Drown, fry, beat, shoot: crash test of the protected Getac V110 laptop
The industry of secure laptops is developing along with the growing demand for such devices from medium-sized businesses: today, on a livestock farm, in a woodworking shop, on a drilling platform, and even in a geoloc tent, everything is computerized, and the concept of IoT + Edge (read our article about the use of IoT in the oil and gas sector) implies that even ordinary personnel should always have a portable electronic terminal at hand. Interestingly, in many similar areas of application, tablets simply did not take root due to the limited platform, and were replaced by laptops-transformers, which can also be controlled with one hand on the touch screen, but which have a full-fledged Windows with a limitless world of software, the ability to integrate into the domain and centralized management of security settings. And very quickly, customers and integrators realized that to work in production, a special class of laptops is needed: the same unkillable as the military, but not necessarily armored, capable of surviving a nuclear strike. A relatively small surcharge for" security " will later be repelled by the fact that the business process will not stand up due to the fact that the mechanic dropped the laptop, or it simply overheated. Previously, for security, unkillable laptops were strongly associated with expensive models of Panasonic Toughbook, but now in this market there is already someone to choose from and what to save on.
What we know about Getac
If you haven't heard of Getac, here's a quick digest: it's a Taiwanese company founded in 1989 and now part of the Mitac-Synnex Group holding. Getac shares have been traded on the Taipei Stock Exchange since 2006, and they have increased in price 3 times over the past 5 years. The main and only activity of Getac is the production of laptops and tablets for heavy-duty applications, and here the company has good experience not only in terms of design solutions, but also in the field of maintenance.
Here are just a couple of examples: Getac officially tested its devices for interaction with antiseptics and disinfectants during the COVID-19 epidemic, issuing a special form. That is, the customer can be sure that, for example, from a 70% solution of isopropyl alcohol, the screen will not darken, the sensor will not die and the inscriptions will not be erased. By the way, they are generally engraved on the keys to better see the built-in backlight, so that the buttons will never be erased. Well, the second is a warranty that takes into account mechanical damage: yes, if you dropped your laptop and it crashed - this is a warranty case.
So if you haven't heard anything about Getac, know this: it's not a Chinese nouname, but a solid Taiwanese company with a 30-year history that makes only one thing all its life - secure laptops, but how well it makes them, we'll find out now.
Design features of the Getac V110 laptop
The Getac V110 is an 11-inch laptop transformer with two quick-release batteries, built-in GPS, smart card scanner, NFC/RFID module, and optional 4G / 5G modem. In general, in order not to waste time on electronic stuffing, let's say this: the configuration of CPU + RAM + VGA + SSD here is quite ordinary, and nothing interesting is not. Getac V110 - like a tasteless, but beautiful cake, it is the details of the case that are important here.
Let's start with the fact that the case is simply strewn with the heads of cogs: here everything is disassembled, removed, and changed, and without these delicate latches of yours, but with a simple phillips screwdriver. Why is this important? In general, an ordinary laptop should immediately go to a service center in the event of a breakdown, where the owner will be explained that the model has long been discontinued, and you should buy a new one. For Getac users, the nearest service center may be hundreds of kilometers away in the taiga, so it is vital to assemble one of the two laptops yourself: change the screen, remove and clean the keyboard - you will not believe it, this is a common procedure here. By the way, Getac has a version with a rubber keyboard, created specifically for working in deserts or dusty rooms, but fortunately it did not get to the test, otherwise it would not be so interesting.
Photos of the case better than a thousand words show the design features of the laptop, please note-the case is completely shielded, which is especially noticeable in the compartment for installing PCI-E cards (4G/5G modem). Everything that is turned on, inserted/removed from the laptop is closed with tight lids with seals and retainers, so as to exclude dust and dirt. It is quite clear that the Getac V110 meets the IP65 protection standards and is designed to work in dusty and humid environments, both in the rain and in the desert, near radio-sensitive equipment and in areas with high levels of EMR.
Sand test
To protect against the penetration of dust in practice, let's see how the laptop resists sand, but not the usual river, and fine quartz, which penetrates even the smallest cracks. Let's fill in the keyboard, the loop of the rotating screen, and don't forget about the cooler fan. Why, we'll fill it all up!
In general, this test left mixed impressions: sand mercilessly sticks to the rubber corner inserts, the laptop does not repel it, but rather, on the contrary, accumulates. It's nice that the touchpad and touch screen remain functional, but the keys after this procedure begin to stick. Here it is worth noting that in Getac V110, there is a huge gap between the keyboard and the screen, so that the screen, even when closed, will not be scratched on dirty buttons. To clean the device, it is best to turn it upside down and knock it properly. Having disassembled the keyboard, we see that the buttons can not be reached: the entire structure is sealed, and only the grandfather's vacuum cleaner method helps to unlock the buttons.
