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August 04, 2016

Fujitsu FMV-S8250 Notebook Battery

The keyboard is a good size, and it feels closer to that of a desktop keyboard than other ultraportables. It's still not full-size, which is somewhat disappointing, because many of the most popular high-end ultrabooks, including the 12-inch MacBook, have full-sized keyboards.You cannot click the 7370's multi-touch trackpad, and it may take some getting used. However, the two buttons at the bottom work well once you get the hang of them. Dragging two fingers vertically scrolls the page up and down, and a pinch gesture zooms in or out. The Dell Touchpad app lets you change settings, including sensitivity and custom multi-finger gestures.

Does the Latitude 7370 offer a "full day" computing away on a single charge? That depends. Battery life varies widely depending on the tasks you perform, which could be attributed to the Intel Core M processor.Continued use involving heavier tasks, such web browsing with multiple opens tabs, and video streaming, for example, quickly decrease the life of a fully charged battery to six hours or less. Less-intensive tasks, such as replying to email and writing in Word, drain power much slower, and the 7370 got as much as nine hours of life.

Power users and travelers will appreciate the Latitude 7370's ability to control the device's charge rate through its Dell Power Manager app. The "ExpressCharge" setting powers up a dead 7370 to about 80 percent in an hour when turned off, or up to 100 percent in approximately two hours. We tested this claim and found that with ExpressCharge enabled, the battery reached 59 percent after the first hour and 93 percent at the end of the second hour. Though our experience doesn't match Dell's claim, it's still impressive because you can fully recharge in slightly more than two hours.

Businesspeople who work mostly at a desk can choose the "Primarily AC Use" setting to lower the charge threshold. The setting charges the laptop more slowly, which is designed to extend the battery's life. You can create a "Custom" setting to specify when you want to start and stop powering up. And the "Adaptive" option automatically sets charge time based on your usage.

The Latitude 7370 gets a little warm on the bottom when used for extended periods, which isn't uncommon, and it is completely silent when in use. The laptop has no cooling vents at all; they're supposedly not necessary thanks to the Intel processor's 4.5W Thermal Design Power (TDP), which means the machine doesn't get very hot. (TDP is a measurement of the maximum amount of heat generated by a computer's CPU.)

One of the Latitude 7370's key strengths is its variety of business-centric features, such as a built-in fingerprint scanner (a $20.29 add-on) and smartcard reader. The touch fingerprint reader works better than other similar scanners on rival laptops, but it's not as reliable as those found on newer smartphones, which is disappointing.

The Latitude 7370 has two Thunderbolt USB-C ports, a micro HDMI port, and a USB-A 3.0 port. One of the two Thunderbolt ports can be plugged into a portable battery to power up the 7370. (Dell offers a USB Type-C external battery that it says provides up to an addition 20 hours of battery life for the Latitude 7370.) The machine's USB 3.0 port is handy for hooking up existing USB hardware without having to purchase adapters, and the Thunderbolt 3 ports promise up to 40Gbps data transfers.

The Latitude 7370 also comes with optional WWAN and WiGig wireless, and the latter option lets it to dock wirelessly with a WiGig station to expand available ports and for faster data transfer than is available via 802.11ac Wi-Fi.The Latitude 7370 is an attractive and well-designed laptop that is well suited for business users with modest computing requirements. It offers security features that are not available in many consumer laptops, such as a fingerprint and smartcard reader, as well as the latest wired and wireless connectivity options. The PC has its shortcomings, but overall it's a solid option for travelers who seek a functional, portable, and most importantly business-centric laptop.

These days the laptop market is a crowded, competitive arena and product differentiation is hard to come by, beyond sexy styling or the race for ultra-thin. However, Dellâ€™s Alienware gaming products division is one of the first to market with a laptop innovation that definitively stands out among the scads of also-ran products in the market. Back at CES 2016 Dell debuted the Alienware 13 notebook with OLED (Organic LED) display and it delivers some of the best visuals Iâ€™ve ever seen in a notebook, hands-down. OLED displays offer dramatically better saturation, contrast and pop versus traditional IPS panels, as well as superior viewing angle coverage. OLED displays also have historically been more expensive, however, and until recently have been relegated to smaller use cases as with smartphones, or crazy expensive deployment in HD TVs. The good news is, laptop-sized OLED displays are now becoming attainable from a cost standpoint and some manufacturers like Dell, Lenovo and HP are beginning to equip them in new or existing designs.

Side-by-side versus a traditional laptop display, the Alienware 13 OLED is like night and day comparatively. I had a chance to review the machine and its deep blacks, vibrant, well-saturated colors and viewing angles are sublime. I even compared it to Dellâ€™s own XPS 15 with its gorgeous, near bezelless Infinity Edge display, and though smaller obviously, the Alienware 13 offered significantly more punch even though itâ€™s only rated for a standard issue 300 nits brightness. I tested the 2560X1440 OLED model which felt well-balanced in terms of screen real estate, though I tend to prefer slightly larger machines (15â€³ OLED XPS 15 Dell?).

The other area where OLED displays excel is in fast moving action, like gaming. Here OLED panels offer 1ms pixel response times for virtually jitter and ghost-free gaming and crisp HD movie watching. The Alienware 13 I tested was also outfitted with a dual-core Intel Core i7-6500U processor, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M mobile graphics chip (4GB GDDR5) and a fast 512GB Samsung NVMe SSD (PM951). In cutting-edge game titles and the benchmarks, it routinely offered very playable frame rates at 1080p with very high image quality settings and 1440p resolutions with Medium to High image quality. Image scaling on the panel, down to 1080p from its native res, was also excellent.

Battery life with OLED displays is actually strong as well, since they generally use less power than IPS, pixel-for-pixel. The Alienware 13 put up nearly 5 hours of HD video playback, which is respectable for a machine of its class. The only concern with OLED displays is that of burn-in, where static, high contrast and bright images, if left on the display for hours, could could produce burn ghosting. Alienware noted itâ€™s in fact more of a concern with OLED versus IPS but that itâ€™s not too significant and they fully warranty the machine for such issues.