Fujitsu Stylistic Q702 Tablet Review

I have decided that it is time to do a review of the Fujitsu Stylistic Q702 Tablet. I've been using one and troubleshooting them for almost 5 months now and have become familiar enough with the model to feel like I've got a pretty good handle on it.

The tablet comes with Windows 8 and I've used it with both Windows 8 and 8.1. You can look up the specs and different configurations online, so I'm not going to bore you with any of that. The version I've been using has an i3 Processor, 4GB of RAM and a 64GB Solid State HDD. The tablet seems to be well built and has enough ports to make it very usable. I've also used it with the docking cradle as well as with the full size docking station. For any kind of imaging for institutional use or deployment, the docking cradle is a necessity since it has an Ethernet port.

I do like the overall design of the tablet and the number of features that it has, however, the issues that I have been experiencing with this model far overshadows any positive points that I may like.

The touchscreen/digitizer - Fujitsu decided to use the N-Trig Duosense digitizer in this tablet. When it works, it's a decent digitizer. You can use simple finger touches or the supplied stylus from N-Trig. The problem is that many users (I have 375 of these tablets in use where I work) experience what are being called "ghost clicks". The digitizer detects what it thinks are touches to the screen and then translates them into actual touches. This is NOT something you want since the majority of them tend to appear at the upper right corner of the screen where the browser home button or the red x close button are located. You can imagine the number of users complaining about being sent back to the home screen or having their programs closing on them. There are also a lot of tablets that I've seen which have numerous dead spots on the screen, which, many times, are accompanied by the ghost clicks. I also have had to disable finger touch on a number of the tablets. So far, this issue has been making these tablets less than functional. While Fujitsu has not denied one of these for warranty repair, when you have at least 40 or 50 of these tablets with this issue, it can be VERY time consuming sending them back for repair. There may be even more that I'm not aware of, but only time will tell how many and what percentage of our batch is affected by this issue.

The wireless adapter - The tablets use the Intel Centrino Advanced N-6205 wireless adapter. Just like the digitizer, when it works, it's great. Connections speeds have been up to 270mbps on 5ghz radios. The adapters are dual band, so they work on the 2.4 and 5ghz bands, a plus if you are connecting to access points that can handle both. The building I am in is a brand new building and uses the latest Cisco access points, which do support both bands. The drawback with these adapters, the random and numerous disconnects. I've tested these tablets with the recommended Fujitsu drivers as well as those from Intel and nothing seems to help. The wireless seems to be turned on and it even sees wireless SSIDs in range, but cannot re-connect to them.  Luckily, running the wireless troubleshooter (which disables and re-enables the adapter) seems to fix the issue in most cases. One caveat is that Intel just came out with a new driver on December 17th, so I have been testing it out to see if the disconnects have been corrected. So far, I don't have enough data because of the small number of tablets with the new driver.

The Bluetooth adapter - The Bluetooth is part of the Centrino wireless adapter, so I'm not sure if the disconnects with the wireless are related to the issues with the Bluetooth. What's good to say about it? The tablet comes with Bluetooth, but most devices already do, so that shouldn't be a big surprise or something to hype. What IS disappointing, is that these tablets also see a lot of issues with the Bluetooth disconnecting peripherals. The users have Bluetooth keyboards from Sharkk and seem to get disconnected quite frequently. Is it because of the sheer number of Bluetooth devices in close proximity? An issue with the driver? A problem with the keyboard? It's hard to say, but there are numerous users every day that have their keyboards not working and either the Bluetooth has turned itself off or Bluetooth is showing as disabled in Device Manager. Either way, the keyboards stop working and usually need an administrative user to turn it back on.

The motherboard/BIOS/some other hardware component - I have seen around 15-20% of these tablets come in and will not turn on by pressing the power switch. I am forced to reset the CMOS in order to get them to boot again. Unfortunately, around 20% of these tablets, that come in for this reason, will not turn back on at all, even when resetting the CMOS. At this point they have to be sent back for repair. I've even had over half of these tablets sent out to Fujitsu's engineers in California and they can't say what might be the cause of the issue.

Bottom line...would I buy one of these? For the price, definitely not. If the tablet was $500 or at most $600, I might be tempted, but only if there weren't any other possibilities available. I had high hopes for these tablets, but they have fallen far short of what I had hoped for.

As always, I hope that this has helped some of you make an informed decision. Stop back, as I will be adding a few links to some of the features of the tablet.