petrv
08-02-2006, 03:25 PM
Thanks to nice people in Fujitsu, I had an opportunity to test their Lifebook E8210. I was very interested how it will perform, since I considered it as one of my favorites, besides HP nc8430 and Toshiba Tecra A8.
I was not running all the usual tests like 3D mark, super PI and others. Instead, I tried to use it as usual and see what fits my needs and what not; so take this short review as my notes made during regular one-day use.
First of all, I couldn’t wait to see the legendary Fujitsu displays that everybody talks about. The only LCD that I was using before this Fujitsu one was old and cheap notebook HP nx9005, which I bought about 3 years ago. Looking to the specifications of HP nx9005 (±35 degrees Horizontal, +15 /-35 Vertical, 150 nits, 150:1), I thought that Fujitsu would be an easy winner. Fujitsu was equipped with a 15.4” 1680x1050 matte display.
Here are both notebooks, side by side:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_front.jpg
Horizontal angles look nearly the same for both, with Lifebook better in extreme angles:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_h1.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_h2.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_h3.jpg
Looking from the top, the E8210 is an easy winner:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_t1.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_t2.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_t3.jpg
Bottom view is nearly the same, again with the E8210 a bit better:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_b1.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_b2.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_b3.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_b4.jpg
Looking from a random high angle, both look the same:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_angle.jpg
Leakage is much better in the E8210:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_leak.jpg
To be honest, I am little disappointed from the results. I thought that the Lifebook display will be nearly perfect in all aspects, but unfortunately, this is not true. I am still working with big 21” CRT monitors, so I am used to perfect colors, speed and viewing angles.
My conclusion is that choosing a notebook from the quality of display is useless, because the best ones on the market are “bad quality” and the others are “even worse quality”. For any serious graphics, I need an external CRT/LCD anyway.
Since I was looking for a very well built business notebook, next step was testing of the build quality. Unfortunately, the E8210 was not very convincing.
First thing that everybody notices is a poorly build DVD drive and the surrounding area. Every time you want to take your notebook or just to move it a bit, you have to hold the DVD drive, which then moves freely about 3mm in random directions. While holding, the drive is making strange noises and the notebook looks like it should come into pieces. The DVD drive and the bottom surrounding area is made by some weak plastic:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/dvd1.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/dvd2.jpg
The DVD drive is located on the right side, which means that the right side of keyboard is also not very stable:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/keys.gif
The frame around the display is made by a weak plastic with too much of flexing:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/edge1.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/edge2.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/edge3.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/edge4.jpg
It’s interesting that the lid from outside is very hard and built very well.
A little LCD is used instead of LED’s to indicate hard disk access etc.:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/little_lcd.jpg
Unusual, and I have to say not very happy solution. It’s located too high and thus bad visible. It is unusable in the dark, because there is no backlit. With the LED’s, you don’t need to focus on them and you know that the HDD is working etc.
I also didn’t like location of some keys on the keyboard. For example, Home and End keys are doubled with PgUp and PgDn keys pressed together with the Fn key. The Fn key is onthe opposite side, so pressing Home/End with a cup of tea in your left hand is not possible:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/home.jpg
I can’t understand who placed the Pause key in the right bottom corner:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/pause.jpg
The Del key would be much more useful there.
Fortunately, there some parts that I liked on this notebook. First of them is a buckskin cover of parts on the bottom that get most hot during hard work:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/buckskin.jpg
The notebook can be placed on your knees without any problem.
The docking connector has a nice auto-opening cover, which can’t be lost:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/dock1.jpg http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/dock2.jpg
During operation from battery and with low load, I could hear some periodic ticking sound coming from the notebook. With higher load or while charging, the sound went away. I think it was some noise from a switching supply inside the notebook. It was loud enough to notice it in a quiet room though.
At the end of the day, I was not very impressed with this piece of hardware. There were no serious problems during my work, but I simply didn’t like all the small problems that I had seen during this quick test. I think that a business notebook should not have such a bad build quality. When I was returning the E8210 in my local shop, I took a look on a Lifebook S. It’s interesting that the S line looks much better built, I can say it’s a different class!
