We’ve seen many ultraportables over the past few months and most have been excellent. Fujitsu is a favourite in Japan, a land where they favour tiny, perfectly-formed notebooks so we were very interested to see how the P7230 fared.
This 10.6in cutie is certainly tiny, weighing only 1.3kg and yet Fujitsu has packed in the features. Most notable is an integrated optical drive which supports dual-layer disc burning and DVD-RAM. There’s also a fingerprint reader with TPM module which belies its business credentials (Vista Business Edition is also installed). The 1280 x 768 screen is bright and well lit but has modest viewing angles. Watching movies showed there were few lag issues though this notebook is more about work and the screen is fine for that. The speakers got modestly loud (despite being tinny).
It’s very-well built, although the lid flexes a little too much under stress to make us totally confident in it protecting the screen from a direct bash. But features like hard disk shock protection show that the P7230 can take some punishment.
Naturally, the perennial weakness of 10in notebooks is present – the keyboard. If you have podgy fingers, forget it. All the keys are reduced in size and everything felt rather cramped even without extended typing. However, it is crisp and well weighted. The trackpad mouse is also rather small and its buttons, even smaller thanks to the fingerprint reader bisecting them.
Not surprisingly power is also an issue thanks to the ultra low voltage 1.2GHz Core Solo processor. It combined with the solitary memory slot’s 1GB of RAM and 80GB 4200rpm hard disk to attain a score of 0.37 in our benchmarks: it’s not one for hardcore encoders but fine for keeping Windows and Office applications ticking along nicely. Despite the low power we were disappointed at the regularity that the fan kicked in, it got surprisingly loud and irritating on occasion, though you’ll notice it less in a bustling environment.
Connectivity is fairly standard including two audio jacks, two USB ports, mini FireWire, a PC Card slot, SD/MMC/MS/xD memory card reader, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2 and 802.11a/b/g WiFi. A D-SUB connector allows connection to an external monitor and a VGA webcam is built into the lid. There’s a programmable button and an ‘ECO mode’ button for power saving switching. We’re also fans of the WLAN switch.
At this size it’s eminently portable, but we’re also impressed with the battery life. This lasted three hours under intensive use and five-and-a-half under light use. The optical drive can be replaced with an additional six-cell battery which Fujitsu claims will last up to 9.5 hours.
The P7230 has no shortage of competition from Dell and Sony and also Lenovo and Asus but it has one very big advantage: price. At $2705 it’s practically one grand cheaper than all of its rivals. While we find sub-12in notebooks a touch too small for extended use, if you’re going to buy one, you’ll struggle to find better than this.
