In today's far more complex world, making everything in one place is, with rare exceptions, no longer feasible. Parts are procured from all sorts of places and assembled in various locations, depending on cost and logistics. This development gave rise to OEMs — Original Equipment Manufacturers — and ODMs — Original Design Manufactures. OEMs make a product per the exact design and specifications of the company that ultimately sells the product with its name on it. ODMs design and manufacture a product entirely by themselves. and then sell the product to companies who put their name and brand on it.

How important are OEMs and ODMs today? Very. Most consumer electronics products today are not actually made by the companies most people think make them. Few who are not industry insiders, for example, have heard of Hon Hai Precision Industry. Better known as Foxconn, Hoi Han had 2017 revenues of US$158 billion. That's more than General Motors, and much more than the annual revenues of IBM, Dell or Hewlett Packard.

Does all of this affect the rugged mobile computer market as well? It does. A large number of rugged handhelds, tablets, laptops and panels are made by OEMs and ODMs, and then sold under the names familiar in rugged computing markets. The relationships between OEMs/ODMs and the final sellers can assume many different forms. On the one side, an OEM may manufacture a product to very precise specifications for one customer only, and that customer has an absolute exclusive. On the other end of the spectrum, an ODM may sell the exact product to many customers who then may only put their brand label on it and nothing more. In between those two extremes are many shades of gray.

So what does all of that have to do with Estone Technology and the MJC-100 tablet? Well, Estone is both an ODM and an OEM, and one that specializes in making rugged computing products. Estone's current and prospective customers are companies that provide rugged technology to their own end user customers. The rugged computing market is much smaller than the consumer technology market, and Estone is much smaller than Foxconn. But it's essentially the same thing.

Who are Estone's customers? That's companies that have built their own businesses on catering to their own special markets. Estone's customers sell rugged computing equipment to their own customers together with expertise, software, turn-key solutions, service, and consulting arrangements. Estone's customers may be fairly large, well established names in the rugged computing market. Such customers may have precise customization requirements, their own color schemes, and their own brand names. But Estone's customers might also be resellers, large end users, system integrators, and more.

While many customers like doing business with one of the major rugged hardware and services brands, for others working with an OEM/ODM like Estone makes more sense. An OEM/ODM offers a cost advantage, OEM/ODM designs are more easily customizable to meet the needs of different customers, including "personalizing" a product with labels, colors, and materials. OEM/ODMs are also more likely to offer variable I/O and support different technologies, standards, and performance envelopes.

So let's look at the Estone MJC-100 Windows tablet and see how the company went about creating what had to be a broadly appealing implementation of the generic 10-inch tablet form factor. Below you can see the MJC-100 from the front and from all four sides.

A challenge all tablet designers run into is how to make a tablet that doesn't look like every other tablet. Much to its credit, Estone came up with a clean design that takes the ubiquitous capacitive touch tablet form factor and subtly adds (easily replaceable and customizable) perimeter and corner protection as well as more wired connectivity and functionality than commonly available.

The 10.8 x 7.6 x 0.74 inch package makes the rugged MJC-100 barely larger, albeit a bit thicker, than your typical 10-inch consumer tablet. It looks elegant and professional and clearly like a tool for the job. Yet, despite its robust build and functionality, our review MJC-100 weighed just two pounds.

Below you can see the MJC-100's left (top) and right (bottom) side, with the hinged protective port covers removed for better viewing. On the left side you find a Type-D micro HDMI port, a standard USB 3.0 port, a standard 3.5mm audio jack, and a micro-SD Card slot.

On the right side are three physical buttons for power/sleep, and volume up and down. Next to the buttons is a slot, secured by a screw-on cover, for a SIM card. Next to that is a micro-USB port and the power jack.

Being in the OEM market, Estone must carefully consider overall performance of their mobile computing product offerings. In addition to the usual size/weight/cost tradeoffs and balancing inherent in any mobile design, OEM customers may have widely differing priorities, ranging from lowest possible cost to highest possible performance. To address that, Estone sometimes offers a platform both in a lower-end and a higher-end configuration (as is, for example, the case with the company's MD-100 and MDK-100).

