Fujitsu Lifebook U939X review – business grade device with a ton of features at 1 kg

You may have noticed, but in the past several years, Fujitsu seems to have lost its edge when it comes to laptops. This seems weird because there are actually more and more manufacturers – no matter Chinese or not, that are starting to make notebooks – some of them are even not that bad. However, when it comes to business-grade devices, the Japanese giant Fujitsu is already right up there with the big names…but how does it fare against them?

In order to answer that question, today in our operating room we have the Fujitsu Lifebook U939X. It is a 2-in-1 laptop computer that is loaded with features rarely seen on most of the notebooks on the market. Additionally, it terms of hardware, it comes with the Whiskey Lake vPro Core i5 and Core i7 CPU, a wide variety of I/O connectivity, as well as an IR, face recognition, a feature called PalmSecure and a stylus, that has its own place in the heart of the Lifebook U939X.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/fujitsu-lifebook-u939x/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Fujitsu LifeBook U939X - Specs

  • Sharp LQ133M1JW35 (SHP14B0)
  • Color accuracy  2.9  0.7
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 1000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 16GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Home
  • Battery
  • 50Wh, 4-cell, 50Wh
  • Dimensions
  • 309 x 215 x 17 mm (12.17" x 8.46" x 0.67")
  • Weight
  • 1.00 kg (2.2 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 2x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Thunderbolt 3
  • HDMI
  • Card reader
  • SD, SDHC, SDXC
  • Ethernet LAN
  • 10, 100, 1000 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5 mm combo
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • optional
  • Web camera
  • Full HD (1080p@30FPS)
  • Backlit keyboard
  • optional
  • Microphone
  • Speakers
  • 2 Stereo Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

All Fujitsu LifeBook U939X configurations

#CommissionsEarned

What’s in the box?

The laptop comes in a non-orthodox packaging that is divided into two portions – one of them houses the laptop, while the other one contains all of the accessories and the 65W charging brick. By the way, we should note that the power adapter has a weird shape, compared to the others we’ve seen.


Design and construction

Similarly to the Acer Swift 5, the Lifebook U939X is built from a magnesium alloy, which results in a very light overall weight – 1.00 kg. While it is a great advantage in terms of portability, it has its downsides – the laptop feels near plasticky and seems like it’s very fragile (Fujitsu claim exactly the opposite, though).

If you want to open the lid of the laptop, you need to use two hands as the hinges are pretty stiff. Of course, this is normal for a convertible notebook, and what is more interesting is that when you put it in an upright position, the backside of the bottom plate slightly lifts up – similarly to the ZenBook Flip 13 UX362. Additionally, we were left a little disappointed when we started using the device, as the lid starts shaking under the lightest vibration or movement applied to the laptop.

Let’s get off track now and take a look at the security features of this laptop – or at least, the visible ones. Above the display, you can notice the IR array around the Full HD camera. It houses an IR face recognition system that works incredibly fast and we found it to be accurate 10/10 times. Then, on the bottom right side of the base – just beneath the keyboard, you can see something that looks like an enlarged fingerprint sensor. However, it not quite that, but yet – a PalmSecure feature. A quick search through the Fujitsu website shed some light onto the technology. It claims to be a non-intrusive, contactless biometric recognition that uses the layout of the veins in your palm. Sounds wicked, doesn’t it?

Okay, we’re back on the typical laptop features, like the keyboard for example. It has a relatively long key travel and decently sized keycaps. However, the feedback is mushy and it is not the best experience we had typing on it. Interestingly, there is an additional button on top of the “F3” key, that acts as a shortcut to the notes and sketches, while on its right there is another camera setup that is a boost in terms of quality with its 5MP sensor.

Just below the keyboard, you can see the touchpad which is on the small-sized, in terms of usable area. Kudos to Fujitsu for giving it dedicated mouse buttons, though. Let’s not forget that you can use the touchscreen of the device as the main input device, with the help of stylus Fujitsu provides you with. It charges through induction via its dedicated slot into the chassis of the laptop.

Interestingly, on the bottom plate, there is only one, rather short, ventilation grill. Hot air is exhausted from the base of the laptop, towards the display and the speakers are placed on both sides of the machine.

