Panasonic Reveals 20-inch Tablet With Ultra HD Display

Ladies and gentlemen, the winner of the "Most Ridiculous Product" award at this year's International CES has been revealed. Sure, Samsung's voice-detecting, motion-sensing, multi-view television was impressive, and Sony's waterproof smartphone attracted some eyeballs, but it's time to concede the race to Panasonic's new tablet.

Sure enough, in The Year of Ultra HD and Phablets, a tablet may not sound very noteworthy, but just take a look at how Panasonic's new slab of technology usurps both trends and combines them into a truly mammoth piece of machinery.

The yet-to-be-named tablet clocks in at 20 inches, easily dwarfing any and all competitors when it comes to size. It's less than half an inch thick and weighs a little more than five pounds. The battery only lasts for a mere two hours on a single charge, but depending on how useful you find a nearly two-foot tablet you can get a lot out of it.

CES 2013 has been all about 4K Ultra HD television sets, but Panasonic decided to go in a different direction here and pack the same resolution into its device here. The 20-inch screen sports a 3840 x 2560p display capable of displaying over 16 million colors, as well as support for 10-finger multi-touch or hi-res stylus. Users can even use a stylus to draw on streaming videos.

Surely this new device will be extremely expensive, but for what it's worth Panasonic is targeting business professionals rather than general consumers. As an example, Panasonic suggested this scenario in its press release :

"An editor comes into the room carrying a 4k tablet with him, lays it flat on the table and switches it on to show the catalog data for perusal by the editorial staff. While they check each page of the print-ready catalog by tapping and swiping the touchscreen, the editor jots down instructions for color changes directly on the screen using the digital pen and transfers them to the printing company. The meeting wraps up after they make a final check of the revised data returned from the printer to ensure the changes have been made correctly."

No word yet on pricing or availability. You can find the complete specs below.

Specifications

Display: 20.0 inch IPS Alpha Panel

Resolution: 3840 x 2560 pixels (230 ppi): Approx. 16.77 million colors

Aspect Ratio: 15:10

OS: Windows 8 Pro 64 bit

CPU: Intel Core i5 3427U vPro 1.80 GHz

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce Graphics

Memory: 4GB (max.16GB)

Flash Memory Drive (SSD): 128GB

Interface: High resolution digital pen (Anoto Live pen), Electrostatic multi-touchpanel (10 fingers)

Wireless: IEEE802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth v4.0