February 6, 2012
batteryfast.co.uk
Fujitsu LifeBook TH701 laptop Reviews
Fujitsu LifeBook TH701 laptop Reviews of light sources and the smooth and slippery palm
rest can feel uncomfortable while typing. Further-
CloudTags: Fujitsu , LifeBook TH701 , laptop Re- more, the finish can be relatively easily scratched
views , Fujitsu laptop battery , Fujitsu D6800 Bat- and if the scratch is deep enough if it will expose
tery , Fujitsu Lifebook t4000 Batteries the metal underneath. We’d much prefer a tougher
matte finish for this laptop’s lid and palm rest. In
The Fujitsu LifeBook TH701 is a tablet convertible contrast, we like the finish of the Fujitsu LifeBook
laptop with lots of features and a more-than-decent battery for SH771 a lot better, even though it isn’t
configuration considering its size. It can be used fingerprint resistant.
as a regular notebook for long typing sessions and
regular work, or as a tablet for when you need to The TH701s screen measures only 12.1in, so the
use a touch interface, draw or take down notes. footprint of the notebook is compact. It’s also a bulky
It uses dual digitiser technology so that you can notebook, but it does have a lot of features. You get a
use your finger or the supplied pen to navigate the built-in DVD burner in addition to a comprehensive
screen and the overall user experience is a good set of connections: three USB ports (including one
one. However, we’re not fans of the notebook’s de- USB 3.0 port), HDMI, VGA, Gigabit Ethernet, head-
sign and finish, which is a little bulky and way too phone and microphone jacks, an SD card slot and a
glossy for our liking. mini-Firewire port. There is also an ExpressCard/54
slot for expansion, a slot for the stylus (and a faci-
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Bottom Line lity to tie it in place) and you also get a convenient,
front-mounted physical Wi-Fi toggle.
The TH701 is a fully-featured notebook that can
easily be converted into a tablet. Its touchscreen
is accurate for handwriting and drawing but it’s a
device feels a little too bulky to hold comfortably
in that form factor. That said, it’s not to be used
like an iPad; it supplements notebook functions by
providing touch input, and you can rest it on a table
to write or draw on it.
Design and features
It’s the type of product that will have more appeal
for professionals rather than home users, yet the
finish of the TH701 is very “consumer”. Not only is
it glossy and slippery to touch, it also has sparkles,
although they are subtle. It’s a very reflective finish The notebook weighs 2.1kg, which is a little heavy
that can be annoying when used in an area with lots for such a small unit, with some of the extra weight
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February 6, 2012
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Fujitsu LifeBook TH701 laptop Reviews
coming from the touchscreen. When the screen is On the bezel of the screen you can find the sliding
folded over to make a tablet form factor, the thic- power button, speakers, a webcam, a fingerprint
kness of the unit is approximately 40mm and it can reader and five buttons. One is a function button
be tiring to hold for a long period of time. You can that brings up the “Fujitsu Menu”, which allows you
reduce the weight a little by replacing the DVD bur- to control the screen brightness, sound and power
ner with a plastic weight saver module. saving settings conveniently when in tablet mode.
Another button is for quickly accessing the Windows
Tablet functions lock screen, two are shortcut buttons, and another
is for rotating the screen manually. If you’d prefer
The screen rests on a single hinge that provides both the computer to detect the screen orientation auto-
tilting and swivelling actions. It’s a bi-directional matically, then you can enable the “Auto Rotation
hinge, which means you can turn it left or right, but Utility” from Windows’ All Programs menu.
it’s a somewhat loose hinge. When using the TH701
in its laptop form factor, simple actions such as til-
ting the screen can cause it to swivel slightly out of
place. This is because the hinge doesn’t really lock,
and there also aren’t any locks at the sides to hold
the screen securely in place, only a couple of flat
resting spots. When you turn the screen around to
make the tablet form factor, you can use the latch
to lock it into place.
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The shortcus buttons that can be used when in tablet
mode.
Once you calibrate the screen, writing, drawing or
just pointing on the screen to navigate Windows will
be a pleasure. The accuracy of the pen position on
the screen was high and it worked even when we
used the pen very close at the edges of the screen.
That said, we couldn’t produce marks at the very
bottom edge of the screen as it was off by around
3mm. You can use the pen to write on the screen
and you can rest your hand on the screen while you
The dual digitiser touchscreen is capacitive, supports write or draw, mostly without marking the screen
multi-touch and it also works with the supplied stylus. if you’re in a drawing program.
