Fujitsu Stylistic Q555 Review

The Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 tablet boasts high style that doesn’t belie its good name. But Win 7 was not built for touch and Fujitsu’s touch utilities won’t save you from an awkward experience.

The Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 is a Windows 7 tablet that features a 10.1-inch capacitive multitouch screen powered by a single-core Intel Atom processor. At first glance, the Stylistic Q550 looks like a consumer-friendly tablet, with its clean lines, rounded corners, and tapered edges. Fujitsu stresses, however, that the Stylistic Q550 is built not for consumers, but for enterprises. After seeing its price and using Windows 7 on the tablet for a few days, we can see why Fujitsu took care to draw that distinction.

For starters, it has security features not found on consumer tablets, including a fingerprint reader, a SmartCard slot, and a TPM chip. These features must add a fair amount to the price of the Stylistic Q550 because at $849, it costs hundreds more than consumer tablets such as the Apple iPad 2, which starts at $499, and the Motorola Xoom which starts at $599. If you can get around the relatively high price, you won’t be able to get around Windows 7, an operating system that is not optimized for a touch interface. After a week of using the Stylistic Q550, very little about navigating the OS feels natural. Unless your company has custom apps for the device, we don’t see it providing much utility for your business pursuits. In this respect, the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 has more in common with a specialized product like the Armor X7 than it does the iPad or the Xoom, despite outward appearances to the contrary.

The Stylistic Q550’s limitations have more to do with Microsoft than Fujitsu, but unless your job demands a business in the field, we suggest you wait for Windows 8, which Microsoft has saidwas designed from the ground up for touch. At the present, the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 is a clear case of the hardware being ahead of the software, creating an uneven user experience.

Specs:

• 10.1-inch diagonal capacitive multitouch screen (1280 x 800) with digital pen input
• 1.5GHz Intel Atom Z670
• Windows 7 Professional 32-bit
• 62GB SSDATA Ultra DMA/300 with full disk encryption and TRIM command support
• 4-cell, 43 WHr)
• Embedded Trusted Platform Module (TPM) v1.2
• 2GB DDR2 800MHz memory
• Intel GMA600 graphics
• Front-facing 1.3-megapixel webcam, rear-facing 0.3-megapixel webcam
• 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0
• 10.8 x 7.6 x 0.6 inches
• 1.9 lbs
• Price as reviewed: $849