Fujitsu Stylistic Review

Introduction:

The Fujitsu Stylistic Q702 is an 11.6-inch hybrid tablet/notebook computer running a full blown Windows 8 on an Intel Core i3 or i5 chip. That makes it a truly outstanding performer, clearly targeting business, and it even offers optional 4G/LTE support to sweeten the deal.

Looking at the spec sheet alone, you’d easily mistake the Fujitsu Stylistic Q702 for an ultrabook, and rightly so. The device features not just an Intel Core chip, but also a solid-state disk drive of up to 128GB capacity. Being a hybrid, it comes with an attachable keyboard dock, turning it into a fully-featured notebook and boosting battery capacity significantly.

A jack of all trades, the Stylistic Q702 aims to be both a tablet and a notebook, and that’s when its ambitions start to seem like too tall of an order. At 11.6 inches it stretches the tablet form factor limits, and on its own it can only last around 5 hours, half of even the worst Android and iOS alternatives.

With a no-compromise processor, is it too much of a compromise in everything else? Let’s find out.

In the box:

• Wall charger
• Driver, manual, utilities, recovery discs
• Stylus accessories
• Cleaning cloth

Design:

Design on the Fujitsu Stylistic Q702 is bland at best. At worst, it’s absent. As much as we like having a Core i5 chip, as much as we like ports and buttons, there are some compromises that have to be embraced in order for the tablet form factor to work, and that would be our main perspective here. As a tablet, the Stylistic Q702 is too huge to be usable. What’s worse it’s so heavy we could use it as a warm-up weight (it weighs nearly 2 pounds - 1.87lbs or 850 grams to be exact!). The awkward 11.6-inch screen is too big to hold in one hand and when you try to do that you’d naturally hold it diagonally to somehow balance the excruciating weight. You can hold it with two hands, but then you’d need to constantly lift one of your hands to flick-scroll through say pages in an ebook because you simply cannot do this with only your thumb.


Build quality is okay, but far from impressive. Despite Fujitsu’s claims for a ‘solid magnesium cover,’ the tablet feels like any other matte plastic tablet.

The Stylistic Q702 is an abominable 13mm, or more than half an inch, thick. That extra thickness frees space for all sorts of buttons on the sides and Fujitsu has them all there, just in case. There is a USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and a full-sized HDMI port. Then you have a 3.5mm jack, a separate opening for a mic, a separate toggle for turning Wi-Fi on and off, another toggle to power the device on and off. Then, you have a volume up and down buttons, and a screen rotation lock key (all too recessed to be comfortable to press). On the back you have a fingerprint scanner, and even a strap loop. With only a couple more additions, it could compete with a Swiss knife!

The irony of it all is in the name - Fujitsu somehow decided to name a bulky device with little style Stylistic Q702...


Screen:

The Fujitsu Stylistic Q702 features an 11.6-inch touch screen. It is a matte panel with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. On such a large screen in a tablet form factor where the device is supposed to stand much closer to your eyes than say a notebook, jagged pixels are definitely noticeable in a bad way.

We like the matte screen, but glare is still an issue outdoors (less than on a glossy screen, but still). Under direct sunlight, the display is barely visible, due to its weak brightness. Fujitsu uses an AH-IPS panel here, and while this sounds good on paper, viewing angles are not that wide and definitely start to wash out a lot at more extreme angles. The overall color representation seems muted, with washed out colors, lacking in sharpness almost as if you are looking at a blurred, bleak mirror-image. The air gap between the cover glass and the actual LCD display is also huge.

The display comes with a dual digitizer supporting both pen and finger input. It is of course capacitive, with 10-finger multitouch support and worked perfectly well with touch.

Keyboard dock:

The 11.6-inch tablet can dock into the keyboard (it costs $269 in addition to the price of the tablet), to transform into a notebook. The tablet clicks easily and snugly in the dock via a sturdy latch mechanism.

The keyboard station itself is much more solid than the tablet. It is made out of aluminum with a brushed metal finish. Keys on the chiclet keyboard seem a bit cramped at first, but turned out surprisingly comfortable to use. Still, those with larger fingers will definitely have an issue with their small size. The touchpad is too small, and you have to install additional drivers to enable gestures on it. Even with them on, it feels much easier just reaching for the touch screen for the simpler gestures.


The dock comes with a removable battery pack that adds a whopping 6 hours of longevity. This brings the total to a respectable over 11 hours when you use the Stylistic Q702 as a notebook. It also even further enriches the port selection adding an ethernet port, another two USB ports and even a VGA port for your old external monitor.



In the dock is also a stylus that easily pops out. It’s been said before and we’ll repeat it again - sketching on such a hybrid device actually makes a lot of sense. The experience is great with the touch optimized Windows 8, and a stylus definitely adds a lot of value to this type of devices.