We make an intermediate conclusion: even if you were covered with sand, the touchpad and touch screen will allow you to scribble the last message, but the keyboard acts as a weak link, so do not forget that it needs to be cleaned, as with a regular laptop: compressed air, a vacuum cleaner, and maybe water?
Ice test
Let's change the hot sand to a snowy frost and see how the Getac V110 will cope with immersion in an ice bath for a few hours. Water acts on the device in diametrically opposite ways: the touch screen and touchpad generate false positives, and the keyboard works like a Swiss watch. For three hours in the bathroom, the ice melts pretty much, and the water already covers the laptop completely. Turn off the touch screen and touchpad, and in principle, you can work without taking the device out of the water. That's great!
Getac claims that they were able to design their touch screen so that the device could work in the rain, and the touch screen would not react to drops. For this purpose, the sensor has 3 modes of operation: finger control (with protection from raindrops), control with gloves or a touch pen (an ordinary plastic blank without electronics). These modes are switched programmatically, in the laptop manager, and the "pen control" mode is set by default, in which the gloved control works amazingly. Switching the mode makes sense when you are working in the rain: yes, unlike smartphones and tablets, here the splashed screen reacts only to your fingers, and not to the water. True, random triggers occur if a stream of water hits the screen directly, but there is no escaping this.
Oddly enough, but water procedures do not pass for a protected laptop without a trace: in our case, the remaining moisture in the screen rotation loop led to the appearance of rust. Of course, in real operating conditions, no one will disassemble the screen rotation loop to remove traces of moisture, but it is possible and necessary to dry the laptop, and that we will do a little later, but first a little more about the sensor.
Glove test
Speaking of the Getac V110 touch screen, I can't find a single bad word. First, the Gorilla Glass, which is well known for its durability to smartphone users, is turned to face the user. The sensor itself is capacitive, and the laptop comes with a passive stylus of the "blank" type, which I personally "did not go": when it is not needed, it can be hidden in the handle, which is attached to the laptop to carry it as a briefcase, but even in this form it remains uncomfortable. It will get lost - and to hell with it, because the highlight here is the recognition of pressing through gloves, and not some special ones, but the most ordinary ones.
I found three pairs: ordinary handymen of the "pimples" type, woolen winter ones, and industrial heat-resistant ones, in which you can't feel the touch yourself. In all cases, the screen handled the touch surprisingly accurately, so here's a solid five.
High temperature test
The Getac V110 specification states that the laptop can operate at temperatures from -29 to +63 degrees Celsius, and such boundary values are not uncommon, because even in the truck cab in the summer without air conditioning, the air can warm up to +50 degrees. To test whether the laptop's cooling system is ready for such conditions, we run a Burn-In test and place it in the oven, gradually increasing the air temperature from 60 to 70 degrees Celsius, while maintaining the maximum load on the processor and cooling system.
The smell of a freshly prepared laptop fills the kitchen, at 70 degrees in the oven, the temperature of the chips rises to 93 degrees, the laptop trottles, but continues to work, demonstrating its readiness to go with you not only to the hot desert, but also to the mouth of a volcano.
Of course, it was possible to continue to raise the temperature further, since we went beyond the permissible limits of use, but I am afraid for the batteries: I do not like to play with the heating of lithium-ion cells. In general, this Getac V110 test was great: the keyboard burns your fingers, the processor is 100% loaded, and it continues to work, and moreover-I can't hear its cooler, that's really cool.
Battery Test
By the way, the Getac V110 has two batteries of 2100 mAh, each with the possibility of replacing "hot", for which it is enough to open the sealed battery compartment cover and press the latch to pull out the battery. Interestingly, if the cover of the compartment is not closed, the screen will be darkened, drawing your attention to the problem. And for those who do not fry laptops in the oven, but work in hot conditions every day, there is a mode in the laptop settings for safely charging batteries at high temperatures.
With two interchangeable batteries, the laptop can be kept on indefinitely, taking as many batteries as you can carry with you on an expedition. Well, as for the autonomy, at room temperature in the mode of a normal office PC, Getac V110 works for about 6 hours. These are average indicators, and there is nothing surprising in terms of autonomy of the machine itself is not.