Other times it makes more sense to optimize a product for a particular target market. If a market's need is for an economically priced light and handy tablet for light processing duty, it makes no sense to create a product that also supports much higher performance. That is the case with the MJC-100. The goal here was to offer a tablet platform that's tough and rugged and suitable for a large number of field applications, but it also had to be budget-friendly.

So Estone chose the Intel "Cherry Trail" Atom x5-Z8350. That's a much simpler processor than the Intel Core processors one Estone offers in higher-end tablets such as the Estone MDK-100 we recently tested (see here).

All of this greatly matters in rugged devices, given the extra demands on durability and reliability. And what things look inside is even more important for OEM products because they go to customers who rebrand them for their particular target markets, resell them to their own particular customer in a particular field, or make them part of turn-key hardware/software solutions.

This means that OEM products must not only be designed from the ground up to be as flexible as possible, cover as many bases as possible, and allow as many configurations as possible. They must also be as easy and simple to maintain, upgrade or repair.

How does the Estone MJC-100 score in all those areas? Opening up the device is easy, and all that's needed is a small Phillips screwdriver. The protective corner bumpers come off first. Since they are not integrated into the housing they can be replaced separately, and Estone could probably make available customized ones. Then the four side covers come off. Here again, these pieces could easily come in different colors and textures, thus assisting in branding. The tablet's hinged protective I/O doors are screwed on and replaceable. Finally, undo 14 small screws that secure the backplate of the tablet to the front.

After that, separating the two halves of the tablet's housing is a piece of cake. The front consists of a shallow thermoplastic polyurethane box, the back of a magnesium back plate. There's only one single wire between the two halves, the one for the speaker, and that disconnects easily. Sealing between the two halves is done with a single, long, replaceable square-profile rubber pressure O-ring type seal that sits in a simple groove. The red replaceable seal contrasts well with the black housing, making it easy to check fit and condition.

The overall construction of the MJC-100 is simple. Electronics are divided into two boards, one to the left and the other to the right of the large battery. Separating I/O this way makes it easier for a manufacturer to offer custom configurations for special needs and applications. All I/O is edge-mounted. Unlike high-performance units with Intel Core processors, the Intel Atom-powered MJC-100 doesn't need a fan or extensive thermal management; a small metal cover over the processor and electronics conducts heat away to the magnesium backplate.

The MJC-100's battery is internal and not user-accessible. Our review unit had a 7.6V, 5,300mAH rechargeable Li-Polymer design providing 40.3 watt-hours, which is quite generous for an Atom-based tablet (it's also about 10 watt-hours more than that in the MJ-100's Windows-based MJC-100 sibling). Unlike some internal batteries that are next to impossible to replace, this one looks like it shouldn't be a problem.

The image below shows an infra-red look at the opened, operating MJC-100, taken with our FLIR ONE Pro thermal camera. Even without the cooling provided by the magnesium backplate, the hottest (imaged as yellow) areas only reached into the mid-80F range.

Our unit came did not come with the optionally available 1D/2D imager integrated into the top side of the tablet. Estone usually sources its CMOS-based barcode scanners from Netherland-based Newland EMEA, a subsidiary of Fujian Newland Digital Technology Co., Ltd.

The Estone MJC-100 has a 10.1-inch capacitive multi-touch IPS display with 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution. That makes for 224 pixels per inch — plenty sharp enough for the intended applications. Since this is an IPS screen, there are perfect viewing angles and no color or contrast shifts when viewed from any angle. The display is listed in the spec sheet as having 220 nits luminance.

"Nits" is the commonly used measure for display brightness. Nits is really candela per meter squared, or cd/m2, and that, per Google dictionary, is "the luminous intensity, in a given direction, of a source that emits monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 × 1012 Hz and has a radiant intensity in that direction of 1/683 watt per steradian."

Standard laptops generate about 200 nits. Consumer tablets and smartphones may go as high as 500 and 600 nits. And special purpose rugged laptops can generate as much as 1,500 nits. The MJC-100 display looked brighter to us than its listed 220 nits and, sure enough, we tested 425 nits, roughly that of an iPad Air. So Estone may have upped the luminance of the standard display, or our review unit may have had an optional brighter display.

