Fujitsu Siemens Pi 3625 review

There's no argument that the Fujitsu Siemens Pi 3625 offers a hell of a lot of laptop for very little cash. Its 17in screen and weighty 3.44kg chassis dwarf the opposition.

Its size is met with brutish looks too, as while the lid is finished in gloss, the interior opts for acres of matte black arranged in a cheerless, angular fashion. Practicality is the order of the day, with the giant lid held shut with twin hooks and a huge wristrest spread out beneath the keyboard.

But the Pi 3625 misses the opportunity to capitalise on its ample frame. The keyboard, while spacious, doesn't feel good under the finger, and wobbly keycaps and a dead-feeling action don't make this ideal for touch-typing. The trackpad's buttons responded with crisp clicks, but cursor control was a touch erratic.

The specification is good for the price, though. The combination of an Intel Pentium Dual-Core T3200 and 3GB of memory was enough to earn 0.90 in our benchmarks - not bad at all. As with other laptops here, only the Intel integrated graphics let the side down, with Crysis limping along at a rate of just four frames per second.

Graphics performance isn't the Fujitsu's strong point, but the 17in display is of good quality. With a 1,440 x 900 pixel resolution, it strikes a good balance between desktop space and readability, and image quality isn't bad, either. There's ample brightness and good contrast, with only narrow viewing angles and slightly wayward colour reproduction.

The Pi 3625 finds itself well-appointed with ports and connectors: eSATA, four USB ports, ExpressCard/54 and even a DVI socket. With Gigabit Ethernet, too, the only thing lacking from its networking capabilities is draft-n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Battery life isn't good, with the Pi 3625's lasting just over three hours under light use, and a surprisingly poor 30 minutes under intensive conditions.

It's this, combined with sub-par ergonomics, that undermine the Fujitsu Siemens Pi 3625. It's a solid desktop replacement in terms of speed and screen size, but otherwise it's unremarkable.

Author: Sasha Muller