A common solution, but especially well implemented here.

And another set of nice details: clockwise and starting from the upper left, you can see:

7. It's great to have hot-swappable batteries, but do you always know if your spares are actually charged? And how much? With the B360's batteries there's never any doubt; just push a button and five LEDs show the charge level.

8. Many touch pads are too deeply recessed for convenient use. The B360's 3-1/4 x 1-5/8 inch capacitive multi-touch pad is recessed only as much so you can easily sense its perimeter with your finger(s). It's also very responsive and has the exact right surface stiction.

9. You want to be able to replace hot-swappable batteries quickly and easily, but you don't want to have them come loose or fall out by mistake. The B360 has lockable spring-loaded levers that work just right.

10. The B360 has a small fan and a fan grille. Have no fear, though: the fan's housing is completely sealed to the interior of the laptop, and the fan itself works even underwater.

11. This is the port sealing method Getac uses on the B360. Sealing external standard ports is never easy, designing such ports isn't easy, and making sure they are properly secured requires a conscious effort. It takes a bit of getting used to the ports on the B360, but they get the job done.

12. Hard carry handles are almost a must on a rugged laptop, but many are bulky and not all are convenient to use. We like the B360's design where the handle is nicely integrated but then clicks into a carrying position when you need it.

In terms of layout and look, these days almost everyone uses the "island-style" look with fairly short key travel but good tactile feedback. That's important in the field; everything must be optimized for functionality, clarity and ease of use. The thick type and white-on-black icons make the B360 keyboard look a bit busy and cluttered. Function labels are icon-style black on white, sometimes below and sometimes to the right of the default character of the key. The whole design looks and feels much like the standard Apple keyboard, which today is as much praised for its "look and feel" as the original IBM PC keyboard was at the dawn of personal computing.

Placement of the keyboard in relation to the slightly recessed capacitive multi-touch touchpad and the two "mouse" buttons is just right. And, almost needless to say for full-size laptop, the all-important QWERTY layout is 100%-scale. That means the distance between the center of the letter Q and the center of the letter P is exactly 6-3/4 inches. This way, anyone used to a standard keyboard will have no problem finding the key and feeling at home, even if they are not full touch typists.

The LED-based backlight can be activated and toggled through three brightness settings via a function key combination. Illumination is reddish-tinted white, and it clearly illuminates the keys in semi and full darkness.

A good part of the Getac B360's appeal comes from its designers' ability to put so much advanced computing power into a package that's not only rugged, but also remarkably light and compact. That's made possible by a selection of Intel's 10th generation of Core processors, the first ever to offer not just quad-core configurations in ultra-low voltage mobile CPUs, but even a few chips with six cores and 12 threads.

Truth be told, it's no longer easy to differentiate between Intel processor generations. Just a few years ago, all one had to know in order to get an idea of the performance and capabilities of a processor was to know its codename. There were substantial differences between a "Sandy Bridge," "Haswell," or "Skylake" chip, with rapidly shrinking miniaturization making for ever more power and efficiency.

That ongoing miniaturization, which enabled Intel to put more and more transistors onto a chip, has slowed down quite a bit, with most of the progress now coming from optimization between, and sometimes within, generations. As a result, the 10th generation of Core processors is anything but homogenous. Code names such as "Amber Lake," "Ice Lake," and "Comet Lake" are all being used for "10th generation" Core processors.

While each of those code names and recent generations added and improved features and capabilities, the biggest thing is doubtlessly the move from dual-core to quad-core designs that happened in the 8th generation, and now the addition of hexa-core designs. Four cores can do more than two cores, and six more than four, and this allowed Intel to lower the base clock speeds of these chips, cutting down power consumption and heat generation. The ongoing refinements, on the other hand, allowed raising maximum "turbo" clock speeds higher. The overall result is higher peak performance with an overall power draw that's no more (and sometimes less) than it was with less powerful dual-core processors.

Now let's look at the new tech. Here, Getac treats B360 customers to state-of-the-art "Comet Lake" Intel 10th generation i5 and i7 Core processors. Led by an i7-10710U hexa-core chip with 12 threads and two quad-core options, there is plenty of performance.

These new marvels are amazingly power-efficient, too. They can idle along at very low clock frequencies, but quickly ramp up to blistering turbo speed to do the heavy lifting. The table to the left shows the basics of the three chips Getac B360 customers can select from (see full table here).

Over the past several Core processor generations, Intel has managed to provide greater and greater performance without paying the price in increasing power draws. In the past, rugged laptops like the B360 used processors with thermal design powers of 35 and sometimes even 45 watts. That meant dismal battery life. Today, we see far greater performance from chips with thermal design powers of just 15 watts. But that's just one side of the improvement. By first switching to two cores, then four, and now six, Intel could greatly decrease the default clock frequencies of processors. Doing routine tasks, these chips just idle along, not using much power at all. But if performance is needed, these new processors have very high "turbo" speeds, in the case of the top processor available for the B360, the Core i7-10710U, an increase of almost 400%!

An important decision systems designers must make is whether to use passive cooling or an active system fan. In the past, Getac used advanced passive cooling systems even in powerful standard voltage systems. The rationale was the elimination of fan noise and potential mechanical failure. Well, the B360 platform does have that small fan. But unlike some fans that are annoyingly loud and on almost all the time, this one is unobtrusive and doesn't come on often, but it IS a fan, and sometimes you can definitely hear it. Getac likely gave that much thought and concluded that an active fan still offers better protection against overheating and, more importantly, makes it possible for the CPU to operate without significant performance drops even at the upper end of its operating temperature range.

In order to get a sense of where the Getac B360's performance level stands compared to some other leading rugged and semi-rugged laptops with different types of processors and configurations, we installed Passmark Software's PerformanceTests 6.1 and 9.0 that run several dozen tests covering CPU, 2D graphics, 3D graphics, memory, and disk and then compute scores for each category and an overall PassMark score.

The results are as follows:

What do the benchmarks show? Some of the results are obvious and expected, others less so.

First, when perusing any benchmark results, do keep in mind that most of these high end products are available with different processor options. We can only report the results of the test machines we were sent for review. Other processor options may yield different results.

Even though our test unit was equipped with the least powerful of the available processor options (the Core i5-10210U), the Getac B360 turned out to be a blistering performer. To illustrate the stunning advances in mobile computing technology over the past few years, the 2020 Getac B360 is more than eleven times faster overall than a fully rugged, top-of-the-line Getac B300X notebook with one of the very first Core processors we benchmarked in 2010 ago.

The competing laptops we're showing in the table are all cream of the crop machines, high-quality, well engineered modern rugged laptops. Each offers various performance options, and even at this lofty level, there is a good degree of performance parity. However, there can still be strategic advantage. And one such advantage the Getac B360 has is its crushing storage performance. The sub-test weighting differs from benchmark to benchmark, but Getac's decision to use very high performance PCIe NVMe solid state disk (as compared to older, slower SATA-based solid state storage) very clearly pays off.

Battery technology has come a long way, but progress remains slower than overall progress in electronics and miniaturization. Does that mean today's slender power packs have less capacity? Often they do. Rugged devices of the past routinely had standard batteries with 90 or 100 watt-hour capacities. Today it's often just half of that. Combined, the B360's two slender (just 3/8-inch thick) batteries, for example, only pack 46.6 watt-hours, a far cry from the old B300's single 94 watt-hour power pack that all by itself weighed more than an iPad Air 2.

Getac specs don't list expected battery life in the B360's specs. So, given the B360's massive performance and super-bright screen, what will we find?

We used PassMark's BatteryMon to measure power draw. Selecting the Getac "Power Saving" mode, and screen brightness toggle set to its lowest setting, we saw a minimum of a stunningly low 2.0 watts. That's one of the very lowest values we've ever seen in an Intel Core processor-powered device. With the backlight set to 50% it was 2.9 watts, and with the backlight at 100%, amazingly, still only 7.9 watts. Dividing the full available 46.6 watt-hours by the lowest observed power draw of 2.0 watts would indicate a theoretical battery life of a massive 23.3 hours.

Putting the B360 into Getac's "Extreme" power mode and toggling the backlight to 0%, power draw was 2.7 watts, still very, very low, and good for a theoretical 17.3. With the backlight set to the 50% level, it was 3.6 watts, still good for 12.9 hours.

With the backlight at 100%, power draw rose to 8.6 watts. This means that in "Best performance" mode and backlight as bright as Windows sets it, theoretical battery life is down quite a bit, to 5.4 hours.

Unlike many Windows machines that have the default power plan options (Balanced, Power saver, and High performance) or only one or two power plans, the Getac B360 comes with no fewer than five. They are Balanced, Extreme, Field, Indoor, and Power Saving. Power plans are a set of system and hardware settings to manage how your device consumes and conserves power. They CAN have a big impact on power draw, especially in machines with very bright displays.

Getting over 23 hours of (theoretical) run time out of two small batteries combining to just 46 watt-hours is tremendous. And they are hot-swappable, carrying a space or two means that battery life should never be an issue at all. We would, however, not recommend hitting the road with just one single battery. And always pay attention to power modes and screen brightness.

All that said, of course, the power draw we measured was at idle. In real life use, computers go into standby mode after a period of idling, using even less power, but when called to do actual work, they use much more. Which mean that real life battery life will vary.

Finally, Getac's rugged mobile computer decontamination document (see here) recommends a number of commonly available disinfectants for the B360. Those have all been tested for 10,000 swipe-downs at a pressure of 14.22 psi.

LumiBond® 2 display works well indoors and out

Computer displays have come a very long way since the early days of the PC, with many of today's displays being pretty much perfect. Indoors, that is. Outdoors, the sun can overwhelm the brightest display, and there are reflections that can make a screen difficult to see and use. Clearly, outdoor/sunlight viewability is of crucial importance to users of rugged laptops such as the Getac B360.

As a result, rugged computer manufacturers have long been in a race for the best possible outdoor/sunlight-viewable display technology.

Several years ago, Getac came up with their "QuadraClear®" (see QuadraClear® page) display technology. The term refers to its four core features: a bright backlight, anti-reflective coatings, linear polarizer, and circular polarizer.

All major manufacturers of outdoor-usable mobile computing equipment use those technologies, and so the difference boils down to a) backlight brightness and b) the extent to which the expensive optical coatings are applied and how the various layers are bonded (the fewer reflective surfaces, the better). Getac calls their layer bonding process "LumiBond®" (see LumiBond® page).

What constitutes a "powerful" backlight? That's where luminance, the intensity of light emitted, comes in.

Luminance is measured in candela per square meter, where candela refers to luminous intensity, the power emitted by a light source. Since "candela per square meter" is a bit cumbersome, the industry uses "nits" which really is just short for "units".

A standard laptop display is generally in the 200 nits range, and rarely reaches 300 nits. Premium tablets are in the 400-600 nits range. Some heavy-duty rugged gear went as high as 1500 nits, but that generally required a massive, heavy battery.

The Getac B360 display is very bright, 1400 nits, while the various optical treatments cut down the percentage of incoming ambient light. That's important because the ratio between the backlight and the reflected incoming ambient light determines the effective contrast ratio, which then translates into the degree of real world outdoor readability of a display.

The matrix below shows the B360 display under a wide variety of viewing conditions.

Overall, its sheer brightness precludes the picture from washing out, the way it does on lesser screens, under almost any lighting condition. The semi-matte surface also totally eliminates the sharp reflections that bedevil standard "glossy" displays outdoors.

There are, however, no completely perfectly solutions to outdoor viewability with current display technology. Getac made this display as bright as possible while, with prudent use of full brightness, still offering generous battery life. But even with a semi-matte displays surface, reflections manifest — not in a distracting mirror-like way, but a degree of milkiness when the display diffuses light.

As is, the B360 display is excellent. Both glossy and semi-matte screens have their pros and cons, but outdoors and in the sun, semi-matte's ability to diffuse the sharp reflections of glossy screens can be a distinct advantage. This is about as good as it currently gets.

Glove touch and handling rain

One of the limiting issues with capacitive multi-touch is that in its generic form, it only works with human fingers or, to a lesser extent, with capacitive styli. Capacitive touch doesn't like rain and it won't accept thick gloves and such. Unfortunately, wetness and the need for gloves is exactly what one encounters out there where machines such as the Getac B360 are often used.

Getac was one of the first to address these issues, and solutions have been part of the LumiBond® 2.0 technology for several years. There's a special G-Manager "Touch Screen" display where users can select "Touch," "Glove," or "Pen." Here's how it works:

"Touch" is the default mode. Drops near the hand on the "Touch" icon indicate that touch continues to work "with direct exposure to rain." How exactly Getac does that is part of their intellectual property.

Water is so conductive that it affects the capacitance between two electrodes, which is the concept upon which projected capacitive touch is built. What can be done is switching from a standard mutual capacitance mode to self-capacitance where the capacitance between one electrode and the ground is measured instead of the capacitance between two electrodes. That would preclude a capacitive pen from working in this mode because a fairly large touch area is required. The capacitive pen does work, however, so what Getac did is make sure the light touch of a rain drop is not interpreted as a finger touch.