The images below provide an idea of what users can expect from the MJC-100 display outdoors. The picture below shows the MJC-100 side by side with an iPad Air 2. We measured the iPad at 415 nits, and the MJC-100 is indeed a bit brighter.

Like virtually all smartphone and tablet displays today, the MJC-100 has a "glossy" transmissive screen with optical treatments to offer as much outdoor viewability as possible. Glossy screens "pop" and make for vibrant displays, but outdoors it all depends on angle and reflections. The pictures below show the tablet outdoors on a bright late morning under various viewing conditions.

Overall, the MJC-100 display is impressive. It's very bright and vibrant indoors, and bright enough for outdoor use. It offers near perfect viewing angles from all directions, without distracting changes in brightness, color, or contrast.

The onboard Windows Camera app in our review unit could go as high as 5mp stills (2560 x 1920 pixels) and 1920 x 1080 pixel FHD video. For video the camera tops out at 1080p/30fps. The Microsoft Windows Camera app is generally very limited in its settings and options, but at least has a "Pro mode" in this Estone tablet. With Pro mode enabled, the app offers time delay; both auto or manual white balance and focus; manual shutter speed, and exposure compensation. There are various shooting modes (panorama, video, photo, document, and whiteboard). That's more than the Windows Camera app does in most systems. But not being able to take advantage of the camera's full 8mp is a drawback.

The pictures below were shot with the MJC-100 rear camera in 2560 x 1920 mode. Click on the image to bring up a full-size version.

Instead, the MJC-100 makes it clear from the start that you can use it without worries. No screen protector needed, because the screen itself is of chemically hardened cover glass. There's no glossy metal that easily scratches, only that tough thermoplastic polyurethane, the rubber bumpers, and the magnesium back plate with a tough finish on it.

By established ruggedness testing standards, just how tough is this tablet? That's a bit more difficult to determine. The MJC-100 carries IP65 sealing where the "6" means it's completely dustproof, and the "5" that it is also protected from low-pressure water jets from all directions. So no worries about a spilling a soda on it or a bit of rain or more.

The device can also handle drops from four feet. That means it can easily survive falling off a desk or a cart. And four feet is also about the distance a tablet falls if it slips out of one's hands while using it in a standing position.

The stated operating temperature range of 32 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit (0 to 45 degrees Celsius) is narrow by SSD-equipped rugged tablet standards. It can easily get colder or hotter than that in many locations. And since many MJC-100 tablets will see lots of outdoor duty, the officially sanctioned operating temperature range should be wider.

Now do look at all the pictures below. That is some of the ruggedness and durability testing gear and instrumentation that Estone Technology uses to test the ruggedness of its mobile computing devices. One gets the impression that the MJC-100 rugged tablet may well be tougher than the few specs in the official brochure indicate.

And, in fact, the company's informational materials go into length about its considerable testing. Which includes aging, immunity to power line variation, liquids resistance, battery stress, thermal testing, temperature and humidity (both storage and operating), drop test, package drop, vibration, ESD, and moisture & salinity. List of testing performed on a particular device, of course, depends on the product and its intended purpose. We'd encourage Estone to make the results of all those tests available in its sales and promotional product literature.

The MJC-100, which weighs just two pounds, features an elegant, polished look that emphasizes (but not flaunts) its inherent ruggedness. Its tough thermoplastic polyurethane and magnesium back design won't easily scratch or break, and its 10.1-inch capacitive multi-touch display with excellent viewing angles is crisp and sharp. The display on our review unit allowed easy viewing outdoors. The tablet's two cameras are remarkably good. The internal 40 watt-hour main battery easily lasts a full shift.

The performance provided by its frugal Intel Atom processor is adequate for many jobs, but it's not in the Intel Core processor class. An optional integrated industrial-grade scanner does 1D/2D barcode reading. NFC, GPS, and mobile broadband are all optionally available. The device has an externally accessible micro SD card slot and good wired connectivity.

The tablet's internal design is rugged, logical, rational and should be easy to repair/maintain. Layout and organization allow for easy customization. Overall, the Estone MJC-100 is a practical, cost-efficient multi-purpose 10-inch Windows tablet platform that is far more durable than any consumer tablet. -- Conrad H. Blickenstorfer, August 2019

Estone Technology MJC-100 Specs: