The Fujitsu-Siemens Esprimo V5535 – Tests and Review

I was asked the other day to review a Fujitsu-Siemens notebook, an Esprimo V5535. So here’s the review.
I tested the notebook one whole day, installed, better said tried to install 3 different operating systems and 2 different games: World of Warcraft and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. I tried to view under every operating system I installed a HD(720p) movie, and finally I tested how much the batteries resist with and without power saver mode, again, under various OSes.
What you will read is my personal experience, I didn’t get payed to write a review, I tell you only what I encountered with a specific notebook.

Fujitsu-Siemens Esprimo V5535 specifications

The notebook I tested had an Intel Core2Duo processor (T7300), running under full load at 2 gigahertz (2000 MHz). The front side bus working at 800 MHz, the 4 MBytes of second level cache and the 2 Gigabytes of RAM makes this laptop extremely fast.
The WXGA display with anti-glare layer is visible and clear in almost all the situations, and the SiS Mirage 3+ graphics card just makes the picture even grater. The graphics card has 64 Mbyte shared RAM by default, you can set this up to 256 MBytes. If the SiS Mirage 3+ isn’t enough for you and your Esprimo, upgrading the notebook with a better graphics card using the integrated additional PCI express port.
Connecting to other devices shouldn’t be a problem either. The notebook comes with integrated 10/100/1000 ethernet card, modem and 3 USB ports. Connecting to an external display also becomes easy with the extra VGA output.

Linux, Windows XP and Vista on Esprimo V5535

The laptop came with Windows Vista and every single driver installed already. The DVD provided with the notebook also contained every possible driver for the system so future Vista re-installs will not be a problem.
Installing XP on the other hand can give some neat headaches. First of all, the 160 Gig HDD being SATA, will not be recognized by all the versions of XP. I tried with Windows XP Home edition and I had to provide the hard drive SATA drivers on a floppy disk – which is impossible as modern notebooks doesn’t have floppy disk drives- or CD/DVD. The latter is only possible if you previously downloaded the correct drivers from the Fujitsu-Siemens Support Website and wrote on a blank CD/DVD.

During installing XP Professional there was not even a single issue. Everything was loaded properly and XP found its own drivers for most of the components. The missing XP drivers for the Esprimo V5535 can be downloaded for every component from the official Support Website mentioned above.

Linux on the other hand can be much more a pain to install. The lack of support begins on the very beginning when the Cent OS distro didn’t find any hard drives where it could install itself. I have to admit that I didn’t bother to really install it, tho. The lack of the users which uses its notebook with a Linux OS made me decide to not fight to install it, and the fact that those who really want to install it, usually have the knowledge to do it.

HD movies, games and the Esprimo V5535

Thanks to the Esprimo V5535’s performance, a HD(720p) movie becomes extremely enjoyable. I also linked the notebook to a plasma screen via the additional VGA port, maximizing the joy to its limits.
Two different games were installed on the Esprimo V5535: World of Warcraft (WoW) and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Since Wow’s requirements are way lower than the computing power provided by the Esprimo V5535, playing WoW was more than a pleasure. The graphics were high quality, fast and the motion flawless.
For my pleasure, Oblivion also worked unexpectedly well too. This is the first notebook from the ones I tested which ran the Oblivion without issues. It’s really unexpected for me.
The performance of the games were better a bit under Vista. Probably because of DirectX 10 and the support of the SiS Mirage 3+ for DX10. Transform and Lightening and some other effects are handled via software which can decrease the performance and the quality of some applications.

Low-end batteries for a High-end notebook

The only annoyance of this notebook is its batteries. The Esprimo V5535 I tested came with a 4 cell 2000 mAh (29.6 Wh) battery. As the tests showed, this is far from the recommended.
The Esprimo V5535 with XP, running in power saver mode and playing music with Media Player lasted about 50 minutes, 55 minutes if I stopped the music. If I switched to High performance mode, this value dropped to 30 respectively 35 minutes.
Vista on the other hand manages power way better: in power saver mode, running Media Player the batteries lasted about a 1 hour and 15 minutes, the same in high performance mode resulted a 1 hour battery life. In power saver mode and without playing music, the battery life was 1 hour and 30 minutes, in high performance mode 1 hour and about 15 minutes.

Verdict on the Fujitsu-Siemens V5535

It’s not the cheapest notebook, we have to admit. Where I live its price is around $900 + VAT in online stores and more than $1000 at retailers.
It’s a piece of art when comes about performance, it’s design is quite neat so I’d recommend it for anyone who doesn’t travel with his/her notebook.
For the business class, who travels with his/her laptop and in the meantime works on it it’s absolutely not recommended because of the short battery life.