mariostevano

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Great Laptop from Fujitsu, but not perfect

Sep 15, 2008

Rating: 8 out of 10 (Excellent)
Pros: huge screen for its form factor; powerful; elegant design ('vaio style'); extremely slim and light for 14 incher; great keyboard; bright and vivid LCD
Cons: no dedicated graphic card; no volume control button/rocker; low resolution screen; extremely lousy speaker
Opinion:
I bought the upgraded version of S6520 (T9400 processor, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320GB HDD). It is approx. SGD 3500 on street, but NTU/NUS/SMU student can buy at approx. SGD 2350 after tax.

It looks well as it is well performing. It has a great keyboard, and also bright and vivid LCD. It is also slim and light for a 14 incher, hence provide great mobility (1.8kg with standard battery).

Small in size does not mean small in performance. My S6520 performs extremely well, run Windows Vista and other relatively heavy application (Photoshop, Office 2007, etc) smoothly. It also has a giant capacity 320GB HDD, quite surprising for notebook in this form factor.

Its main selling point is its 14" screen, embedded in a 13" form factor (its size is very similar to 13 incher Vaio SZ series). Unfortunately, its 14" screen only has 1280x800 resolution, which is arguably low for a hi-end 14" laptop. Hence, it is not as sharp as other hi-end 14" laptop, but still sharp enough for average user who do not expect hi resolution screen.

S6520 also does not have dedicated graphic card, hence not suitable for gaming and perform graphic-intensive activities such as 3D rendering. Though it is okay for business user, we can say that Fujitsu is left behind by other manufacturers. Sony for example, has put dedicated graphic card in its SZ series, and even put more powerful card in its slimmer Z series.

This laptop does not have a volume control button/rocker. It is quite annoying when I have to press Fn + F8/F9 to increase/decrease volume level. Its speakers are lousy, it sounds slightly better than my previous Toshiba M400 speaker.

Despite its cons, S6520 is worth to buy for business user or student who does not want to sacrifice screen and performance for mobility. It is extremely powerful yet slim, and quite rugged with its Magnesium body. But consumer who demand more powerful and slimmer, lighter laptop might look at the new Sony Vaio Z series, which is priced around SGD4000 for the most powerful type (13.1", P9500 processor, NVIDIA® GeForce® 9300M GS 256MB, 1.5kg weight).