Fujitsu LifeBook E736

COULD THIS BE THE PERFECT MOBILE WORKSTATION?

ONE OF THE PECULIARITIES OF THIS SYSTEM IS THAT IT IS THE ONLY ONE THAT MANAGES TO CRAM 32GB OF MEMORY INTO A 13.3-INCH FORM FACTOR.

LET’S GET TO the point: the Fujitsu LifeBook E736 is an expensive laptop. But according to its manufacturer, it delivers uncompromising elegant design and functionality.

e truth is there are more svelte machines out there, but the E736 just about qualies as an ultrabook. It is 20mm thick and weighs 1.6kg despite looking like a slab. Part of that surprising light-footedness is down to the use of magnesium in the lid and aluminium in the palm rest, which gives the latter a rather odd articial smoothness.

One of the peculiarities of this system is that it is the only one that can cram up to 32GB of memory into a 13.3-inch form factor. Such a massive amount of RAM is ideal for memory-intensive applications.

Fujitsu opted for a classic look with a gunmetal lid and a red border that runs across one edge. Because of its metal palm rest, the rst thing that strikes you when opening this machine up is how cold the chassis is. ere’s also the extreme smoothness of the palm rest.

e display is attached to the base via two hinges. We noticed a lot of ex in the display, the sort usually associated with entry-level laptops. e keyboard also showed some ex during long typing sessions. In either case, though, this didn’t a ect our working experience. e keyboard has a longer-thanaverage travel, and the keys are so to the touch, which might make for a mushier typing experience than you’re used to, while the touchpad is big and responsive enough with two physical buttons.

A nger print reader, located on the palm rest, joins a pair of tiny speakers (generating a boxy sound without much depth); ve status lights; and the power, Wi-Fi on/o and Eco mode buttons, all of which are located above the rst row of keys.

e amount of raw power packed in the E736 is impressive and it doesn’t come as a surprise that this laptop can deliver the sort of performance that would bet a full-tower workstation only a decade ago.

Not once did we encounter any sort of stuttering, as you would expect from such a beast. e fan did kick in a few times but not to any worrying extent. Fujitsu allows you to disable it completely via the BIOS (accessible via F2) but we’d suggest keeping things as such, otherwise the CPU will be throttled (in other words, the CPU speed will drop in such a way as to prevent too much heat from being generated).

Battery life was exceptional on our test unit, as expected. It managed to last 12 hours, — yes, 12 long hours, playing an MKV le with sound and brightness set at 50%.

But the LifeBook E736 won’t appeal to everyone — this laptop’s price and design drew blanks on the faces of some of our consumeroriented colleagues but that’s understandable. ey’re used to the MacBook Pros and the Dell XPS 13s of this world, while we were looking for something that would be more suited to a business user.

Instead, it scores high points when it comes to modularity/expandability, performance, manageability and battery life. e particular model we tested isn’t available at retail in Australia: it packed in 32GB of memory, whereas the nearest equivalent has 8GB. Regardless, there’s still the option of up to 18-hour battery life (with less-intensive tasks) via the addition of a secondary battery which takes the weight to 1.75kg. ere’s also an optional Port Replicator as well, which we loved. It’s compact and o ers more connectivity options than most of the competition, it’s just a shame that it doesn’t support 4K resolution screens.

At the time of print, street prices varied quite signi cantly for the Core i7/8GB/256GB model of the E736 (the nearest to what we tested here), with the lowest being around $1,900 and the highest at $2,300. at lower price is a reasonably fair one, although the 256GB size of the internal SSD is perhaps a little small, but that’s alleviated by the modular drive, which can take a second hard drive.

On paper, this is one of the best business laptops available, but its value does very much depend on how much you can nd it for. Snag a Core i7 version for under $2,000 and it’s not a bad deal at all.