Fujitsu Lifebook T4410: Performance, Design, and Usability

Tablet notebooks have always fallen into a slightly difficult position; they’re slim, nicely designed, and reasonably powerful, yet at the same time they lack the battery longevity or processing power to be effective as a mobile workstation. Fujitsu, one of the most prominent tablet laptop developers, have aimed to combine portability and power with the new Lifebook T4410.

At first glance, the Lifebook T4410 looks just like any other tablet notebook. Its screen swivels around to become parallel with the notebook body; its enclosure is fabricated from dense plastic and offers simple, albeit slightly uninspired, portability. While the T4410′s keyboard is far from ideal, it’s comfortable enough for creating documents and preparing presentations.

But this tablet laptop is quite different from the others. Rather than installing an inexpensive processor and focusing on usability, Fujitsu have outfitted the Lifebook T4410 with an Intel Core 2 Duo and reasonably powerful integrated graphics processing unit. Most applications are handled with ease, though we can’t recommend the Lifebook T4410 purely for its processing power.

A 160GB hard drive is installed as standard, offering reasonable storage capacity and a decent access speed. The T4410 includes a multi-use memory and storage card slot, allowing users to easily access mobile broadband connections or edit their photos while on the go. An HDMI port is also included, giving the Lifebook T4410 reasonable multimedia capabilities.

Despite its impressive feature list, the Lifebook T4410 remains a tablet at heart. The 180-degree display can be turned parallel and clipped into the laptop’s body, giving users a simple and highly usable graphics tablet. Weighing in at just over two kilograms, the T4410 is light enough to keep steady in one hand, with another making use of the control stylus.

Writing and drawing using the Lifebook T4410‘s stylus is remarkably simple. The display is bright, sensitive, and quite forgiving – a pleasant alternative to the many bulky, user-unfriendly, and rigid tablet displays out there. Stylus movements are followed accurately and monitored quite effectively; we found that the Lifebook T4410 could track movement with the stylus over an inch from its screen.

However, the sensitive screen and decent processor certainly don’t make the Lifebook T4410 a winner. The T4410 ships with few touchscreen applications installed – the Microsoft Touch Pack was all we could find, and it’s included even on standard display laptops. Switching away from the touchscreen gives users a miniscule touchpad, which makes the T4410 a frustrating experience for business users and mobile workers.

Combined with a poor battery lifespan and a rather uninspired enclosure, these missed features make the Lifebook T4410 a difficult purchase to justify. It’s doubtlessly effective for artists and graphics experts in need of a mobile computer, although it’s arguably less user-friendly for mobile work than a USB graphics tablet and standard notebook.

At just over £1,100 the Lifebook T4410 is far from cheap. Graphic design gurus may enjoy the T4410′s crisp display and great drawing sensitivity, though its lack of basic features make it a particularly difficult purchase for non-designers.