What is 'Rugged'?

When you're looking for a 'ruggedised' portable computer for a specific application, how do you know 'how rugged' that device needs to be in order to withstand the conditions it's likely to experience in the field? Does being compliant with the U.S. MIL-STD 810F (Military) standards or the IEC Ingress Protection (IP) ratings qualify a computer as being 'rugged', let alone 'Military Rugged'?

What differentiates a Semi-Rugged computer from a Vehicle Rugged one, or a Fully Rugged or Military Rugged one? Are there even levels of ruggedisation? And if there are, what tests must a device pass so that you can use to assess whether that level of performance is right for you? 

The answer is that there are no standards that define 'levels of ruggedisation''. Similarly, there are no mandatory build requirements that must be employed to achieve 'ruggedised' status. Further, there are no defined 'levels' of ruggedisation, eg 'Semi-Rugged', 'Vehicle Rugged', 'Fully Rugged', 'Military Rugged' ... or indeed ANY level of 'Rugged'. These are all manufacturer's classifications.

But there are a set of standardised tests that can be used to rank a products durability. The difficulty is, you need to know what the tests are, and what the different levels of testing within each category mean.

For example, a product might be MIL-STD 810G 'drop tested', but did it only pass being dropped 6 times from 30" (77cm), indicating that it was moderately rugged with respect to impact resistance, or did it pass the 48" (120cm) drop test, which would indicate a higher level of impact resistance more in line with military requirements?

Similarly, the IEC (International ElectroTechnical Commission) standard 60529 defines levels of resistance to moisture and dust. Together, the levels of testing provide a guide as to how rugged a device should be in the normal use; ie what levels of physical durability it should offer. But does a high level of dust and moisture resistance mean a product is suited to your needs if it only complies to a few of the low level MIL-STD 810G tests?

The message? BEWARE!

So let us help you better understand the standards and the issues involved in creating GENUINELY RUGGED portable computers, to help you assess what's the best product for your needs.

After all, we've been designing and building industrial-grade Fully Rugged and military-grade Super Rugged computers since 1994, so have considerable experience delivering products into applications where, to this day, those products set benchmark levels of performance for durability and reliability.