In the wake of high-end 17in powerful desktop replacements like Dell’s XPS M1710, Toshiba’s Qosmio G30 and Sony’s VAIO VGN AR18GP, comes Fujitsu’s offering, the N6420. First impressions aren’t great – the rivals look like they cost $5000 while the N6420 has a plastic graphite-coloured chassis. Despite this, it has a very solid build quality.
Like the Qosmio, it sports Toshiba’s HD-DVD optical drive. We’re pleased to see that this is backwards compatible: it supports dual-layer burning at 2.4x and DVD-RAM at 3x. Unfortunately, the screen’s resolution is only 1440 x 900 so it can’t render HD-DVD movie titles in their full 1080p glory. However, we couldn’t help be impressed with it. The viewing angles from the sides and above are among the best we’ve ever seen on a notebook – there’s very little colour degradation when moving your head. It’s also bright and well lit. Watching HD movies was also a joy, as there was little lag.
The keyboard is very comfortable to use and we welcome the separate number pad. The trackpad is nothing special, but accurate enough. Beneath the screen lie some useful shortcut keys for volume, WLAN and channel changing – the latter being more useful when you launch into Fujitsu’s MyMedia mode without booting into Windows. The speakers get quite loud and offer a fair bit of punch at all frequencies.
Naturally, everything comes at the expense of portability. At 4.8kg you won’t want to lug it around much, and you can forget using it for extended periods away from the mains: the battery only lasted 1hr 24mins in light use and 44mins under intensive.
But it’s fast. The 2.16GHz Core 2 processor, combined with 2GB of RAM to score 1.25 in our benchmarks. This could have been faster if the two whopping 200GB hard disks had been in a RAID0 array.
The X1600 graphics aren’t the most powerful: gaming is possible, but with both Far Cry and Call of Duty 2 averaging 14fps in our 1280 x 1024 tests, you’ll have to drop detail and resolution settings.
Connectivity is a mixed bag. We were happy to see composite, S-Video and (unusually) RCA audio inputs, but outputs only included S-Video and VGA - there’s no HD-friendly DVI or HDMI. But five USB 2 ports are welcome, as are slots for a PC Card, ExpressCard 54 and a media card reader.
A disappointingly analogue TV tuner is included, as is a rather grey, but well-featured remote control.
It’s a decent desktop replacement, but for five grand it should offer some luxury like its slightly-dearer rivals. The two year C&R warranty is welcome, as is Vista Home Premium. However, unless price is paramount, if you have this much to spend on a notebook, it’s probably worth plumping for the rival that best suits you.
