Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 Review

Fujitsu Stylistic Q550

Review Summary:

The Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 tablet boasts high style that doesn’t belie its good name. But Win 7 was not built for touch and Fujitsu’s touch utilities won’t save you from an awkward experience.

Pros

• Attractive and durable design
• Silent during operation
• Replaceable battery
• Robust security features

Cons

• Windows 7 not optimized for touch
• Pokey Intel Atom processor
• No place to store stylus on tablet

Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 Full Review

 

The Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 is a Windows 7 tablet that features a 10.1-inch capacitive multitouch screen powered by a single-core Intel Atom processor. At first glance, the Stylistic Q550 looks like a consumer-friendly tablet, with its clean lines, rounded corners, and tapered edges. Fujitsu stresses, however, that the Stylistic Q550 is built not for consumers, but for enterprises. After seeing its price and using Windows 7 on the tablet for a few days, we can see why Fujitsu took care to draw that distinction.

For starters, it has security features not found on consumer tablets, including a fingerprint reader, a SmartCard slot, and a TPM chip. These features must add a fair amount to the price of the Stylistic Q550 because at $849, it costs hundreds more than consumer tablets such as the Apple iPad 2, which starts at $499, and the Motorola Xoom which starts at $599. If you can get around the relatively high price, you won’t be able to get around Windows 7, anoperating system that is not optimized for a touch interface. After a week of using the Stylistic Q550, very little about navigating the OS feels natural. Unless your company has custom apps for the device, we don’t see it providing much utility for your business pursuits. In this respect, the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 has more in common with a specialized product like the Armor X7 than it does the iPad or the Xoom, despite outward appearances to the contrary.

The Stylistic Q550’s limitations have more to do with Microsoft than Fujitsu, but unless your job demands a business in the field, we suggest you wait for Windows 8, which Microsoft has said was designed from the ground up for touch. At the present, the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 is a clear case of the hardware being ahead of the software, creating an uneven user experience.

Specs:

• 10.1-inch diagonal capacitive multitouch screen (1280 x 800) with digital pen input
• 1.5GHz Intel Atom Z670
• Windows 7 Professional 32-bit
• 62GB SSDATA Ultra DMA/300 with full disk encryption and TRIM command support
• 4-cell, 43 WHr)
• Embedded Trusted Platform Module (TPM) v1.2
• 2GB DDR2 800MHz memory
• Intel GMA600 graphics
• Front-facing 1.3-megapixel webcam, rear-facing 0.3-megapixel webcam
• 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0
• 10.8 x 7.6 x 0.6 inches
• 1.9 lbs
• Price as reviewed: $849

BUILD & DESIGN

The Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 lives up to its name. Its style is obvious and it's also highly portable and yet feels incredibly durable. A black bezel frames the 10.1-inch display, and the display’s glass extends over the bezel. A thin black border wraps around the bezel and gently tapers out along the side. The back is light gray in color and gently tapers in along its edges. The magnesium alloy back panel has a rubberized coating, creating a great feel when gripping the tablet. At only 1.9 pounds and only 0.6 of an inch thick, the tablet is very comfortable to hold. It’s easy to grip the Stylistic Q550 in one hand and navigate the touchscreen with the other.

Despite its trim dimensions, the Stylus Q550 serves up an impressive number of ports and connections. An SD card slot resides on the right edge, and opposite it on the left edge you’ll find docking and power connections. Just above the SD card slot on the back of the tablet is a fingerprint reader. Along the top edge are a USB 2.0 port and an HDMI port along with a headphone jack. Just behind the top edge on the back panel is a SmartCard slot.

You won’t find any ports or slots along the bottom edge; instead, you’ll discover three small buttons. They call up the keyboard, rotate the screen rotation, and act as the Alt key. The buttons sit flush with the edge of the laptop and aren’t likely to be accidentally engaged, yet they’re large enough to press without too great an effort. Bookending these buttons are two switches: one for power and the other for the Wi-Fi signal. The tablet also features a pair of webcams: a 1.3-megapixel rear-facing camera and 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera. Missing are volume controls; sadly, you'll need to use the touchscreen to adjust the volume.

