Getac B360 Pro review

Performance

The performance of the computer at the heart of the B360 Pro is exciting in one breath and a little disappointing in the next.

While it is easy to understand why Getac went with Intel and its 10th Gen mobile platform, the performance of it compared to the 9th and even 9th generation is hardly anything remarkable.

We’ve tested 8th Gen Core-i5 processors that delivered better scores on 3DMark, Cinebench, and PCMark 8 Home Test, and the Intel Core i5-10210U is strong evidence that Intel has been less than diligent in delivering significantly improved chips.

GPU performance hasn’t moved its dial for some considerable time, and Intel has even given up giving this component a number, merely calling it ‘Intel UHD Graphics 10th Gen Mobile’ uninformatively.

Compared with anything discrete or AMD integrated solutions, it is disappointing and based on these scores Intel has signalled no intention of making it better any time soon.

Luckily, Getac has the option of installing the GeForce GTX 1050 card, and we’d recommend this to anyone working with graphical apps or compute demanding tasks.

There are a few places where the sunlight penetrates and one of those is the LITEON CA5-8D256 NVMe storage. For a standard 4-lane M.2 device the read speed of this drive is particularly good, leading to very rapid launching of Windows 10 and applications. Unfortunately, the 256GB model included in the review hardware doesn’t have as impressive write performance as the larger 512GB option (CA5-8D512). 

But the tests that truly delivers a solid reason for buying the B360 Pro are the battery life ones, as this machine can run an inordinately long time with its two batteries. And, because it can hot-swap them while being used, in theory, it could run battery-powered almost indefinitely with sufficient resources.

The excellent battery performance results lead us to wonder how amazing this machine might have been if it had been AMD Ryzen powered.

Resilience

When makers of laptops, tablets and phones need to talk about the resilience of their devices, they often hide behind various IP code and MIL-STD certifications, without actually defining what those mean in terms the public might understand.

Refreshingly, Getac details exactly what its IP66 certification and MIL-STD-810H and MIL-STD-461G tests involved, and just how abuse-resistant the B360 is.

For those unfamiliar, IP66 is water-resistant against powerful jets, not complete immersion, but it can handle being in the rain at the very least.

The MIL standards are more complicated since the US military doesn’t issue certifications, but others use their testing models to provide a means to gauge the likely survivability of equipment.

Getac got American Labs to perform a series of brutal tests on the B360 based on those defined in  MIL-STD-810H and MIL-STD-461G documents. These included ‘an array of conditions and situations, including high/low pressure, high/low temperatures, rain, humidity, vibration, acoustic shock, impacts and altitude’. In these tests, the machine survived 26 drops from four feet on to a solid surface and continued to function.

Getac also makes the ZX70, a rugged tablet, and that device is rated to IP67 (full water immersion), but as far as laptops go the B360 Pro is impressively tough and capable of functioning through extreme situations.

Final verdict

The Getac B360 Pro is made ready for abuse and should be able to handle being deployed in harsh locations and inclement weather without immediately succumbing.

It isn’t the lightest laptop we’ve ever tested, but compared to all the other equipment that typical soldiers and law enforcement officers carry, the B360 Pro isn’t excessive.

In fairness, it’s not much more than the weight of the Panasonic Toughbook 55, Dell Latitude 5420 Rugged and the Durabook S14, but has dramatically better durability credentials than all those competitor products.

Its inherent robustness makes it ideally suited to any endeavour that starts in a field or up a mountain, and those in the construction industry might find it equally useful as those in the Army.

Battery life is beyond expectations, and the screen is remarkably bright, even if the 10th Gen Intel chip doesn’t offer much to recommend it over anything else mobile from Intel in the past five years.

Where this system might not be ideal are for those people who need to work with CAD or 3D modelling applications, as Getac has no discrete GPU option for the B360 at this time.

The extensive options available enable the system to be configured for a specific function that might require a dedicated GPS, LTE data connections, or card security, or some other feature.

With any system this well made and specified, the costs aren’t going to be minor and the Getac B360 Pro, and its accessories, aren’t cheap. But in the sectors that will be interested in this system, they will already understand that computers that can handle challenging environments aren’t ever going to be as inexpensive as a typical office laptop.