Fujitsu Lifebook T4310 Tablet PC

Review by Julian Prokaza on Thu 21 January 2010

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Summary

Guide price: £949
Rating: 3 out of 6
Good: Multi-touch display works with stylus or fingers; well-made
Bad: Bulky; grainy display; Windows 7 not well-suited to finger control
Verdict: If you need a laptop first and a tablet second, then the Fujitsu Lifebook T4310 isn’t a bad choice, but it’s just too bulky to use the other way around.
Manufacturer: Fujitsu

Review

While everyone else is getting their knickers in a twist about a tablet that Apple might be launching later this year, here’s one manufacturer that actually has launched one — Fujitsu.

Before you get too excited, we should point out that the Fujitsu Lifebook T4310 is a Tablet PC of the old school rather than a sleek, slimline web browsing device, which means it’s effectively a traditional laptop with a screen that folds back on itself when you want to scribble on the screen.

Microsoft first pushed this idea for a new kind of portable PC back in 2002 and while it hasn’t exactly taken off in the intervening years, the Tablet PC has carved itself a small niche in areas where it’s easier to write on a large touch-screen held in the crook of one arm than to type on a keyboard sat on your lap.

The Lifebook T4310 is a 12.1” Tablet PC, which means the screen is large enough to comfortably use in laptop mode, but not too large to make it unwieldy in tablet mode. At 1.79kg and nearly 1.5” thick when closed, this isn’t a laptop you’d want hold in one hand for too long, though — losing the internal optical drive would help reduce the bulk, but perhaps Fujitsu’s customers are happy with a few hundred grammes of extra weight for the sake of this small convenience.

As far as business laptops go, the Lifebook T4310 isn’t bad looking — it’s bulky, as we said, but it also feels pretty solid. The case is all-plastic rather than some more exotic material, with a combination of gloss and matte finishes that make the best of what is otherwise a fairly ordinary design.

The lid is a thick piece of plastic that, while a little flexible, keeps any pressure on the outside away from the screen inside. It sits on a single pivoting hinge that rotates through 180 degrees in either direction, so it’s easy to snap into tablet mode with either hand.

The pivot feels robust enough and holds the screen stiffly at any angle, while a chunky latch keeps the lid locked in place whichever way the screen is facing — it pops through either side of the lid, depending on which side is folded flat against the keyboard.

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