Wireless connectivity comprises 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0, while mobile broadband is an optional feature. In testing, I found that the Wi-Fi signal was rather weak. In my (small) home, my 802.11n router is located upstairs. Downstairs, nearly directly below the router, my iPad and a Windows 7 laptop each had an excellent signal, while the Stylistic Q550 struggled, showing only one or two bars out of a possible five.

Display & StylusThe 10.1-inch display features a 1280 x 800 resolution a matte finish that makes it resistant to glare and smudges. Although the Stylistic Q550 features some rugged aspects, meeting nine military standard 810G tests for demanding environmental conditions (functional shock, vehicle vibration, vibration integrity, altitude, low (cold) and high (heat) temperature, humidity, transit drop and blowing dust), its display is not all that viewable in direct sunlight. If you can find a shady spot on your work site, you should be fine, but for those in the field and under the sun for the majority of the day, you’ll need a specialized tablet built for such conditions. The display does feature impressively wide viewing angles, both horizontally and vertically.

The display is a capacitive touchscreen, meaning it picks up the lightest of touches. The Q550 also features an auto rotation feature, but it needs to be enabled by the user. Without it enabled, you will need to hit the small button on the bottom edge of the tablet to rotate the screen orientation. (Note: a previous version of this review wrongly claimed the Q550 did not feature auto rotation.)

You can navigate the touchscreen with your finger or the included pressure-sensitive N-trig stylus. The stylus is powered by a AAAA battery, but there is no off switch. Sometimes the tablet would pick up the stylus when placed near it, interfering when I was attempting to control the action with my finger, making me pine for an off switch. There is only one button on the side of the stylus -- pressing it acts as a right-click. You can also perform a right-click simply by pressing and holding the stylus for half a beat.

The screen is large enough to navigate relatively comfortably and accurately with the tip of your finger, although I did catch myself using my pinky finger to tap on a small icon or link. Oddly, there is no slot or clasp to store the stylus. The stylus comes with a tether, which you can tie to a spot on the lower right corner of the tablet, but it’s rather useless with no place to store the stylus when not in use. Who wants to walk around with a tablet that has a stylus dangling from it? This setup makes the Folio Case that Fujitsu sells all the more attractive; it protects the tablet and includes a spot to store the stylus.

PERFORMANCE

With the single-core 1.5GHz Intel Atom Z670, 2GB of 800MHz DDR2 memory, and integrated Intel GMA600 graphics, the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 is not going to set the world on fire with its performance. In fact, it failed to run any of our standard tablet benchmarks. In anecdotal testing, we frequently found ourselves often waiting for a command to be recognized. Whatever performance gains one might have received from the fast seek times of the 62B solid-state drive is offset by the slow clockspeed and single core of the Intel Atom CPU. Of course, that Atom CPU does not demand much from the battery, which lasted for five hours and 27 minutes with the screen set to 70% brightness and Wi-Fi on.

Without a spinning hard drive and nary a cooling fan, the tablet is deathly quiet during operation, and it manages to stay cool even when handling demanding tasks such as playing HD video. And speaking of HD video, the integrated graphics proved capable of handling 480p video; we experienced smooth playback when running through a number of 480p trailers on Apple’s site, but were dismayed to find it refused to download 720p trailers. Jon Stewart on Hulu came through smooth and funny at 360p. The accompanying audio was predictably weak. Better to use headphones than rely on the tiny speaker located on the tablet’s lower-left edge (when in portrait mode), unless you enjoy watching video while huddled inches away from the speaker.

