Ultraportables have had a tough time of it in recent months, with a veritable herd of cheap netbooks trampling all over their previously pristine territory. And when you can buy a 10in or 12in laptop that's perfectly usable for writing email or browsing the internet and has a built-in 3G modem for less than $1500, why spend any more?

Most manufacturers have responded by paring down their offering of smaller "traditional" ultraportables, in favour of more powerful laptops with larger, higher-resolution screens.

The P8020, on the other hand, is a truly old-school ultraportable business laptop. It boasts a 12.1in screen, which brings it squarely in line with the latest breed of netbook, but the 1280 x 800 resolution is no higher than that of many netbooks, despite the price premium.

The other problem is its power. Like the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 and MacBook Air before it, in order to provide decent battery life from its six-cell 8700mAh battery, the P8020 features one of Intel's low-voltage processors - a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo SU9400 backed up by 2GB of 1,066MHz DDR3 RAM.

Although this is significantly more powerful than a netbook, its overall score of 0.74 in our application-based benchmarks doesn't offer enough of a performance boost to push it up to the next level, where serious multitasking and the use of processor-intensive applications is possible.

Compared to a score of 1.14 from Lenovo's equally compact 12.1in ThinkPad X200 for example, this Lifebook P8020 is a real lightweight, and its Intel integrated graphics fail to add ballast.

Another area where ultraportables normally attempt to differentiate themselves is in weight, ergonomics and design. Lenovo's X-series of laptops, for example, boast superb keyboards and rock-solid build quality; Toshiba's Portégé R600 is almost unfeasibly insubstantial; Apple's MacBook Air is fantastically slim and drop-dead gorgeous.

The Fujitsu has none of these advantages. Despite a positive key action, its keyboard is cramped and fiddly; we much prefer the keyboard on the Lenovo X200. The P8020 weighs 1.34kg, which isn't much lighter than the larger 13.3in Lenovo X300 and, save for a sparkly lid, it isn't exactly the last word in technological bling.

We didn't take to the build quality either: the metal screen hinges feel durable enough, but the lid feels cheap and over-flexible, and the rest of the chassis isn't much better.

So, is there anything about this laptop that beats the competition? Well, the screen, while low on resolution, is bright and punchy. It's also able to boast the considerable advantage of being transflective.

From working in sun-lit train carriages to browsing the internet on a summer's day, you'll be able to see web pages and documents crisp and clear, instead of having to squint or turn the brightness all the way up (a feature it shares with the Portégé R600).

Its business credentials are second to none: there's a built-in HSDPA modem - a must in a laptop at this price - plus dual-band draft-n Wi-Fi courtesy of Intel's WiFi Link 5300 chipset, a fingerprint reader and some useful manufacturer-installed utilities. Plus, there's a built-in DVD writer - a feature no netbook we've reviewed can lay claim to.

Battery life is worthy of note too. Switch to the P8020's power-saving mode, which turns off peripherals such as wireless radios and the DVD writer and reduces the screen refresh rate to 40MHz, and this little laptop will last up to 7hrs 38mins.

That's under light-use conditions, but at just short of an entire working day, there aren't many laptops around that can compete with this. At full power, it lasted for a more modest 2hrs 39mins, but again, this is pretty good.

There are things to like about this 12.1in laptop - the screen and long battery life, for instance as well as thefree port replicator and mouse - but alas it's not enough to convince us that it's worth its whopping price.

The Lifebook P8020's eyebrow-raising dollar cost brings it into the same territory as Lenovo's excellent ThinkPad X200, which is altogether more powerful, boasts better build quality, and is cheaper too.