Sep 20 Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 review

Are you interested in buying a Windows tablet before the arrival of Windows 8? It is not a bad idea though, if you’re planning to buy a Windows 7 tablet which features like running PC apps and handwriting recognition then you might want to know all about “Fujitsu’s Stylistic Q550”It has the power of Windows with a touch screen and stylus. This tablet is also featuring an all new Oak Trail Atom CPU which gets you a decent battery life. But this device comes with a price tag that will not suit everyone so easily, including all Windows tablet fans.

THE DESIGN:

The Q550 may seem like a business machine with a few adoptions from the modern styling. The angled edges make it look slimmer and these rounded corners let you hold it with ease. But one thing that we found very strange about this machine is its matte black plastic which truly doesn’t go with the matte black glass bezel or even the white grey back with company’s logo. The company couldn’t manage to fit a well for the stylus into the case with fair hands at all, leaving it dangling from a lanyard, we believe that this device will be kept in a case most of the times because it also has a slot for the pen.

Finding some room for the stylus would be a hard task because all of the edges of this device are already engaged, but it is just a small omission that makes the Q550 much harder to deal with. On the bottom side, there is a docking port for either a cradle for a keyboard, the single speaker and a power jack.

The top edge has been occupied with an SD Card slot and the edge of the removal battery. On the left side, there are array microphones, single USB port and a full-size HDMI. The headphone jack and the smart card reader has been placed n the left side with the fingerprint reader set further back. The right side of the case has been taken up by numerous buttons that enhance the usage of Windows on a tablet. As well as the sliding power keypad lock-up and wireless switches, there are buttons to access the on-screen keyboard, flip the screen if you’ve turned off the auto-rotation feature and send the equivalent of CTRL+ALT+DEL.  These features work before Windows load the touch screen drivers, and they can be used to navigate lists and press enter, if in need.

We wouldn’t say that this tablet is as lighter as an Android tablet or iPad, and at a weight of 800gm, it is a little heavier than the HP TouchPad too, but you will not feel it. Despite being over-weight, yet it is thinner and better balanced than other tablets you’ll find in the markets. So, you will not have to hold it from both hands while enjoying a movie because it balances very well in your one hand when you’re composing notes on screen.

 PEN INPUT : 

This is the very first tablet PC to be used with Ntrig’s latest combination active digester and capacitive touch, instead of what we see from the Wacom screen. Using your fingers and a pen on the same screen at the same time is ideal for Windows users, you can write notes with a pen as well as with your fingers with an on-screen keyboard. Also, you can use your fingers to scroll down a web page and then switch to the pen to tap an icon too small for your finger. We really liked the virtual keyboard, because it has spacious keys and a reasonable response time and has useful text prediction.

When you move the pen nearer to the screen, the screen capacitive touch is automatically. turned off, so you can give your hands a little rest on the screen as you write, it also makes your writing neater and enhances its accuracy than to hold the pen without brushing the screen. Even so, we found that inking isn’t too smooth and fluid as what we were getting from Wacom pen and the resolution of touch-screen isn’t very impressive as well. So, while tapping on larger buttons and scrolling web pages with ease, you will also have to use the pen to perform different actions in this tablet.

There’s also a grainy cast to the screen because of the Ntrig layering, which can be sighted from different angles; that’s quite a shame because this is otherwise an excellent display to be given with tablet. It has rich colors, crisp details, awesome brightness level and reasonable contrast in dark images. We had to go through with some problems with reflections in some low-light conditions, but the 1280 by 800 resolutions is still adequate for the 10 incher. Front and rear facing cameras are nicer enough to go with the twin microphones for video calls from Skype.

The volume of the built-in single speaker is comparatively lower than what we have heard from other Android tablets. Hold the tablet up close to your ears and the sound gets amazingly strong with excellent treble and very detailed. But nevertheless, it has missed out on a ‘boombox’ aspect.

PERFORMANCE WISE:

We have been largely ditched by the performance of the Atom Z670 CPU in this device and particularly in the GMA 600 graphics which is especially made for full- screen videos. You don’t expect this kind of performance from an ATOM, even at 1.5GHZ, with only 2GB of internal memory. But this tablet is a lot slower than other present in the markets and it lets you experience a jerk while performing a number of things like adding folders to libraries etc. Though, we had no such problems with the Office products until we tried one software which is ‘OneNote’s handwriting recognition, this is basically a key feature for any tablet PC aimed at business users. It is because the handwriting sub-system is carried out on a separate CPU thread, we found out that it would completely hand the program at frequent intervals. It recovered every time and somehow we didn’t lose any data.

Video performance is also very poorer; 1080p video streaming from the web had an excellent smoothness and good color but it was jumpy. We found some problems occurring with 720p HD video which we played over the local network, especially on full-screen mode, the video pretty much skipped the frames and showed definite artifacts. No hardware accelerations were received from the GMA 600 graphics, not even in Internet Explorer 9. This is something which indicates a problem with the graphics software in this tablet. At the other hand, Fujitsu’s update utility could not find a newer driver to install as the system only says that it supports up to DirectX 9, we don’t think that any graphics driver could possibly enhance its video-streaming powers. With such disastrous video performance, it’s small comfort that the case doesn’t go warm and the system is silent while in operation.

The performance issues have been balanced somehow by excellent battery life for a Windows tablet. We got full 5 hours even with a wi-fi turned on and we were continuously streaming contents from the internet like music, video and browsing web pages. The company has also claimed that you could take it too 8 to 9 hours with wi-fi turned ff and the Eco power-saving mode on.

Bundled software is still minimal; you get company’s own utility softwares, including a very disappointing widget-driven launcher, Office Starter and Windows Live Essentials. There is also Norton Internet Security that you have to remove for performance reasons. For business users, the Windows 7 professional would be a handy option available.

 VERDICT:

The Q550 is wrapped up in compromises and they may not be the right ones for you. You’re getting business security features and full-size ports in compact but sturdy package. And they do not go work with full powers for you.

Although, this device has nothing over Android tablets or the iPad when it comes to pricing because it is one of the cheapest Windows tablet with both pen and touch screen technology. Unfortunately, with the downfall in its price, we have also seen a decrease in its memory and storage, so it has summed up the whole thing. The main concern is its performance, the ATOM Z series was said to be the right chip for tablets which would enhance the performance of this device to the maximum. Anyways, we can still be happy about the battery life which is 5 to 6 full hours with wi-fi turned on and you get 8 to 9 hours with battery life saving mode turned on.