Touch UtilitiesWindows 7 is not an operating system built or optimized for touch-screen devices. It features the standard Windows 7 interface and includes standard Windows software including the ad-supported Microsoft Office Starter apps Word Starter 2010 and Excel Starter 2010. It’s doubtful you’ll create long Word docs or sprawling Excel spreadsheets on the Stylistic Q550, whether you use the onscreen keyboard or the handwriting-recognition Writing Pad. The writing pad was fairly accurate in turning my scribbles into text, but the onscreen keyboard was slow in registering key commands when using Word or Excel. It was just enough of a delay between me tapping a key and it registering it to prevent me getting into any sort of typing rhythm. The onscreen keyboard is more responsive in other apps, such as with Firefox when entering the name of a URL or entering a word in the search box of the Start menu.

Another annoying aspect of Windows 7 on a touch screen is the extra step required to call up the onscreen keyboard. Shouldn't Windows know I need the keyboard when I click in a text field? For example, when I click in the Windows search box or a URL bar, instead of the keyboard automatically appearing, a small keyboard icon appears, which I then must line up my cursor with and click. I feel as if I shouldn't have to make this second, small step.

Also, many times when flitting about in Windows in both portrait and landscape modes, a window would open that would be half off the edge of the screen, as if it expected the tablet to be in the opposite orientation. Navigating Windows 7 is challenging enough without having to drag newly opened windows into the center of the display. Perhaps as an admission of Windows 7 touch shortcomings, Fujitsu includes a handful of touch utilities to improve the experience.

The most useful of Fujitsu’s touch apps is Touch Launcher, which places a customizable strip of icons along the right edge of the display. It features two modes, launcher mode and Internet mode. In launcher mode, it features certain Windows commands such as print, close window, and call up the onscreen keyboard. There’s also a Touch Mode button that enlarges the top menu bar of windows, making it easier to tap your intended menu options. In Internet mode, it displays a back button along with buttons that let you scroll up and down a web page and bookmark, close, or print a page.

Fujitsu’s Home Launcher app is accessed from the home icon in the Windows taskbar. It presents a customizable touch interface with large icons to access frequently used applications, the webcam, and your photos and documents. It also displays the date and time, battery and Wi-Fi status, and volume and screen brightness controls. It’s easier to navigate than the small icons and menu items in the standard Windows 7 start menu, but it would be more useful if it included a search box.

The OnScreen Touchpad app puts a touchpad and mouse buttons on the display. It also features common keyboard buttons -- Esc, cut, copy, paste, enter, Alt commands, and so on -- and a number pad with calculator functions.

Touch Notepad is a largely useless app. It features two modes -- handwriting and text -- that let you create notes on the tiniest of memo pages.

Unrelated to touch, there are also a few utilities includes.PortShutter is a security app that disables the ports and slots of the tablet, keeping vital corporate secrets from prying eyes. And the Battery Swap Utility puts the tablet into hibernation so that you can swap in a new battery. In anecdotal testing, the 4-cell (38WHr) battery ran for approximately 5 hours 45 minutes.

Lastly, despite its billing as a business-class system, the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 comes back with a decidedly consumer-grade warranty. It lasts only one year.

CONCLUSION
We commend Fujitsu on the design and build quality of the Stylistic Q550; it really is a slick and sturdy tablet – until you actually start using it. And we applaud the inclusion of its touch utilities, which do improve the user experience to a degree. We must fault Fujitsu on its outfitting the Stylistic Q550 with an underpowered, single-core Intel Atom processor. Wrestling with Windows 7 on a touch screen is difficult enough without being left wondering if a click was on target as you wait for a command to be recognized. Unless your business has software built to run on a Windows 7 tablet, you are better off waiting a few months for Windows 8.

If you simply must have a Stylistic Q550 tablet, do note Fujitsu sells two Q550 models. The other model costs a bit less at $729 and features a smaller hard drive (30GB), a smaller battery (2-cell), and no TPM chip. 

Pros Attractive and durable design Silent during operation Replaceable battery Robust security features

Cons Windows 7 not optimized for touch Pokey Intel Atom processor No place to store stylus on tablet