Gunshot test
The most frequent damage to laptops after the leaders of the undisputed leaders: spilling coffee on the keyboard and "I pressed something and everything disappeared" - this is mechanical damage. Laptops fall off the table, they step on and sit down, throw heavy things on them, they even fight off wild animals: in any repair shop you will be happy to tell about one or two such cases when customers asked to revive the laptop after an unequal battle with a monster. Most often, when a laptop falls, it hits the floor with a corner, so it is in this part of the case that the massive rubber bumpers are located. The declared shock resistance allows you to drop the device from a height of 1.2 meters without hesitation, but for me this is not an indicator: my Macbook Pro also fell from a height of 1.2 meters and remained alive, but another question is whether the Getac V110 will withstand a shot from a gun? The shooting was decided to be carried out with 40 meters of Fetter 12/70 cartridges with a 00 shot.
In the body of the laptop came 3 pellets, 1 of which bounced off the metal insert around the screen, and 2-broke through the outer wall and got stuck in the multi-layer structure of the touchscreen. Pay attention to the material of the screen body-it resembles ceramic plastic: strong, but crumbles at the point of impact. Naturally, the screen after such an execution went out forever, but the device did not lose its functionality.
By connecting the Getac V110 to an external monitor, you can continue to work as if nothing had happened, and what's more - the touchscreen functioned with the same ease as when we first met. That is, not only that, if something happens, Getac V110 will be able to protect you from an accidental shot, it will most likely survive the shooting. However, I did not like the fact that there is a technological hole under the Getac nameplate, which, by the way, is held on velcro. In practice, this means that sooner or later the logo will fall off from the screen, and moisture will gain access to the inside of the screen. How it will behave in this case, I can no longer check, because we have destroyed the screen. But in any case, for the next test, I will seal the wounds of the laptop with duct tape and glue the logo in place.
Crush test
In order for the screen to withstand loads when sitting on it or leaning on it, there are high legs, and as I said, a huge gap between the screen surface and the keyboard, which protects against scratches when debris gets on the keyboard.
In order to check the loop and the screen stops for strength, I drove over the laptop in a car, and I can say that apart from scratches on the bottom of the laptop on the asphalt, Getac V110 did not even notice this, which means that you can not be afraid that someone will sit down or step on your laptop, carelessly forgotten in the work environment.
To save the most valuable
In our testing over a few days, the Getac V110 has survived more than most laptops in its entire lifetime, and in some ways, it's even a little sad that I couldn't kill it by simulating the different situations it might encounter on the service. But if this happens, and Getac V110 is crushed by a concrete slab, smeared on railway sleepers, or corroded by acid, the most valuable thing is the data, which has an additional line of protection. The M. 2 NVME drive is mounted in an aluminum container, which adds another layer of protection, and makes it easy to pull your data out of the device when it can no longer be saved.
Yes, all the most properly protected laptops have this function, but from the failure of the carrier itself, the usual NVME M.2 SSD there is no protection here. If I were the manufacturer, I would sacrifice the NVME bus in favor of SATA, but I would leave the RAID...
Equally important is the protection against unauthorized access. Our Getac V110 model had a smart card slot to facilitate user identification in companies with increased security requirements, but starting in April, new models will ship without this slot. The laptop supports identification by the user's face via Windows Hello, and optionally a fingerprint scanner can be installed.
Specifications
According to the characteristics, Getac V110 is a mid-level model designed for simple office tasks:
- OS - Windows 10
- CPU: Intel Core i5-10210U / Intel Core i5-10310U, vPro / Intel Core i7-10510U / Intel Core i7-10610U
- GPU: Intel UHD Graphics
- RAM: 8-64 ГБ DDR4
- SSD NVME: 256 ГБ - 1 ТБ
- Screen: 11.6" IPS TFT LCD FHD (1920 x 1080)
- Keyboard with backlight, optional rubber keyboard
- Smart Card reader
- Optional barcode reader
- Ports: HDMI, 1 порт USB 3.2 Gen1, 1 порт USB 3.2 Gen2, RJ45, serial port D-SUB, dock station port
- Network: 1 Gbps Ethernet, Intel AX200 802.11ax, Bluetooth (v5.2), optional GPS, optional 4G
- Powering: 2 Li-Ion batteries 2100 mAh
- Dimensions: 313x238x39 mm, 2.1 Kg
- Environmental: from -29°C to 63°C, storage: from -51°C to 71°C
- 3 years warranty
Conclusions
Getac has its own monitoring interface that allows you to monitor the entire fleet of laptops of this brand with predictive analysis of breakdowns and the current state of the devices. Today, this is a Must Have for corporate equipment, since you can assume in advance where something will fail and carry out prevention before the occurrence of a case of failure.
Despite the fact that during the testing process I had some complaints about the design, I want to note that in each test I violated the operating rules and exceeded the allowed parameters: I overheated, completely lowered into the water, pressed harder than possible, and he took it and survived. Our copy went to the workshop, and instead it was given a replacement, since the shot case is a warranty case.
Michael Degtjarev (aka LIKE OFF)
06/04.2021
