Neat User Interface from Fujitsu Stylistic Q550
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. Before I get into it, I want to emphasize Fujitsu’s enduring commitment to the tablet form factor. Their designs are excellent, as is their build quality. The Q550 lives up to their standards in that respect. Fujitsu has been good for the community and great to me in particular. Holding the slate, it’s easy to feel the quality of the Q550. There’s a subtle texture around the whole body that offers the right amount of resistance to grip the tablet and provide enough drag on the screen so that the pen glides over it like paper, not glass.
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.
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 tablet 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.
One of the star features of the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 is its brand new processor. The Intel Atom Z670 runs at 1.5GHz and is supported by 2GB of RAM. The processor is designed for small devices that need long battery life, though we didn’t feel the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 did brilliantly in that regard. From a full charge, we played video in a continuous loop from a USB stick and managed just under five hours. That’s good, but not stunning. Still, you can swap out the battery. Carrying a spare ought to give most people a realistic shot at all day computing.
The Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 runs Windows 7 Professional (32-bit). One of the problems with putting Windows 7 into a tablet is that Microsoft’s current operating system – unlike its successor, Windows 8 – was not really designed for finger-based use. Its icons are a bit small, and they’re difficult to hit accurately with a fingertip on the 10.1in, 1280×800-pixel screen.
The Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 looks fine, but it’s a bit heavy – and we’d have liked to see some sort of housing in the chassis for its stylus. Infinity Lounge has potential, though, and we’d like to see it expanded. The storage quota definitely needs a boost too.