I will try to get also the HP nc8430 and Toshiba Tecra A8 and compare the build quality to the E8210.
I was not running all the usual tests like 3D mark, super PI and others. Instead, I tried to use it as usual and see what fits my needs and what not; so take this short review as my notes made during regular one-day use.
First of all, I couldn’t wait to see the legendary Fujitsu displays that everybody talks about. The only LCD that I was using before this Fujitsu one was old and cheap notebook HP nx9005, which I bought about 3 years ago. Looking to the specifications of HP nx9005 (±35 degrees Horizontal, +15 /-35 Vertical, 150 nits, 150:1), I thought that Fujitsu would be an easy winner. Fujitsu was equipped with a 15.4” 1680x1050 matte display.
Here are both notebooks, side by side:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_front.jpg
Horizontal angles look nearly the same for both, with Lifebook better in extreme angles:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_h1.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_h2.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_h3.jpg
Looking from the top, the E8210 is an easy winner:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_t1.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_t2.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_t3.jpg
Bottom view is nearly the same, again with the E8210 a bit better:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_b1.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_b2.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_b3.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_b4.jpg
Looking from a random high angle, both look the same:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_angle.jpg
Leakage is much better in the E8210:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/disp_leak.jpg
To be honest, I am little disappointed from the results. I thought that the Lifebook display will be nearly perfect in all aspects, but unfortunately, this is not true. I am still working with big 21” CRT monitors, so I am used to perfect colors, speed and viewing angles.
My conclusion is that choosing a notebook from the quality of display is useless, because the best ones on the market are “bad quality” and the others are “even worse quality”. For any serious graphics, I need an external CRT/LCD anyway.
Since I was looking for a very well built business notebook, next step was testing of the build quality. Unfortunately, the E8210 was not very convincing.
First thing that everybody notices is a poorly build DVD drive and the surrounding area. Every time you want to take your notebook or just to move it a bit, you have to hold the DVD drive, which then moves freely about 3mm in random directions. While holding, the drive is making strange noises and the notebook looks like it should come into pieces. The DVD drive and the bottom surrounding area is made by some weak plastic:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/dvd1.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/dvd2.jpg
The DVD drive is located on the right side, which means that the right side of keyboard is also not very stable:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/keys.gif
The frame around the display is made by a weak plastic with too much of flexing:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/edge1.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/edge2.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/edge3.jpg
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/edge4.jpg
It’s interesting that the lid from outside is very hard and built very well.
A little LCD is used instead of LED’s to indicate hard disk access etc.:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/little_lcd.jpg
Unusual, and I have to say not very happy solution. It’s located too high and thus bad visible. It is unusable in the dark, because there is no backlit. With the LED’s, you don’t need to focus on them and you know that the HDD is working etc.
I also didn’t like location of some keys on the keyboard. For example, Home and End keys are doubled with PgUp and PgDn keys pressed together with the Fn key. The Fn key is onthe opposite side, so pressing Home/End with a cup of tea in your left hand is not possible:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/home.jpg
I can’t understand who placed the Pause key in the right bottom corner:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/pause.jpg
The Del key would be much more useful there.
Fortunately, there some parts that I liked on this notebook. First of them is a buckskin cover of parts on the bottom that get most hot during hard work:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/buckskin.jpg
The notebook can be placed on your knees without any problem.
The docking connector has a nice auto-opening cover, which can’t be lost:
http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/dock1.jpg http://www.volny.cz/veitel/e8210/dock2.jpg
During operation from battery and with low load, I could hear some periodic ticking sound coming from the notebook. With higher load or while charging, the sound went away. I think it was some noise from a switching supply inside the notebook. It was loud enough to notice it in a quiet room though.
At the end of the day, I was not very impressed with this piece of hardware. There were no serious problems during my work, but I simply didn’t like all the small problems that I had seen during this quick test. I think that a business notebook should not have such a bad build quality. When I was returning the E8210 in my local shop, I took a look on a Lifebook S. It’s interesting that the S line looks much better built, I can say it’s a different class!
I will try to get also the HP nc8430 and Toshiba Tecra A8 and compare the build quality to the E8210.