Shake, rattle and roll: We test 3 rugged tablets (with video)

Anyone who depends on their tablet throughout the workday knows that disaster can strike at any moment -- it can get accidentally pushed off a desk or dropped while you're running for your airline connection, or caught in a sudden storm, or sat on by your three-year-old.

If you want to avoid last-minute catastrophes, then you may want to consider buying a ruggedized tablet.

There were about 530,000 rugged tablets sold in 2016, about 0.3% of the overall computer market, making it a niche within a niche, according to Chetan Mohan, lead hardware and semiconductor analyst at market-research firm Technavio. He forecasts sales to rise to 720,000 systems by 2021, an annual increase of over 6% -- a rare portion of the PC market that is prospering.

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