Fujitsu LifeBook T5010

The Fujitsu LifeBook T5010 is a 13.3in tablet that comes with lots of quality hardware in a small package. Unfortunately it generates too much heat, making it unpleasant to use.

The T5010 feels solid and is comfortable to use when first turned on. The full-sized keyboard offers excellent key bounce-back, and the screen changes orientation without much lag. However, after a few hours of use the T5010 begins to heat up. Much of this is the fault of the hard drive and the CPU, both of which are found on the left side of the chassis. The palm-rests and keyboard become too warm for relaxed use and you’ll find it more difficult to concentrate on your work.

Fortunately the keyboard isn’t the only input option for T5010 owners: it has a Wacom active digitiser. Unlike a touch screen, this is great for people wanting to hand-draw or write directly into the laptop. Resting your palm on the screen, as you would when writing on a piece of paper, will not cause the cursor to start dancing around the screen. Its handwriting recognition is very good; we found that the pen’s accuracy and motion tracking was occasionally off, but it worked very effectively most of the time.

The 13.3in screen has a native resolution of 1280x800 and displays excellent contrast and doesn't suffer from dithering. It’s mounted onto the chassis with bi-directional hinge, which means the screen can be rotated clockwise and counter-clockwise, making it easy to convert the laptop into a slate.

The 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 processor in the Fujitsu is fast, as shown by our Blender rendering and MP3 conversion benchmark results of 1min 15sec and 1min 14sec, respectively. The T5010’s 2GB of DDR3 RAM also helps speed up the system; our WorldBench 6 test returned a score of 86, indicating that the system can handle the average office workload without any problems. The T5010’s 250GB hard drive spins at 5400rpm and will provide more than enough storage for most users.

The power requirements of laptops with digitisers often result in a poor battery life, as seen in the HP Pavilion tx2600 (tx2613AU_01). Happily, this isn’t the case in the T5010, which survived 1hr 45min in our DVD rundown test — 15min longer than average.

The notebook’s weight is also an advantage for users on the move, with the T5010 weighing 2.2kg on its own and 2.4kg with its power supply.

The T5010 has a variety of expansion ports; there are three USB 2.0 ports, a mini-FireWire port, a D-sub port and an ExpressCard/54 slot. For $2999 we would like to see a few more options, such as HDMI or eSATA.

The T5010 offers the fastest network connectivity available, with 802.11n Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet provided. Bluetooth is also available.

The bottom line is this: despite the fast processor, excellent screen, superior battery life and excellent connectivity, the T5010’s suffers from an unfortunate heat issue. If you don’t mind your keyboard getting hot as you work, then take a look at an otherwise strong notebook.