Fujitsu L1010: fashion or farcical?

“As pleasing as it is on its own, the Fujitsu L1010 can easily add to the sartorial ensemble as a fashion accessory to match their personal sense of style”. We’re still trying to figure out what this sentence from the L1010’s press release actually means, but it’s just one of dozens that tries to position this laptop as a fashion accessory. These not so elegant exclamations of the L1010’s good looks are nestled alongside another hundred or so references to Generation Y (or Generation Whine as we prefer to call them). So then, based on the excruciating press release, it appears that the L1010 is aimed squarely at spoilt teenagers, to match their Coco Chanel handbags and Christian Dior sunglasses.

Unfortunately, aiming at a market where brand is more important than functionality is fraught with danger. It doesn’t matter how good the product is, because without million dollar marketing campaigns and product placement in the latest Spiderman flick, there’s no competing with Apple when it comes to designer hardware. Ask any teenager which laptop is the best on the market, and they’ll all say it’s a MacBook, even if they don’t actually know what a MacBook is. You can make laptops in all the colours of the rainbow – the L1010 comes in White and Pink Gold, Turquoise Blue, Pink and Purple – but unless Shia LaBeouf shows up on the Letterman show claiming its his favourite gadget, Generation Y aren’t going to buy your hype. Which is a shame, because when it’s not trying to be the new iPod, the L1010 is a decently specced up laptop.

At 14.1in, the screen is a little small for this price range; we’d expect at least 15.4in. Thankfully the 1,280 x 800 resolution ensures it’s nice and clear. With its glossy screen you wouldn’t want to use the L1010 in direct sunlight or overly bright rooms, especially considering the modest screen brightness. Negating these weak points is the fact that the backlight is perfectly even across the entire screen, and contrast is fantastic. Unfortunately the Fujitsu warranty does not cover any dead pixels, so you might like to test your purchase model before taking it home.

On the top edge of the screen is a 1.3 megapixel camera, so the Gen Y’rs can upload dirty videos of themselves to MyTube, ensuring their success as the next Paris Hilton. The image that it takes is exceptionally sharp, but the same excellent performance doesn’t extend to the captured video’s framerate, which is woefully slow. The inbuilt microphone is nice and clear, but a little quiet – get used to shouting when Skyping. Thankfully obnoxious Gen Y’rs are used to shouting and bellowing at those around them (can you tell that the author is a slightly jealous Gen X’r yet?), so this shouldn’t be a problem.



Due to the small size, the keyboard is one of those low travel jobbies, but it doesn’t have the fragile plastic feel of other budget laptops that we’ve seen. Button travel is soft yet reassuring. The touchpad is accurate, but lacks a defined edge to separate it from the wrist rest. This makes it quite easy to over skirt past the edge of the track pad when navigating. The buttons are relatively small due to the central fingerprint scanner, which can be used to lock snooping parents out of secret diaries and hidden Facebook pages. We’re not sure about you, but when we were kids, we didn’t have fingerprint recognition to stop prying parents, and instead relied on the unbreakable code of Pig Latin. For paranoid oldies, a bit of super glue should stop the otherwise accurate scanner from keeping you out.



Fujitsu claims that the L1010 provides gamers with “a perfect gaming experience without any motion lag”. Impressive – let’s read the next line of the press release, shall we? “Gen Y-ers can also score equally high on the cool factor as this fine-looking laptop makes any user look like a poised gaming guru.” So it runs games perfectly and allows you to be a supermodel gamer! That noise you hear is the sound of our bs detector going into overdrive.

Sadly, even in Fujitsu’s fantasy land, where gamers drive Ferraris and date Playboy Bunnies, the L1010 is going to struggle to keep up with today’s titles. The 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor is decidedly low end, while 2GB of memory isn’t enough to run both Vista and a memory-hogging game. The NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS graphics chipset is great for HD decoding, and the HDMI output means spoilt teens can make the most of it on their 80in Plasmas. But when it comes to games, forget about it – this is one of the lower performing graphics chipsets. Unfortunately we couldn’t run 3DMark Vantage to prove it, as the monitor’s resolution was below the minimum specs. However, a little Warhammer Online proved that this laptop struggles, even with such a simple looking game.


But what of this laptop’s main claim to fame – its stunning good looks? While we’re sure there’s at least one teenager out there who appreciates a Purple laptop, the sad fact is that this looks just like every other budget laptop on the market. Just a little more gaudy. Sure, the Fujitsu logo on top looks almost like an Apple logo if you squint hard enough, but at the end of the day it’s just another Japanese laptop designed for functionality first, fashion second.



There’s one other slight problem with the L1010 – the price. For a budget laptop with these specs, the asking price of $1,349 is rather high, and almost puts it in the price range of mid-level laptops. Shave a few hundred off and it’d be great value, but until the price drops we’re a little hesitant to recommend this to those on a strict budget. Even if Pink Gold is their colour.