Why You Can Trust CNET Fujitsu LifeBook P8110 review: Fujitsu LifeBook P8110
Fujitsu's sturdy and attractive LifeBook has good battery life and should appeal to business types.
Fujitsu LifeBook P8110
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Design
Fujitsu's not a company that pitches particularly at the direct consumer market, and as a result many of its LifeBook lines have a rather staid, corporate look. That's definitely the case with the P8110, a black and silver 12.1-inch notebook that measures in at 282x215x29mm and 1.38kg. Tastes vary, but we rather like the elegantly understated design over some of the flashier notebooks on the market today.
A 12.1-inch screen invariably means that there's not a lot of space to dedicate to the keyboard, but in most respects Fujitsu has done well with the spacing, with the notable exception of the space bar itself, which feels a little stunted. Above the keyboard you'll find five programmable buttons that by default offer support, browser, email, power-saving modes and a user-selectable application option.
Features
Screens that are 12.1-inch and smaller are typically the domain of netbooks these days, but the P8110 doesn't play in that space, either from a price or processor viewpoint. The entry-level P8110 starts at AU$1899, much more than any netbook. The processor is a choice of Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 1.30GHz or Core 2 Duo SU9600 1.60GHz. Our review sample had the speedier SU9600 part, but they're both ultra-low voltage parts, which should have a positive impact on battery life. Standard memory is 2GB, up to a maximum of 4GB, with either a 320GB or 500GB hard drive installed. The cheaper P8110 uses an Atheros XSPAN 802.11b/g/n chip for Wi-Fi, while the costlier model uses Intel's Wi-Fi Link 5300AGN. Ethernet support encompasses gigabit, and Bluetooth 2.1 is supported. Both models use Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD chip for pixel pushing duties. The operating system supplied is Windows 7 Professional edition, although it's only the 32-bit version.
Connectivity options include HDMI and VGA for external displays, three USB 2.0 ports, RJ45 Ethernet, audio in and out, and an SD card reader/ExpressCard 54 slot, which sits directly underneath the right side-mounted dual-layer DVD Super Multi Writer.
Performance
There's one reason and one reason alone that vendors put in a ULV processor, and it's not to save themselves big bucks. It's to extend battery life. The P8110 comes with a six-cell 5800mAh battery that Fujitsu rates for up to eight hours of battery life. We ran the P8110 through our regular battery test, which involves disabling all battery-saving measures, pumping the screen brightness up to 100 per cent and playing back full-screen DVD video until the battery exhausts itself. It's a tough test designed to give a "worst-case" scenario for battery life, as in almost any real-world situation you could eke out more battery life than our figure. The P8110 lasted three and a half hours, which is pretty good for a system with this much grunt. Yes, you could do better with a netbook with less power, but given the balance between features available at higher processor levels and expected battery life, the P8110 acquitted itself well.
The LifeBook P8110 still sits as a business machine, so there's more of a focus on number crunching than straight-up graphics prowess. Its PCMark05 score of 3051 and 3DMark06 score of 550 reflects this entirely. As a smaller, eminently portable machine for somebody who wanted a bit more grunt than you might get out of a netbook, it should suit nicely, although the starting asking price does make it a pricey option compared to some of the entry-level 12-inch notebooks on the market.