Like its predecessor, the LifeBook T4220, the Fujitsu LifeBook T5010 is a well-rounded convertible with an optical drive, and it has been updated to reap the benefits of Intel’s Centrino 2 technology. Fujitsu has also squeezed in a larger 13.3-inch display while adding very little weight. These improvements, along with a reliable pen-input experience and solid design, makes this a business Tablet we’d recommend.
Design
The T5010 weighs a manageable 4.9 pounds (versus 4.3 pounds for the T4220) and is 1.4 inches thick. You can bring it down to 4.5 pounds by swapping the DVD drive with a weight saver. The system can easily be hauled around without straining your shoulder, and when held in the crook of your arm, it isn’t too cumbersome. The black matte lid along with a light silver keyboard and palm rest give the system a bit of spice; however, it has a boxy look and an overall ho-hum design.
While the T5010 might not stand out style-wise, it offers very good ergonomics. Its full-size, spill-resistant keyboard is roomy, and the well-spaced keys provided excellent feedback. Similarly, the touchpad is wide and the mouse buttons were responsive and relatively quiet. We appreciated the scroll pad on the right of the touchpad.
The T5010 has a solid array of ports, including three USB, FireWire, VGA, Ethernet, a PC Card slot, and a 2-in-1 memory card reader. On the front side, you’ll find the Wi-Fi switch and a fingerprint reader on the screen’s bezel.
Display and Audio
The T5010’s 13.3-inch WXGA display is impressive. The 1280 x 800-pixel glossy screen was crisp, and colors looked clear without the grayness typical of other tablets. When we watched DVD episodes of Californication, colors looked quite good; David Duchovny’s shaggy hair looked detailed, and the California landscape vivid. Vertical and horizontal viewing angles were fine in both notebook and tablet mode.
The system’s durable, metal, bi-directional hinge lets the screen rotate 180 degrees in either direction, and the latch on the screen locks into the one on the keyboard to keep it from wobbling. The display switches from landscape to portrait mode in about a second.
The T5010 contains two speakers on its back edge; Fergie’s “Clumsy” came through loud and clear, but with a slight bit of tinniness. The 1.3-megapixel webcam above the display served up good images in a video chat over Skype; our caller could tell that we had a tan and could see the details of our necklace.
The dual microphones located on the screen’s bottom bezel recorded the voices of our colleagues in a meeting. However, unlike the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablet, the T5010 lacks noise cancellation out of the box; it picked up both the noise of our pen scraping across the screen and our keyboard strokes before we configured the microphone settings in the Reatek Audio Manager.
