Panasonic shows off 20-inch tablet with 4K screen

IDG News Service - Panasonic on Tuesday showed off a 20-inch tablet with a 4K screen that can display images at a resolution of 3840-by-2160 pixels and is designed to improve multimedia tasks such as photo editing.

The tablet was unveiled during a keynote speech by Kazuhiro Tsuga, president and CEO of Panasonic, at the International CES show in Las Vegas. To highlight the benefit of the 4K screen, Panasonic showed how a photographer could use the tablet to edit photos on location and send images directly to the cloud.

Tablet display resolutions are continuously improving. Google's Nexus 10 tablet, which has a 10-inch screen and is made by Samsung, can display images at a 2560-by-1600 pixel resolution, while Apple's latest iPad has a 9.7-inch screen and a resolution of 2048-by-1536 pixels.

Panasonic did not share information about the availability and price of the 20-inch device. The 4K tablet is being shown at Panasonic's booth at CES. The company also showed off a 4K OLED TV during the keynote.

A lot of the focus on 4K displays has been TVs, with Sony, Samsung, Toshiba and LG announcing new 4K TV sets. Sharp also announced 32-inch 4K monitors at CES. The 4K displays show images at four times the overall resolution of 1920-by-1080 pixel resolution displays.

Tsuga said that the tablet represented progress being made by Panasonic to develop new technologies in the laptop and tablet market. But with a 20-inch screen, the "tablet" could be cumbersome to carry. The tablet would perhaps be more appropriate as an all-in-one computer for desktops.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com