Panasonic announces an update of its iconic-- at least in its home Japan-- Let's Note business laptop line, with 12.1-inch CF-SVF series featuring quad-core 8th generation i5/i7 CPUs.
Being Japanese, Let's Note laptops are somewhat quirky devices. Most notable is the circular trackpad, but there's also an optical drive, a rarity in this day and age. The chunky chassis is in plastic (and tough enough to withstand drops of up to 76cm, Panasonic says), and carries a big "S" battery promising up to 21 hours of use on a single charge through the addition of a removable "L" accumulator.
Customers can buy either get a CF-SV7 laptop with an Intel Core i5-8250U or Core i7-8550 CPUs, 8GB LPDDR4-1866 RAM and a SATA SSD (128GB – 1TB), or custom-order from Panasonic with features such as a Core i8-5-8350U or Core i7-8650U CPU, 16GB RAM or 1TB PCIe SSD. Connectivity comes through x3 USB 3.0, ethernet, Thunderbolt 3.0 and HDMI 2.0 ports, with wireless via 802.11ac wifi and Bluetooth 4.1. The 720p webcam is Windows Hello compatible, while the SD card reader supports SDHC/SDXC cards with UHS-II interface.
The aforementioned optical drive comes as either a CD/DVD burner/reader or a Blu-ray reader/CD/DVD burner.
The Let's Note CF-SVF series laptops are available now in Japan. Panasonic gives no word of Western availability, but that is perhaps unlikely.
