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After a warm weekend and another hot summer week coming up, we have completed another review here at Laptop-Review. Although we have slowed down some, there will still be reviews over the summer. We will be looking at a number of Fujitsu devices in the near future, which are aimed at both students and professionals. The first one is the Fujitsu LifeBook S710, a 14 inch laptop in a black-white business look. The computer features hardware like Intel’s i5-520M processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 320GB hard drive. That should satisfy the target user group, but we will take a closer look at exactly how S1710 performs.

The product was kindly lent to us by Fujitsu.


Specifications:

- Intel® Core™ i5 520M, 3 MB, 2.4 GHz
- 4 GB DDR3 RAM - 1066 MHz
- 14 inch LED backlit - HD anti-glare display (1366 x 768 pixels)
- Built-in 10/100/1000 MBit/s Intel® 82577 LM
- Intel® HD Graphics
- SATA, 5400 rpm, 320 GB, 2.5-inch, S.M.A.R.T.
- Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-bit
- Dimensions: (W x D x H): 340 x 245 x 35 mm
- Weight: 2.15 kg

Price: Around £900


Build & Design
















The first impression of the Fujitsu Lifebook S710 is that of a soft and round laptop. If you take a look at the lid, you will notice it does not appear to have edges as such, although these are more marked when viewed from the side. When you lift up the device a bit you will notice the edges are not all that soft – this is not to say they are particularly sharp, but simply illustrates the design was not uniformly imposed.
But you should not always judge a book by its cover, for the device actually has a very nice design on the inside, something you do not notice until you open up the lid. In general terms it feels like a modern remake of the late Fujitsu Siemens classical designs, which were primarly made for the business segments. That is expressed in the sharp black and white contrasts, a mix of the old and the new. As an old Fujitsu Siemens user, I must confess it looks very appealing. The build appears quite sturdy overall, and there really is little to criticise beyond the design, which is always a subjective matter in any case.


Keyboard & Touchpad



The keyboard is pretty good to type with. You quickly get used to it, and it is certainly comfortable enough for longer-term use. There is little flex, and it appears quite stable. The letters are printed clearly on the keys, and everything is really as it should be.



The touchpad reacts as it should. The surface is decent and suitably responsive. However, the surface area is a little small and is something you need to get used to, although this is not too much of a problem. The buttons are slightly noisy but at least they work well. Rather than being integrated into a single bar, as is so popular these days, they are separated with a fingerprint reader, which allows you to log into various accounts without having to type passwords and such. It seems the touchpad lacks multi-touch functionality, but this would be impractical anyway because of the small size.


Ports & Connectivity

Left



On the left side we first have the DC-in jack for the power supply, followed by a VGA port that is hidden by a rubber lid, then a vent, HDMI output, eSATA port, 2x USB 2.0 and an ExpressCard slot.

Right





On the right side we have a SmartCard reader, a USB 2.0 port, a Kensington lock slot, the optical in a modular bay that can also hold an extra hard drive or secondary battery.

Front





At the middle of the front we have a multi-in-one card reader that supports MS, SD and MS Pro standards, followed by a switch to (de)activate WiFi. Then there is an IEEE 1394 Mini FireWire port and the audio jacks.

Rear



At the rear we have an RJ-45 Ethernet port, another Kensington lock slot and the battery.

Bottom



At the top right we have the lid for the hard drive. To the left of that there is a bigger lid that provides access to the CPU, and another lid within which gives access to the RAM modules. At the bottom we have the battery, and at the right the optical drive in the modular bay, which can easily be replaced by other components.

Display









The display measures 14 inches and runs a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. It is LED-backlit and uses anti-glare technology, which is exactly what it sounds like. This is very useful as it reduces problems with glare, and incredibly handy for outside use, especially when the sun is shining.
The angle of view is quite small; view the display from the side and the picture darkens with blue-black colours, with only the sharper contrasts remaining intact. View it from below and the picture gets even darker. View it from above and the picture whitens dramatically, which is not very pleasant to look at either. When you sit directly in front of the screen though, the picture is crystal-clear and the brightness decent.

Noise & Heat



The computer barely makes a sound, be it in idle or working at full performance. The temperature also remains relatively low.


Benchmark & General performance

Fujitsu S710 ran the “High performance” power profile in Windows 7 during tests with AC, and the “Powersaver” profile when running tests on battery. The device is pitted against three others, which each cater to the business/student segment in their own unique way via different factors like mobility, battery life and performance.

The reference laptops are as follows:

MSI X600
Read the review here
http://www.laptop-review.eu

Asus UL30A
Read the review here
http://www.laptop-review.eu

Toshiba T130-17E
Read the review here
http://www.laptop-review.eu


Battery:

BatteryEater 2.70





Idle test settings
Brightness: 1/10, hard drive standby after 10 minutes, "Powersaving" power profile and WiFi activated.

Classic test settings
Brightness: 15/15, hard drive standby after 10 minutes, "High performance" power profile and WiFi activated.

Under Classic settings, S710 can go for just over an hour, quite low compared to the reference laptops. Asus UL30A reaches 7½ hours at Classic settings while the other two can go for about an hour longer than the S710, which is still a large difference. The situation is much the same under idle settings for the UL30A, which can go for almost 15 hours. In this case S710 can go up to four hours – a good deal better – but we have to keep one thing in mind. This particular configuration is one of the “best” in terms of hardware performance, which we will see in the following benchmarks. if you go for a “lighter” model, battery life is likely to improve quite a bit.

Obs. The reviewed configuration includes a secondary battery which replaces the optical drive, so this is bound to increase battery life.


Processor:

wPrime 2.03



S710 takes the lead in the wPrime test by completing it in under 19 seconds. The two other devices that actually ran the wPrime benchmark took over a minute.


Graphics:

3DMark









MSI X600 takes the lead in 3Dmark 06, pretty much because it is the only device with a discrete graphics card. The S710 with its onboard Intel graphics is not too far behind, but the main point is none of the devices score particularly high.


Overall

CineBench R11.5





The reference computers have unfortunately not been tested in CineBench.

PCMark Vantage





Only T130 from Toshiba ran PCMark Vantage out of the three reference devices, but is is clear that the overall performance of the S710 is twice as great. This is in large part due to the i5 processor


Conclusion

Fujitsu Siemens S710 is a decent notebook that has a bit of everything. The configuration under review sported the i5 processor from Intel, which resulted in higher performance than the reference laptops. Unfortunately it also brought about a lower battery life. Not exactly what you want on a longer trip, which is were the other models excel.
Overall, the device comes in a modern design that is aimed at the student as well as the businessman who needs a bit of processing power. The 4GB of RAM and the 320GB hard drive should be enough to handle a diverse range of data, although this configuration does sacrifice battery life somewhat. At a price of around £900 the device does seem somewhat expensive, but as noted earlier a secondary battery is included that is bound to affect battery life positively. How much exactly we cannot say, so this conclusion is not definitive.

Pros:
Anti-glare display
Powerful processor

Cons:
Battery life
Price versus hardware

Battery:	2,5 / 5
Graphics:	1 / 5
Construction:	3 / 5
Mobility:	3 / 5
Software:	3 / 5
Overall:	2,5 / 5