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Fujitsu LifeBook TH701 laptop Reviews
The TH701 uses Windows 7s built-in tablet features, software that Fujitsu has pre-loaded and which runs
so it’s adept at recognising handwriting and cor- in the background.
recting spelling mistakes. Running writing can be
handled by the tablet fairly well, and most times The laptop didn’t get too warm while being used for
it will understand even the messiest excuses for Web browsing and office tasks. It has a heat sink
writing. You’ll have to get used to the limited space and fan on its right side and it isn’t all that noisy
of the writing interface and make sure you insert either. There is a removable compartment next to
your writing into your target application regularly. the heat sink, which allows you to easily clean lint
and dust that can accumulate over time.
Specifications and performance
Battery life
On the inside, the Fujitsu has plenty of power for
processing the handwriting, facilitating multitas- Unlike most laptops, the battery on the LifeBook
king and being generally quick when running office TH701 is not on the spine. Instead, it sits in a com-
applications and media encoding. It uses an Intel partment in the base under the right palm rest and
Core i5-2430M CPU, which runs at 2.4GHz, has two it can be removed by manipulating two little clips.
cores plus Hyper-Threading, and takes care of the It has a 67 Watt-hour rating, but it didn’t last as long
graphics (Intel HD 3000). It’s joined by 4GB of DDR3 as we’d hoped it would. In our tests, in which we
SDRAM and a 7200rpm, 500GB hard drive. In our disable power management, enable Wi-Fi, maxi-
Blender 3D rendering and iTunes MP3 encoding mise screen brightness and loop an Xvid-encoded
tests, the TH701 recorded times of 43sec and 51sec, video, the notebook ran for only 3hr 15min. For
respectively, which shows that it’s no slouch. This comparison, the Samsung Chronos, which is a 15.6in
was also shown in the AutoGordianKnot DVD-to- notebook that we tested with the same CPU, lasted
Xvid file conversion test, which took a respectable over four hours in this test. That notebook also has
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53min to complete. Compared to the similar Life- a sealed battery design. Compared against the last
Book TH700 tablet that we reviewed in 2010, which generation LifeBook tablet, the standard battery
used a first generation Intel Core i3 CPU, this model life is about 30min better on this model.
is significantly faster.
Fujitsu allows you to increase battery life by adding
In 3DMark, a score of 3568 was reached, which a second battery to its modular bay, in place of the
means that there is plenty of graphics processing DVD burner or weight saver. Furthermore, there is
power for high-resolution photos (although the a power utility that allows you to switch off many of
1280×800 screen resolution and visual quality of the system’s devices (such as the network features,
the screen aren’t conducive to photo editing). Its FireWire port, DVD burner and ExpressCard slot) in
hard drive recorded read and write times of 95 me- a bid to get as much life out of the battery as possible.
gabytes per second (MBps) in CrystalDiskMark, and You can also set the battery charging utility to only
a more modest 31MBps in our own test, in which we charge the battery up to 80 per cent of its capacity
duplicate 2.1GB worth of files from one location on in order to prolong its life (in terms of the number
the disk to another. During regular Web browsing, of charging cycles it can handle).
document creation, and other everyday tasks, the
laptop felt responsive and we never noticed a slow-
down in performance, despite the huge amount of
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Fujitsu LifeBook TH701 laptop Reviews
Other features Related Articles:
The keyboard on this laptop is not backlit, but it
feels very comfortable to type on — the keys are
soft and possess good travel and bounce. There are
a couple of keys in positions that need some getting
used to, such as the delete key being one in from the Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment
top-right corner and the page up and page down below and continue the conversation, or subscribe
keys being right above the left and right arrow keys, to my feed and get articles like this delivered auto-
although these are convenient. matically to your feed reader.
The touchpad is way too small though and it doesn’t
support gestures such as two-finger scrolling or
three-finger flicking like many other Synaptics-
based laptops that come through our Test Centre.
However, the fact that it doesn’t support two finger
scrolling or three-finger flicking probably doesn’t
matter too much because of its small size. It would
be very hard to perform these functions on a pad
this size.
A mobile broadband module is installed in the unit,
there is an antenna that can pop up of the screen, and
a SIM card can be inserted in the battery compart-
http://www.batteryfast.co.uk/battery-technology/fujitsu-lifebook-th701-laptop-reviews/
ment. It worked perfectly with our iiNet SIM card
and we were able to use either Windows’ networking
or the supplied mobile broadband software interface
to get online without using our phone as a hotspot.
Conclusion
The Fujitsu LifeBook TH701 is a good laptop in terms
of what you can do with it. However, the design
and finish on this unit could stand to be better. The
hinge, in particular, was very loose on our test mo-
del, the touchpad is way too small and the finish
is too glossy and feels slippery. Its performance is
very good for a small laptop though and it supports
plenty of connectivity features that can be very use-
ful — even integrated 3G. Check it out if you want a
well-featured laptop that can also supply a versatile
touch interface.
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