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Panasonic’s giant 4K tablet goes on sale in January for an eye-popping $5,999

Panasonic’s giant 4K tablet goes on sale in January for an eye-popping $5,999

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Panasonic 4K tablet
Panasonic 4K tablet

4K was the ultimate buzzword of CES earlier this year and Panasonic didn’t disappoint with its dazzling display of a 4K Windows 8 tablet. Nearly a year later, Panasonic is ready to release its Toughpad 4K UT-MB5 tablet with a hefty price tag of $5,999. The huge 20-inch "tablet" is more monitor than it is tablet, but that’s not stopping Panasonic calling it the "world’s lightest and thinnest 20-inch tablet." When it debuts in January, owners can look forward to a 3840 x 2560 LCD display that’s targeted at photographers and other professionals.

Panasonic Toughpad 4K tablet photos

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The Toughpad gets its name from a rugged frame made of magnesium alloy and reinforced glass fiber. Panasonic has specifically built it to handle drops at different angles and heights, which is a possible scenario when you’re carrying around a 20-inch device. This tablet won’t slip into a backpack easily, but Panasonic believes it’ll be suitable for use in hospitals, museums, galleries, and at construction sites. For the $5,999 price you’ll get the impressive 4K 20-inch display with an Intel i5 processor clocked at 1.9GHz, 256GB of SSD storage, and 8GB of RAM. The Toughpad also includes a USB 3.0 port, SD card slot, and built-in smart card reader. What you won’t get is good battery life. Panasonic estimates just two hours of use for this 20-inch tablet, the price you pay for a 4K display in a tablet form factor.

Just two hours of battery life for this 4K tablet

Panasonic is also offering what it describes as an Electronic Touch Pen for use with this tablet. It’s an optional accessory, but it provides 2,000 levels of pressure by using infrared signals and Bluetooth to read each pixel on the display. We got a brief look at the pen at CES and it worked well for sketching and manipulating images using Photoshop. The Toughpad 4K UT-MB5 will be available in January 2014 in the US for $5,999.