We look for a lot of things in a tablet. Size, weight, internal components, but it’s not all that often that we choose a tablet that might be able to stop a bullet. Or at least survive a dunk in the ocean while bouncing off the side of a boat on the way down. But that’s what the Latitude 12 Rugged Tablet from Dell is going to be offering.

Okay, maybe not the bulletproof functions, though we still reckon it has a shot at that. The Dell Latitude 12 Rugged Tablet, which despite the name features an 11.6-inch display, is designed to survive water, dust, sand and falls from a distance of 1.2 metres. It’s the sand-proofing that we’re taken with, taking Dell’s slate to the beach wouldn’t be an instant death-sentence for the hardware.

All that protection is being wrapped around an Intel Core M processor, 8GB of RAM and 512MB of storage. Where have we seen those specs before…? Oh yes, in Apple’s new (or New) Macbook and the ASUS UX305. And like the ASUS ultra-thin, the Dell Latitude 12 Rugged Tablet is set to arrive packing Windows 8.1.

You can even make it seem more like the notebooks it seems to be competing with, with additions like a snap-on keyboard making it more… notebooky. There’s also a GPS module and other tweaks on the way. Lastly, there’s about 12 hours of battery life expected, which is likely the product of that fifth-gen Core M chip.

Dell is going to be dropping the Latitude 12 Rugged Tablet before the end of this month, though they haven’t made pricing and local availability known just yet. We’ll keep you posted.

Source: GSM Arena