We finally got to check out the elusive Panasonic ToughPad A1 in person today, and can confirm that it laughs in the face of water damage. The tablet feels unsurprisingly sturdy, and we particularly liked the matte display designed for outdoor viewing. It didn't do much to impress on the software side, though, running Honeycomb at a pretty slow pace. The Panasonic representatives pointed out that the tablet's target end users in enterprise and the military are unlikely to have much interest in being on the bleeding edge in that regard. The ToughPad we saw was a pre-production model with hardware as well as software wrinkles due to be ironed out before its release in May, so Panasonic wasn't crazy about the idea of us conducting scientific stress tests with a hammer. We did, however, manage to convince them to let us douse it with a bottle of water, and you can see the results of our experiment below.

Nathan Ingraham and Jeff Blagdon contributed to this report.