The first thing you’ll notice when you pick up Panasonic’s new Toughbook CF-W5 will likely be its matte-silver finish, super-light weight, and pop-up optical drive. You won’t, however, need to pay much attention to the battery meter, since this system lasts a staggering eight hours on a charge. Throw in a durable design and an optional Verizon Wireless EV-DO card for anytime, anywhere connectivity and you have a pricey but highly recommended ultraportable.

Without the mobile broadband option, this refresh of the Panasonic CF-W4 sports a lower base price tag of $1,899 but is a little heavier at 3.1 pounds versus 2.8 pounds. That’s because the wireless WAN antenna is built right into the lid. With a thickness of 1.8 inches, the CF-W5 has a higher profile than most other ultraportables. This extra girth is put to good use, however, providing super-rigid support for the W5’s 12.1-inch display. Other business-rugged features include a full magnesium-alloy case designed to withstand a one-foot drop and a shock-mounted hard drive that’s rated for a fall of 30 inches.

As on the CF-W4, the CF-W5’s combo optical drive is ingeniously stashed under the right half of the wrist rest. Just flick the drive’s on/off switch and half the wrist rest pops up, revealing a snug optical turntable. We like that the drive automatically shuts down after three minutes of inactivity to save battery life. Panasonic told us that it purposely chose not to include a DVD burner as an option because of the high cost, but we think that decision should be left to the buyer.

The standard configuration includes a meager 60GB hard drive and just 512MB of memory. Given that Microsoft Vista is coming soon, we would strongly recommend upping the RAM to 1GB ($130). You’ll also find two USB 2.0 ports, a VGA port, both an SD Card slot and a Type II PC Card slot, and a docking connector.

Of course, tiny size does require certain compromises. The keyboard has all the usual keys, and they felt great when typing, but the layout looks and feels cramped compared with most other ultraportables. The Tab key is especially tiny, and the Delete key is located on the bottom right side. As on the CF-W4, the CF-W5’s circular touchpad and relatively small mouse buttons take some getting used to.

The 12.1-inch display is bright and performed passably well in direct sunlight. Side-to-side viewing angles were generous, but vertical viewing was more challenging. That’s not much of a concern, however, since this system is compact enough to use on an airline seat tray without having to lower the lid.

Our test unit was equipped with an optional Verizon Wireless EV-DO card. The CF-W5 can also be ordered with optional integrated radios that will work with Sprint’s EV-DO network or Cingular’s HSDPA network. In our tests, the CF-W5 delivered an average throughput of 670 Kbps, which is on the high end of Verizon’s claims of 400 to 700 Kbps. The connection was plenty fast for surfing the Web, downloading large files, and even streaming music and video. We experienced a handful of dropped connections while commuting, but for the most part this ultraportable delivered.

This CF-W5’s 1.2-GHz Intel Core Solo U1400 processor mustered a relatively low score of 169 on our MobileMark 2005 test, just one point better than the W4 equipped with a Pentium M CPU with the same clock speed. But the strength of the CF-W5 is its endurance. On our battery tests, the W5 lasted a remarkable 8 hours and 28 minutes with Wi-Fi off, besting its predecessor by two full hours. With the power-hungry EV-DO connection turned on, we were able to surf the Web periodically while doing other work for over three hours, and the battery meter said we still had nearly two hours of juice left.

It is hard not to be impressed with the Toughbook CF-W5, which is backed by a generous three-year warranty. The system doesn’t possess the dual-core power that multitaskers crave, and we’d like to see a widescreen and DVD burner option, but otherwise this ultraportable is ideal for road warriors and field workers who are hard on their notebooks and who don’t want to bother with hotspots.