Fujitsu Lifebook LH532

Among budget-priced laptops, there's a good rule of thumb to always bear in mind: Appearances can be deceiving. Case in point: the Fujitsu Lifebook LH532 mainstream laptop looks great on the shelf, with a sleek-looking design covered in stickers that highlight features like USB 3.0 and Wireless Display. But despite a roster of appealing features, it came up short, with sputtering performance and a short-lived battery.

Design
The Lifebook LH532 has a glossy-black plastic chassis, and with blue LED indicator lights, a glowing blue power button, a black matte rubber soft-touch finish across the lid, and Fujitsu's infinity snake logo in polished chrome. Weighing 4.5 pounds and measuring 1.41 by 13.19 by 9.45 inches (HWD), the Lifebook LH532 is roughly the same size as the Editors' Choice Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5) ($750 direct, 4 stars).

The 14-inch Lifebook has comfortable soft-touch panels on the plamrest and a spill-resistant keyboard. It's not light enough to use on the go every day, but for those times you may need to work through lunch?or take your work with you to lunch?you can rest assured that it will survive your occasional slops and spills. The soft touch finish of the palmrest also covers the trackpad, which has a raised pattern of dots to indicate the touch surface. It works well enough, and the right and left mouse buttons are soft and rubbery, making them both comfortable and quiet.

The 14-inch display has 1,366-by-768 resolution, which is par for the course, letting you enjoy movies in 720p or tile windows side-by-side for multitasking. Generic stereo speakers may not produce spectacular sound, but when tested with streaming audio (Queen's "Princes of the Universe") the sound quality was clear at all but the highest volumes, though it was too quiet at low volume.

Features
While the Lifebook LH532 has all of the standard features you might expect, like an SD card reader, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, USB 2.0, microphone and headphone jacks, and VGA and HDMI outputs for connecting an external monitor or HDTV, Fujitsu has also added plenty of unexpected premium features as well, like three USB 3.0 ports (one with charging capability), a DVD+-RW drive with dual-layer read and write support and Bluetooth connectivity. For those who don't want to hassle with an HDMI cord, the Lifebook LH532 is also outfitted with Wireless Display 2 (WiDi 2.0), which transmits HD video and audio wirelessly, through an adapter, like the Belkin ScreenCast or the Netgear Push2TV ($99 list).

The 750GB 5,400rpm hard drive found in the Lifebook LH532 is one of the largest in the category?the Dell Inspiron 14z and the Acer Aspire TimelineX AS4830T-6841 ($649.99 list, 4 stars) both offer 640GB?and Fujitsu doesn't clutter it up with a bunch of bloatware, including only a 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security Software, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, and a Google toolbar. Fujitsu covers the Lifebook LH532 with a one-year warranty.

Performance
The Lifebook LH532 is equipped with a 2.3GHz Intel Core i3-2350M dual-core processor and 4GB of RAM, similar to the 2.2GHz Intel Core i3-2330M CPU seen in both the HP Pavilion dm4-2165dx ($649.99 list, 3.5 stars) and Sony VAIO VPC-EH25FM ($599.99 list, 3.5 stars). With a faster CPU, the Lifebook LH532 beat out both in Cinebench processor speed tests?2.17 points as opposed to the HP dm4 (2.02) and the Sony VPC-EH25FM (2.11)?but without providing the same performance. In PCMark 7 performance tests, the Lifebook LH532 scored 1,802 points, falling behind both the HP dm4 (1,940) and the Sony VPC-EH25FM (1,865), not to mention the Core i5-equipped category leaders, like the Dell Inspiron 14z (2,308).

The difference in performance was even more pronounced in media tasks. In Handbrake, the Lifebook LH532 took 2 minutes 45 seconds to convert our test video from one format to another. By comparison, the similarly-equipped HP Pavilion dm4-2165dx completed it in 2:22, while similarly priced Core i5 systems, like the Acer Aspire TimelineX AS4830T-6841 (1:57), completed the same test in under 2 minutes. In Photoshop CS5 the performance dropped from middling to lousy, taking 12 minutes 16 seconds to grind through a test completed in 5:22 by the slowest competitor, the HP dm4-2165dx. As expected in a system with middling performance and integrated graphics, gaming is limited to the most basic games.

The Lifebook LH532 also came up short in battery tests. It lasted only 5 hours 1 minute in MobileMark 2007, which is reasonable given the laptop's 48Wh battery, but similarly priced competitors pack larger batteries and longer life, such as the 55Wh battery in the HP dm4-2165dx (7:58) or the 65Wh battery found in the Dell Inspiron 14z (8:38).

The slow performance and short battery life of the Fujitsu Lifebook LH532 were disappointing, given the promise of compelling features like a spill-resistant keyboard, USB 3.0, and WiDi streaming. Unfortunately, all the clever features and design in the world can't compensate for poor performance, and the Fujitsu Lifebook LH532 falls short of competitors with similar price tags and specifications. While the $750 price tag of the Editors' Choice Dell Inspiron 14z may be a bit more than the budget-minded shopper wants to pay, alternatives closer in price to the Lifebook LH532, like the Acer Aspire TimelineX AS4830T-6841 and the Sony VAIO VPC-EH25FM provide superior performance, longer battery life, and better value for your dollar.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Fujitsu Lifebook LH532 with several other laptops side by side.

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