"Glove" allows the B360 to be operated with gloves. That is done by increasing the sensitivity of the touch controller, so that it can recognize a finger even a brief distance away from the screen, as in the distance that the material of a glove adds to the finger's distance from the screen. That's the way Getac seemed to have done it, as not only do gloves work in this mode, but the cursor now follows the finger even when it is a short distance away from the surface, and touch operations no longer require a firm touch.

"Pen" mode is for use with the dual-mode input option. Touch continues to work in pen mode, but the system will not recognize touch when it sense the pen in use, and vice versa. Pen mode is also for use with narrow-tip capacitive pens, where the smaller contact area of the stylus takes priority over the large contact of finger touch.

Summary: Getac B360 fully rugged notebook computer

With the new B360, Getac offers something its main rival, Panasonic, actually doesn't have: a modern, full-size, fully rugged laptop that isn't bulky and doesn't weigh a ton. In fact, with this thoroughly modern laptop, Getac has done the seemingly impossible: make a machine that can handle whatever hazard or abuse comes its way, yet is no bulkier, and weighs no more, than the competition's semi-ruggeds. That is remarkable.

So to just quickly reiterate, the Getac B360 weighs barely over five pounds, offers superior performance thanks to using state-of-the-art technology (like Intel 10th gen Core chips and PCIe NVMe storage), and sports the kind of full, uncompromising ruggedness needed on so many jobs.

Now add to that a smoothly operating capacitive multi-touch display that's also the brightest available screen in this class (or most others), hot-swappable batteries, things you don't usually get in laptops (like an optional integrated scanner), and also the availability of a B360 "Pro" model for those who need additional features and build options, and you have a platform that is very hard to beat. – Conrad H. Blickenstorfer, July 2020

Getac B360 Specifications Status Introduced June 2020, full review July 2020 Type Fully rugged notebook Processor Intel Core i7-10710U (1.1 GHz base frequency, 4.7 GHz max turbo) Intel Core i7-10510U (1.8 GHz base frequency, 4.9 GHz max turbo) Intel Core i5-10210U (1.6 GHz base frequency, 4.2 GHz max turbo) Thermal Design Power 15 watts (all available processors) Graphics Intel UHD Graphics OS Windows 10 Professional (64-bit) Memory 8GB DDR4 expandable to 64GB Storage Main storage: 256GB / 512GB / 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD Optional 2nd storage: 256GB / 512GB / 1TB SATA SSD Expansion slots 1 x SD card, 1 x Smart Card Display type IPS TFT LCD, LumiBond® 2.0 sunlight readable LED display Display size/res 13.3"/1920 x 1080 pixel (166 ppi) 1400 NITs Digitizer 10-point capacitive multi-touch Keyboard LED backlit membrane keyboard; optional LED backlit rubber keyboard Housing Unknown Size 13.46" x 11.06" x 1.37" inches (342 x 281 x 35 mm) Weight Starting at 5.1 pounds (2.3 kg); weight as tested with two batteries and stylus: 5.16 lbs. Operating temperature -20° to 145°F (-29° to 63°C) Drop test MIL-STD-810H Ingress protection IP66 Vibration e-Mark certified for vehicle usage Humidity 95% RH, non-condensing Disinfectants See Getac rugged mobile computer decontamination EMI MIL-STD-461G certified Power Hot swappable dual 11.1V 2,100 mAH 23.3 whr Li-Ion batteries Cameras Front-facing FHD webcam or optional Windows Hello webcam Scanning Optional barcode scanner Security TPM 2.0, cable lock slot, Smart Card reader, opt. HF RFID reader Interface 1 x Headphone out/mic-in combo, DCin Jack, 2 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type A, 1 x PowerShare USB 2.0, 1 x LAN (RJ45), 1 x HDMI, Docking connector. Configurable I/O Options are serial + VGA OR serial port + USB 3.1 Type C OR serial + DisplayPort Wireless Intel 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 AX200, Bluetooth v5.1; opt. dedicated GPS OR opt. 4G LTE mobile broadband with integrated GPS, opt. RF antenna pass-through for GPS, WLAN and WWAN Price Inquire Web page Getac B360 web page Brochure Getac B360 brochure/specs Video Getac B360 promo video Warranty 3-year bumper-to-bumper warranty standard