Fujitsu LifeBook A3510 review – one of the most affordable business laptops out there

You know, business-related products are more often more expensive in what they offer, compared to their non-business alternatives. However, this is definitely not the case with the Fujitsu LifeBook A3510.

Naturally, the manufacturer has done everything in its power to cut corners and reduce the cost of this device. And although they kept a lot of things old school, visually, the laptop still looks at place in 2021. They have even implemented the lid leverage system so that you get better airflow.

On the other hand, we have to keep in mind that the LifeBook A3510 uses dated hardware. We are talking about 10th Gen Ice Lake processors from Intel, like the Core i3-1005G1, and the Core i5-1035G1. They don’t even use the Iris Plus iGPUs, which is a bummer, given the fact that you don’t get a dedicated graphics option. We don’t want to be hasty with our conclusions, but we doubt that playing games will be possible on this laptop.

On the other hand, you won’t be getting this laptop to game on it, right? Instead, you probably want to take advantage of the optical drive reader – a feature that is soon going to fall into the annals of time, as the next obsolete ingenious discovery.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/fujitsu-lifebook-a3510/

Contents

Specs Sheet

What’s in the box?

Inside of the package, we found a 65W power adapter, some paper manuals, and…that’s pretty much it.

Design and construction

As we said earlier, Fujitsu has gone through some cost-cutting measures for this device. The first, and most noticeable of them all, is the build. Here, we find only plastic – one that is rough and feels rather cheap to the touch. Ultimately, the end result is a 1.95 kg weight and a profile of 23.9mm. Surprisingly, the base feels pretty solid, however, the lid flexes like a madman.

Surprisingly, you will be able to open the lid effortlessly with a single hand. Furthermore, the rubber stripe at its bottom, grips the desk surface easily, which results in the backside of the base lifting up. Also, you get an HD Web camera above the display, which is surrounded by relatively thin bezels.

Now, as we move to the base, we get most of the corner-cutting. First of all, the palm-rest area feels uncomfortable for long periods of use. Then, there is the keyboard that lacks a backlight. It offers a generally good typing experience with decent key travel and clicky feedback. However, the keycaps seem to be of not very good quality.

And then there is the touchpad. Although it has a pretty swift response and a rather accurate tracking, its surface is far from being smooth. In fact, it is the exact opposite – it is covered by rough plastic material, reminiscent of what manufacturers used to do 10 years ago. Don’t quote us on that one, but we think that that part of this material is going to smooth out in a couple of years, which will result in a visually aged device. At least it has dedicated buttons to work with.

When you look at the bottom panel you will notice nothing more than the ventilation grill. This is because the speakers are placed above the keyboard. Lastly, the hot air escapes from a slot at the back of the base, essentially aimed towards the bottom part of the screen.

Ports

On the left side, you will find the charging plug, an RJ-45 connector, an HDMI connector, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port, and an SD card reader. Then, on the right, there is a Kensington lock slot, an optical drive slot, two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, and an audio jack.

Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

We are glad to see that Fujitsu thinks about its users. They are one of the few manufacturers to have left the service lid intact. In this case, you need to undo one Phillips-head screw to be able to pop it open.

There, you will find the 45Wh battery pack, which is held in place by a lock slider and nothing more. In terms of upgrade options, you get two RAM SODIMM slots for up to 64GB of memory in dual-channel mode. As for the storage, there is one M.2 slot.

However, if you want to access the rest of the internals, you should undo all the visible screws. Before you start the prying process, make sure to remove the optical drive from its place.

Once you have removed the bottom panel, you will see a 2.5-inch SATA drive bay. Also, there is the cooling solution, which consists of only one heat pipe.

Display quality

Fujitsu LifeBook A3510 comes with a Full HD IPS panel, model number LG Display LP156WFH-SPD1 (LGD0680). Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080p. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 142 ppi, their pitch – 0.18 x 0.18 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 60 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

The viewing angles are good. We offer images at different angles to evaluate the quality.

Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.

The maximum measured brightness is 276 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 257 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 13%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6180K (average) – slightly warmer than the 6500K optimum for sRGB.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 52% Brightness (White level = 144 cd/m2, Black level = 0.13 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is good – 1080:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Fujitsu LifeBook A3510’s color gamut coverage.

Its display is limited just to 51% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Fujitsu LifeBook A3510 with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 27 ms.

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.

Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Fujitsu LifeBook A3510’s backlight does not use PWM at any brightness level. This ensures comfort to the eyes in this aspect.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Fujitsu LifeBook A3510 configurations with 15.6″ LG Display LP156WFH-SPD1 (LGD0680) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

Sound

Fujitsu LifeBook A3510’s speakers produce a sound of good quality but rather low maximum volume. Additionally, its low, mid, and high tones have deviations from clarity.

Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://support.ts.fujitsu.com/IndexDownload.asp?lng=en&OpenTab=

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This device’s 45Wh battery pack lasts for 7 hours and 53 minutes of Web browsing, and 6 hours and 48 minutes of video playback.

CPU options

Currently, this notebook can be found with either a Core i3-1005G1 or a Core i5-1035G1.

GPU options

The graphics department looks similarly unimpressive, with the only option being the integrated GPU inside of the processor.

Gaming tests

CS:GO	HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)	HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)	HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS	53 fps	28 fps	– fps

DOTA 2	HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)	HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)	HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS	59 fps	35 fps	– fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i3-1005G1 (15W)	0:02 – 0:10 sec	0:15 – 0:30 sec	10:00 – 15:00 min
Fujitsu LifeBook A3510	3.29 GHz (B+174%)@ 85°C	2.74 GHz (B+137%)@ 75°C	2.47 GHz (B+106%)@ 67°C
Dell Vostro 15 3501	3.29 GHz (B+174%)@ 94°C	3.08 GHz (B+157%)@ 98°C	2.74 GHz (B+128%)@ 96°C
ASUS ZenBook 14 UX425	3.29 GHz (B+174%)@ 95°C	1.88 GHz (B+57%)@ 65°C	1.92 GHz (B+60%)@ 62°C
Acer Swift 3 (SF314-57)	3.07 GHz (B+156%)@ 89°C	2.42 GHz (B+102%)@ 79°C	2.29 GHz (B+91%)@ 74°C

Although this is not a processor with much hunger for power, we are happy to see that the temperatures were quite well managed. Indeed the clock speed at the end was about 270 MHz lower than that of the Vostro 15 3501, however, the CPU ran at some 29°C cooler.

Comfort during full load

Thankfully, the big chassis had its advantages, as the keyboard seemed to be well insulated from the hotspots of the internals. This resulted in an external temperature of just under 30°C. And while the fan was clearly audible, it wasn’t too loud.

Verdict

If we have to be honest, we were a bit disappointed the first time we held this device in our hands. However, it seems like Fujitsu has made a ton of sensible decisions, given the fact that this is one of the most affordable 15-inch business laptops on offer at the moment of writing this review.

The first apparent downside is the processor choice. Although Intel did a great job on improving their 10nm manufacturing process with the Tiger Lake CPUs, their Ice Lake predecessors weren’t particularly impressive. On the other hand, you shouldn’t get too worried, if your daily workload doesn’t include particularly hardware-intensive apps.

Fujitsu LifeBook A3510’s IPS panel (LP156WFH-SPD1 (LGD0680)) has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, good contrast ratio, and a non-flickering backlight. Unfortunately, it covers only half of the colors of the sRGB gamut. Also, our unit showed a pretty uneven luminance across the surface of the screen, which is another downside.

And although this panel seems to be pretty cheap, we are happy not to see a TN unit instead. Another factor that sits in the middle ground is battery life. This notebook’s 45Wh unit lasts around 8 hours of Web browsing, and 6 hours and 48 minutes of video playback. These numbers will definitely be lower when you add a more aggressive workload, so we doubt that you will have a full workday without the need to connect your laptop to the wall.

Now, the elephant in the room for us was the build quality. Here, we saw cheap plastic, a touchpad with a rough surface but with a very nimble response, a flimsy lid. In our view, though, (of course, when our expectations are adjusted to the price), this is a small price to pay for what you get. Especially with the ease of upgrades. Yes, the LifeBook A3510 has a service lid. Essentially, this means that only one screw separates you from upgrading your memory and M.2 storage. However, if you need to put a 2.5-inch drive, you have to remove the whole bottom panel (which is not a difficult task, to be honest).

And with an I/O that good – three USB Type-A all with 3.2 (Gen. 1) speeds, a 10Gbps USB Type-C, SD card reader, optical drive, and more, we feel that getting this laptop for the money they ask is a steal.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/fujitsu-lifebook-a3510/