T2010 Review - WOW

Reviewer: Ed Starkey

Configuration: U7500, 60GB HD, 2.5GB DDR2
Tested Price: T2010 = $1499 From Laptop Authority
OCZ 2GB DDR2 = $109 From NewEgg

The T2010 is Fujitsu latest soldier in its mobile space army. The sleek black tablet sans optical drive is a departture from the tried and true 42xx platform, but in the ultra-light arena, optical access is usually omitted. I definitely have a triumvirate of first going here - (first laptop, tablet and Fujitsu product), but upon unwrapping the well package device, I felt right at home.



Upon charging the battery, I couldn't refrain from powering the unit up! The screen is like looking at a photograph! On maximum brightness, limited outdoor use may be possible, but upon application of the included screen protectors, this dream slowly dwindled. Maybe I'm just spoiled from the deep contrast and rich colors of the 12.1" widescreen naked. On the short list is something that would allow me to relive this fleeting memory, even if sacrifice of glare resistance is required. There is no latching mechanism for the lid, in either tablet or laptop mode, but the unit remained fairly stable in both modes.





The keyboard is a good feel to it, but I've used better ones: Not too noisy, great layout, nice size, but there is more flex in it than I expected and hence the keyboard can feel a little mushy. Its not something that I notice as I'm typing, but if I look for it, I will find it. The Pen is on the small size compared to my Wacom Graphire 4x5 tablet, and larger hands may feel cramped in extended inking sessions. My hands are middle of the road, and it worked fine, but not perfect.





The erase function of the pen requires WAY to much pressure in order to erase! At first, I thought I may need a new Wacom driver to enable the feature, but under closer inspection, I could 'see' the eraser graphic appear on the screen, but it wouldn't functions without the use of, lets say it together 'WAY TOO MUCH PRESSURE'. I also could not get my Wacom Graphire pen to work on the T2010, something to note if you may want to use an alternative inking solution. The 4220 series users should rejoice, already in the 24 hours of ownership I have left my pen at home (twice) while my T2010 and I masqueraded around the campus of my university. Possibly if the pen was in sight, I would have been alerted to its absence. UPDATE: With more use, the erase function takes considerably less pressure.



The touchpoint wonder aimlessly when the sensitivity was set too high. Reducing it all the way to heavy touch all but solved the problem.

Let's talk about what eveyone wants to know about - Battery Life. With 100% battery, I get the following battery life.

With wi-fi off
6 hours 57 minutes on Power Saver
5 hours 57 minutes on Balanced Power
4 hours 16 minutes on high performance

With wi-fi on
5 hours 10 minutes on power saver
4 hours 38 minutes on balanced power
3 hours 13 minutes on high performance

Vista power meter has hysteresis, so it is a delay before new battery life numbers display. Not quite nine hours of battery life Fujitsu claims but very respectable. I can only wonder what the extended battery life can be. I recommend for indoor use to modify the Display settings to reduce the brightness even more. On maximum brightness the display is brilliant, and you won't lose much by going to 80% or even 70%. I'm sure most users will run 50% daily.

There is definitely an anomaly with vista power functions. On power saver the displayed brightness is set higher than on balanced power. I'm not sure what other features may be reduced in order to allow power saver to have greater power reduction than balanced power, but vista has a plethora of customization options to reduce power even further.

Since I went for the low end option, (1.06ghz, one GB ram, 60 GB hard drive) I knew I would be in need of a ram upgrade. I chose one stick of 2GB of OCZ DDR2667, hoping and praying I didn't fall victim to the Fujitsu ram problem. To my surprise, the install memory was micron brand, and the memory I purchased was recognized without incident.



The speed difference was dramatic between 1 GB and 2 1/2 GB of ram. The system booted at least twice as fast, even though it wasn't slow to begin with. However, 1 GB left the system clawing at the hard drive, even during modest loads. Speaking of hard drive activity, vista's indexing activity can be a battery killer. Options in power settings can adjust this activity to only occur when AC Power is utilized.

System noise is very low during power save mode, and very modest in performance settings. Heat also wasn't a problem in tablet mode (it was warm, not hot), but if you went tablet in high performance mode, I think it would be an issue. Air intake at the rear and exhaust at the left side.