Interface:

The Fujitsu Stylistic Q702 comes with a full blown Windows 8, back-compatible with all your Windows 7 and earlier apps. Windows 8 brings the live tile-based “Modern” UI for touch-friendly navigation, while keeping the “desktop mode” known from notebook/desktop computers.

The new ‘Modern’ user interface takes some getting used to as a lot of things are not immediately obvious. The gesture-based navigation boils down to swipes: a swipe up or down brings up a contextual menu, and a swipe from the right brings the Charms bar which also changes depending on the context. That last bit is a bit surprising, and it takes some getting used to that the settings button on the Charms bar will offer different settings depending on the app.


Once you master the new interface, you’ll inevitably start looking for apps. You won’t find them. In the nearly half a year since Windows 8 launched, Microsoft has only slightly improved its app position. A decent free Twitter or Facebook app is hard to find. We do have to mention, though, that Windows 8 comes with deep native integration of social networks.

The native apps work well. The mail app for instance offers a very convenient sectioned layout with emails auto-fitting the screen. Setting up email, contacts and the calendar and syncing with popular services like Google’s cloud is a breeze.



Processor and Memory:

The Fujitsu Stylistic Q702 comes in a variety of models varying by hardware. Starting from $1,099 for a Sandy Bridge Core i3-3217U running at up to 1.8GHz on Windows 7 and ending at $1,669 for a Sandy Bridge Core i5-3427U vPro running at up to 2.8GHz and Windows 8 Pro.

The unit we test is powered by Windows 8 with Intel Core i5-3427U vPro, Intel HD 4000 graphics, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and an impressive 128GB solid-state disk drive. The processor clock speed is set at 1.8GHz, but with Intel’s Turbo Boost 2.0 technology it can go as far up as 2.8GHz. That is some serious muscle, and it comes for an equally serious price of $1,399 (with the keyboard dock included).

When it comes to the subjective performance, we’d say that Windows 8 runs mostly smooth on this machine. Moreover, it is capable of running heavy-duty legacy apps like Photoshop and even video editing applications.

We have to also mention the device did crash on us a couple of times, leaving us frustrated staring at a frozen screen. We had to restart it, losing all the unsaved work.

Internet and Connectivity:

If there is one thing we love about the Fujitsu Stylistic Q702 is its SIM card support and 4G LTE connectivity.

Windows 8 allows you to install any browser you want - Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or whatever. It all works perfectly fine, with Adobe Flash running hassle-free on the Intel chip. Scrolling, pinching to zoom, everything browser-related is a buttery smooth affair.

Camera:

This hybrid tablet/notebook has both a front HD Webcam recording 720p videos and perfect for video conferencing and a rear 5-megapixel autofocus rear shooter.


Shooting anything serious on such a bulky tablet/notebook is absurd, but both cameras are more or less a necessity for Skype, and that’s what justifies their existence.

Image quality is far below mediocre, with stills turning out soft, low on detail and with poor dynamic range. For emergency camera situations (cats gone mad, unicorn apocalypse?), though, it should be fine.



Multimedia:

With a plethora of apps for playing back movies and music, codec and format support is brilliant on this device. It plays everything you throw at it from MKV files to DivX/Xvid-encoded clips with no stutter. The interface of the default video and music applications on the Modern interface is simplistic and clean, and media playback via the built-in speakers is moderately loud and clear.

If you plan on using this device to watch a lot of movies, though, it's definitely not the best fit. It is too large and heavy to hold comfortably for an hour and has a bleak screen.

Battery life:

Battery life is quoted at around 5 hours, and that’s around what we got at best when using the Fujitsu Stylistic Q702. Docking in in the keyboard dock adds another 6 hours of longevity, and overall when docked it’s fairly long-lasting at nearly 11 hours.

While the battery on the tablet itself is not removable, the one on the keyboard is and that’s one big plus.

Conclusion:

An expensive device with top notch hardware, ironically, the Stylistic Q702 is bland on style and too big and heavy to be a decent tablet. It has a poor battery life and a bleak screen. It is not a good notebook either - at a price of a premium ultrabook, it’s thicker and less versatile, with a cramped keyboard. Trying to kill two birds with one stone, the Fujitsu Stylistic Q702 succeeds at neither.

If you are looking for the productivity of a Core chip in a device that can be used as a tablet, right now most of the alternatives are almost as bulky as the Stylistic. Your best bet however would be the much better designed Microsoft Surface Pro which also comes cheaper. For a truly portable tablet, though, Android and the iPad right now look much better.

Fujitsu Stylistic Video Review: