At the time when the leaders of the notebook market often experimenting with their products, and sometimes not entirely successful release laptops, Fujitsu is on the thumb track. She has won the trust of many users for its budget and top-end professional models who, regardless of the cost, are of high quality and reliability. Line LIFEBOOK notebooks with a “Standard” is perfect for use in household purposes and for undemanding office work.
Worthy representative of this series can be called the hero of this review – laptop Fujitsu LIFEBOOK A512. It amazes with its design or the unprecedented power, but will appeal to all those who seek to ease of use and reliability. In addition, users who do not like to overpay for a nice wrapper, for sure will appreciate the budgetary cost of the laptop – about $ 400. And despite the fact that the country of the manufacturer is not China, and Germany.
Design
Of course, given the budgetary cost of Fujitsu LIFEBOOK A512, nobody expects that this laptop will be made, for example, of aluminum. The predominant material in this case is a plastic mat. It is hard-wearing, which in itself is a huge plus, because in practical use – one of the most common demands of a user when choosing a laptop. In the center of the lid emblazoned company logo Fujitsu. The laptop is available only in black. Build quality is very good, nothing nowhere falter and does not flex.
Opening the notebook, we see that its screen is framed by a not very wide frame, the keyboard is very compact. It also prevails matt plastic which is not sensitive to fingerprints and dust does not accumulate. Regarding the quality of the display mounting, here it is excellent. Loop taut with one hand to open the laptop is unlikely to succeed.
The bottom of the laptop, too plastic. To access the replaceable components, you need to unscrew the two screws available covers. Under one of them is the hard drive, the other two slots for RAM.
Dimensions of the laptop are as follows: width is 37.8 cm, length – 25.2 cm, thickness – 3.7 cm and weighs 2.5 kg.
Display, audio and webcam
Display Fujitsu LIFEBOOK A512, perhaps, be called more than mediocre. This 15.6-inch matte matrix with a resolution of 1366×768 pixels, made by technology TN. Of course, due to the fact that the matrix in this laptop is not IPS, viewing angles leave much to be desired: the case of deviation, vertical, color rendering significantly distorted. Across the situation is somewhat better, but is also far from ideal. The brightness of the screen as a whole is not bad, the average is 246 cd/m2, contrast ratio – 186:1. Edging the display frame is matte plastic, which does not show traces of minor scratches or fingerprints.
Above the display you can see the webcam with a resolution of 1.3 megapixels. In order to make full shots, its resolution is not enough, however, to chat on Skype – enough is enough.
Above the keyboard LIFEBOOK A512 under a decorative mesh is the speaker. The sound they mean, however, for a movie or video that’s enough. But in order to improve the situation, you can connect speakers or headphones.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The working area as well as the rest of the surface of Fujitsu LIFEBOOK A512, made of plastic. The keys are matte, however, as the substrate. Keyboard Type island, almost all full-sized keys. They have a square shape with a stepped structure at the sides, thus avoiding erroneous pressing the adjacent keys. Overall mark is made in white color, and additional function keys are highlighted in blue. During operation, the keyboard does not flex, all keys are securely fastened, the build quality is excellent. The keyboard backlight is absent, which is not surprising, given the low cost of the laptop.
I would like to pay attention to the size of some keys. For example, the left button [Shift] on the order of magnitude smaller than the right, the same fate overtook and [Caps Lock]. In this case, [Enter] and a big row, but rather it is a tribute to the tradition, because in modern laptops this form is rarely used. Dial button unit is also very small, there is a risk to hurt nearby keys. It is impossible not to note the presence of a full-size numpad, which is very convenient to use. A further positive aspect is that the keyboard is protected from spills, that is, simply put, is waterproof. This makes it possible to avoid the adverse effects of moisture on the laptop keyboard.
Just above the number pad is a large button on the laptop, it is round and is highlighted bright blue LED on the notebook. So to find it even in the dark there is no trouble.
Under the keyboard is the touchpad is large and comfortable. Its surface is rough and dull, in addition, tactile boundaries of the manipulator are very easy to find it so blindly there is no trouble. The touchpad supports multi-touch gestures and has two physical buttons.
Performance
Fujitsu LIFEBOOK A512 (A5120MPAC2RU) comes with Windows 8 64-bit, but other configuration of the laptop running DOS. In addition, the filling of this laptop is a dual core processor Intel Celeron B830-generation Sandy Bridge processor with a clock frequency of 1.8 GHz. Unfortunately, the processor does not support Turbo Boost, so will not be able to increase the frequency. Also, it does not support, and Hyper-Threading, Virtualization VT-d, Quick Sync, Wireless Display. However, at the same time, it can be called quite energy-intensive, as the TDP of the processor is 35 watts. Choosing another complete set, you can get more powerful processors, namely: Intel Core i3-2348M, Intel Core i3-2328M, and Intel Celeron 1000M.
As for the graphics processing, it is responsible for this integrated graphics Intel HD Graphics. Her performance is enough for undemanding solutions daily tasks such as surfing the web, watching videos, etc., as well as on a variety of business applications. Discrete graphics card is missing, because the laptop is not being positioned as a gaming or multimedia, so demanding of applications related to graphics, will have to forget.
In the Fujitsu LIFEBOOK A512 also has 2 GB of memory standard, DDR3-1600 MHz, in addition there is another slot, with the maximum memory can be increased up to 16 GB. As for storage, there is the manufacturer installed a hard disk capacity of 320 GB and a rotational speed of 5400 rpm.
Ports and Communications
You can not say that the Fujitsu LIFEBOOK A512 downright packed with ports and connectors, but the most necessary interfaces are present here. On the left side there are two ports USB 2.0, VGA video outputs or HDMI, LAN port RJ-45, and a slot ExpressCard. Right in the middle of a face can be seen vent used to remove hot air.
The right side contains another port USB 2.0, optical drive DVD ± RW, a Kensington lock slot and power connector.
The rear panel is empty, but the front has a card reader 4-in-1 (SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro), headphone output, microphone input, and a series of LED indicators that signal on a laptop.
One should not forget about the wireless communications, in this case, Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi standard 802.11 b / g / n.
Battery
This notebook is equipped 6-cell lithium-ion battery capacity of 4400 mAh, which has a very good autonomy, given that the laptop is not designed to address the demanding tasks. According to the manufacturer, the time on a single charge is 6 hours, you will agree, is a good indicator. In real life, when viewing movies laptop lasted little more than 3 hours, and in the Web-surfing – about 4 hours. With a maximum load of this figure is reduced to one and a half hours. Accordingly, this gadget is safe to take with you on the go, without fear that it will shut down at the worst possible moment.
Conclusion
Fujitsu LIFEBOOK A512 has a strict and practical design. In addition, it has a very comfortable keyboard, touchpad, and a good autonomy. A little disappointed the display, as TN-matrix has not the best indicators of the brightness and contrast, and wide viewing angles. The same can be said about the lack of ports USB 3.0. Maybe someone will seem a great disadvantage and weak filling, but the amount for which you can buy this laptop, justifies all these shortcomings.
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