Low system noise is great, unless you want to get audio from the T2010. The single speaker was by far a blemish on an otherwise jewel of a laptop. Its also covered in tablet mode. Maybe the integrated Bluetooth will allow streaming audio to wireless headphones? Microphones worked great in laptop and tablet for speech recognition.



Speaking of performance, the overall feel of the unit was fine in daily tab such as note taking well browsing, email and the like. Wireless performance was top notch on 802.11G. I don't have a router with N capability, but if it's anything like the G I'm sure it will be very acceptable. The lack of an optical drive allowed me to run wi-fi through its paces. I installed one note 2007, firefox, thunderbird, Photoshop CS2, and Trend-Micro anti virus and then uninstalled Norton, and the lite version of some other note taking utility that escapes me right now. All of this was going on while writing this review, running a few youtube streams and utilizing speech to text.


Images of my wife in Photoshop while I crop for a desktop background



Desktop Background

All of this was done in power save mode, 90% of the time and Performance mode the other 10%.
Five and a half hours non stop and power meter says I have 10% battery life!! I don't know how long it takes to charge the battery, because I haven't run it down yet!

In summary, everything the T2010 is, is all that it can be. Everything it isn't was given up for the former - a lightweight, handsome tablet disguised as a laptop with adequate performance for the ultra-slim sector and business needs. Great integration with Vista Business will make all but the most prude forget that XP ever existed.

Pros:
Awesome screen.
Great battery life.
Very light weight
Handsome business looks
Did I say Awesome screen already??

Cons:
Pen erase function UPDATE: With more use, the erase function takes considerably less pressure.
Trackpoint wondering
Abysmal speaker - (speaker not speakers)

 

Thank you for the review! Mine should be in Wednesday or Thursday. I'll add details with my specs for the readers!

 

You mentioned that a screen protector is needed, so my dream of a glass top like the 2710p is crashed... but is it easy to apply the protector? Is it really necessary? I'm quite worried about air bubbles and dirt if I were to do it myself.

Also I'm a bit worried about the no latch thing. You said it was stable, but how does it feel when writing on the surface in tablet mode? Do you have to grab the lid on the side?

 

Tell me more about the awesome screen =) In particular I'm curious about viewing angles. I noticed that the LED-lit Macbook Pro was carefully engineered so that the only direction in which screen stability wasn't very good was from below the screen, in which case the keyboard starts to get in the way anyways. However, this type of panel setup would be a problem in slate mode.

How is image stability on the T2010 when viewing the display from the left, right, top, or bottom? One thing I can definitely say I do like about the ThinkPad tablets is that you can lay one is late mode on a flat table and the image is nearly as stable from any angle as a sheet of paper!

 

As a owner of x60t SXGA+, I'd like to disagree here. I can't bear viewing it vertically mostly because of the uneven backlight across the screen from left to right. Actually for the same reason, I disliked Fujitsu ST5010 that I once owned. Maybe my eyes are picky, but one of the reason I buy tablet is that I want to read PDFs in vertical mode, and the two tablets I owned both disappointed me.

 

hi,

Great review (and nicely composed photos as well).

Can you take a photo of the screen with photoshop running (image, palettes, toolbars, etc)? I'm interested to see what colours look like and the feel of the application, as that's where I plan on spending most of my time.

Thank you,
cheers

 

Hmm, is the x60t SXGA+ an IPS-type panel? My brother has an XGA x60t and its not as bright or nice as the x61t SXGA+ panel (although his screen chassis certainly seems more stable). From what I've heard, the SXGA+ x60t is an inferior panel to the XGA x60t panel.

I guess I shouldn't have generalized so broadly about X tablets. Ok, enough with the thread-jacking, lets hear more on the T2010 display!

 

You really can't get a good view of colors from the photo of a monitor. You have color from an uncalibrated monitor stacked on top of white balance from the camera. I can email you a RAW Canon file if you like, but the monitor still isn't calibrated.

 

Just noticed you have already posted this review ED.

You mention the Pen and how it being small.....
Can you please edit your review and add a photo of the Pen so others can see the difference here of this new style Pen.
Best to lay it flat with a ruler by it's side as a guide for measurement.

 

Side-by-side-by-side with a ruler and the Graphire pen!