It’s not every day that you unbox a product and scream in excitement. That product - a Fujitsu laptop - landed at my doorstep over two weeks ago.
I say this for a couple of reasons. First, the laptop is from a company you don’t usually see anymore. Back in 2018, Lenovo completed its merger with Fujitsu’s PC arm and it wasn’t until July 2021, when Japanese company Fujitsu, entered the Indian Consumer PC market. Most people I asked couldn’t even recognise Fujitsu’s logo on the lid of the laptop.
Second, the laptop is impossibly light: probably the lightest laptop I’ve ever used, and no, I haven’t tried LG’s Gram series yet. I was at a briefing the other day (for a different product) and I asked a few technology journalists there. Even they were surprised by how lightweight the laptop was.
The third reason I am so excited about this laptop is because it just works as intended. No, it isn’t a gaming laptop (because it lacks a dedicated graphics card), but very few laptops come close to the Fujitsu FMV UH-X laptop for daily office work. Let me tell you why.
The laptop I received for review is the Fujitsu FMV UH-X 2023 model. It features a 14” WUXGA (widescreen ultra extended graphics array) anti-glare display with a 1,9200x,1200 resolution, 400 nits of peak brightness, a 16:10 aspect ratio and a LED backlight.
It comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, 512GB SSD, an FHD camera (with a privacy shutter), Intel’s Iris Xe graphics, 64Wh battery, and a magnesium chassis.
You also get Intel’s latest 13th Gen processors in two variants: the Core i7-1360P processor (with a touch screen display) or the Core i5-1335U processor (and get the non-touch display). The laptop comes in Pict Black or White Silver colour options. The Core i5-1335U (with a non-touch display) model will retail for ₹79,990. The Core i7-1360P variant is priced at ₹99,990 and comes with a touch display.
There are a number of ports on the laptop for all your needs. There are two USB-4 Type-C ports (with Thunderbolt 4 support and power delivery functionality), two USB 3.2 (Gen1) ports, one HDMI (out) port, one audio/microphone combo, a microSD slot and an Ethernet port. Pretty robust, I’d say.
The design of the UH-X for 2023 has become cleaner and more premium. The small logo is now in the corner of the laptop, rather than bang in the middle (like on the 2-in-1 model from 2021). Other than that, the entire lid is completely clean and devoid of fingerprints and smudges. I got the White Silver model for review, and it has quickly become a favourite of mine.
The laptop’s lightweight is due to the materials used in the manufacturing process. The top of the laptop is made of carbon fibre, while the bottom is made of magnesium-lithium alloy. The keyboard is made of a durable and lightweight magnesium alloy. What surprises most people is that the new device comes in at under 1,000 grams. That’s slightly heavier than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro’s LTE version, which comes in at 685 grams. Meanwhile, the thickness of the laptop is just 15.8-17.3mm.
Couple all that with a super slim bezel display that boasts a 93 percent screen-to-body ratio and you have a winner on your hands.
OLED displays are by far the best in the business. Just ask Asus, a company which has outfitted over 90 percent of their 2023 laptops with an OLED display. Nonetheless, while reviewing the Fujitsu FMV UH-X, I realised I didn’t really miss an OLED display. The 14” LED display served me just fine thanks to the 16:10 aspect ratio and 400 nits of peak brightness. There are just two small things I wish were changed.
While watching the trailer for the latest Mission Impossible movie, I realised something about the speakers. I got up to grab my glass of water from across the room and the sound got tinier and tinier, but the quality of the picture stayed the same. The speakers, located on the bottom of the laptop, get plenty loud when you’re within five feet of the laptop. Go 10 feet and further and even pumping it up to full volume will not help.
The display, on the other hand, is fantastic. It's got punchy and vivid colours. I did miss the deep blacks while watching movies though. But not during any other tasks.
As I said above, they’re just two caveats. One, there is a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz. This is unacceptable for a laptop launching in 2023 and costing almost ₹1 lakh. Second, the viewing angles were a bit disappointing, though not a dealbreaker. If you’re three people watching something on the laptop, then the person furthest away is going to have difficulty fully appreciating the display and the content on hand.
The sub-heading may sound crazy to some of you, but for the most part, it’s true. My daily tasks include writing, using Spotify, watching YouTube videos, editing photos, playing light games, attending Microsoft Teams or Zoom briefings and meetings, and surfing over 30 Google Chrome tabs at once (which has slowed down other laptops in recent times). With 16GB RAM, a speedy SSD and Intel’s latest Core i7 processor, the laptop ran like a dream for daily tasks. It was buttery smooth.
There’s no dedicated graphics card in this laptop and hence I didn’t even try playing graphic-heavy games (except Halo) or editing any videos. I tried Halo for fun, and I knew it wasn’t going to run smoothly. I shut it off within 10 minutes. I stuck to classic games like Trackmania Nations Forever and Limbo for the rest of the review period. These games didn’t lag and the laptop didn’t heat up either.
Yes, due to only a 60Hz refresh rate, the animations stuttered sometimes, especially when doomscrolling through my social media feeds. It is something that can be annoying to the consumer, but it didn’t happen often enough for me to list it down as a negative.
The laptop was quick to wake up from sleep and has a superfast fingerprint sensor (integrated into the power button). There’s no Windows Hello support on the FHD camera, which is a letdown.
The speakers were good for work calls and my voice could be heard clearly during meetings. The camera isn’t anything to write home about but it just about suffices for office meetings or video calls with friends.
Fujitsu has outfitted the laptop with a 64Wh battery. While the battery life never got to the company's lofty claims of up to 16.5 hours, it still exceeded my own expectations. For such a thin and light laptop, the FMV UH-X ran like a tank. There were many times, during the review period, wherein I never had to charge the laptop for two days straight. Typically, I sit in a cafe for over four hours and get my work done and then another couple of hours at home.
On some days, I could get about 10 hours of battery life from this laptop. On some other days, it stopped just short of eight hours. To sum it up, the battery life is fantastic unless you’re constantly pushing it to the limit. Even then, it’ll exceed your expectations.
Open the lid of the laptop and you’ll instantly notice something different. The trackpad has buttons for left and right clicks. There hasn’t been a laptop in recent memory to have featured this. It’s a breath of fresh air. It does mean that the trackpad itself is slightly smaller, but I’ll take the compromise any day. The keys have a satisfying click and not once didn’t do the job it was intended to do.
This review is now the third or fourth that I’ve typed on this Fujitsu laptop. I must say, it isn’t the best in the business (some Asus and Lenovo models outshine it) but it gets the job done. I’ve managed to maintain my typing speed and there is a decent amount of feedback from the keys.
For someone like my mother, who types out documents, makes and edits presentations, and attends Microsoft Teams meetings, this is pretty much a perfect laptop. My mom is the perfect consumer as she wants a lightweight (lighter the better) laptop that refuses to break down.
You may be wary of a brand like Fujitsu since it isn’t mainstream anymore. If you’re a gamer, content creator, or someone who feels the need to be plugged in at all times, then this laptop isn’t for you.
For everyone else, the Fujitsu laptop is one of the best in the business. It’s definitely one of the best ultraportable laptops I’ve reviewed over the last 15 months.
I do think the pricing could have been more aggressive, but it’s still competitive. At ₹79,990 (i5 variant) and ₹99,990 (i7 model), the Fujitsu FMV UH-X for 2023 is definitely a compelling buy. The 2023 edition of the Fujitsu FMV UH-X for 2023 will be available for purchase in India at the end of July.
Sahil Bhalla is a Delhi-based journalist. He tweets at @IMSahilBhalla
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