Ports

On the left side, there is the power plug, not one but two USB Type-C Thunderbolt connectors, an HDMI connector, a USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) port, an audio jack, and a Smart Card reader. Moving to the right we see a hidden RJ-45 connector, another USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) port and an SD card reader. It all finishes with the Power On/Off button that sits slightly inside the chassis and has tactile feedback and the LTE card slot.


Disassembly and upgrade options

For a laptop that sits comfortably on the scale that displays 1.00 kilos, we find the method of securing the bottom plate a little weird. Fujitsu has used a total of 16 Phillips-head screws… Recently we had the Lenovo Ideapad S940 that has only four of them. On the bright side, when you manage to remove them, the bottom panel falls just like that – easy-peasy.

The first thing we’ve noticed (and we’re sure you did too) was that there are no visible RAM DIMM slots. Well, this is because, the memory if this device is soldered to the motherboard, so choose wisely how much RAM you need before you buy.

Then, there is the cooling solution, which incorporates an incredibly thin and short heat pipe that connects to an even smaller heatsink. Additionally, the fan that the Lifebook U939X is equipped with is yet again, not boasting a huge size. At least on the bright side, the path between the die and the actively cooled area is very short, so it should be pretty quick to stabilize its temps back when its load is decreased. By the way, just below the CPU, you can see the M.2 NVMe slot – there are some upgradability options, thankfully.

Fujitsu Lifebook U939X has been equipped with a sizeable 50Wh battery pack which should provide a decent amount of time away from the plug.


Display quality

Fujitsu Lifebook U939X is equipped with a Full HD IPS touchscreen panel, Sharp LQ133M1JW35 (SHP14B0). Its diagonal is 13.3-inch (33.78 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080p. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 166 ppi, their pitch – 0.153 х 0.153 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 53 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Viewing angles are comfortable. We offer images at different angles to evaluate the quality.

The maximum measured brightness is 330 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 314 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 11%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 7500K – slightly colder than the 6500K temperature for sRGB. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 7570K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 53% Brightness (White level = 140 cd/m2, Black level = 0.15 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 excellent – 920:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of 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 in 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 U939X’ color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 97% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976, providing a punchy and vibrant image.

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 U939X 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 = 30 ms.


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 U939X’s display is employing PWM to adjust its brightness up until 85 nits. Sadly, the pulsations have a very low frequency, although on the bright side it is way below the average working brightness level. Thankfully, our Health-Guard profile eliminates this issue.

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.

Conclusion

Fujitsu LifeBook U939X has a touchscreen IPS panel with a Full HD resolution, good contrast ratio and comfortable viewing angles, which is very important for a 2-in-1. Additionally, it has a wide color coverage and with the help of our Gaming and Web design profile, these colors are very accurate with an average dE of <1. This means it is perfect for Web designers. On the downside, this device uses PWM to adjust its brightness levels, although doing so until reaching a relatively. low brightness – 85 nits.

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 U939X configurations with 13.3″ Sharp LQ133M1JW35 (SHP14B0) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS panel.

*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.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

Fujitsu Lifebook U939X’s speakers are mediocre in terms of sound quality. The low, mid and high tones have deviations.


Drivers

You can download all of the drivers and utilities for this device from Fujitsu’s official website: https://support.ts.fujitsu.com/IndexDownload.asp?lng=com

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 laptop is equipped with a 50Wh battery pack.

Contrary to what Fujitsu state on their website (15h), we experienced a slightly shorter battery life. Nevertheless, it is still going to last your entire workday – 9 hours and 50 minutes of Web browsing and 9 hours and 10 minutes of video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

Acer Spin 5 (SP513-52) 53.9 Wh, 4670 mAh, 6-cell

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.

Acer Spin 5 (SP513-52) 53.9 Wh, 4670 mAh, 6-cell

CPU options

You can choose from the Core i5-8265U, Core i5-8365U, and the Core i7-8665U. All of them are quad-core/eight-thread processors, while the last two are also part of the vPro certified products.


GPU options

Intel UHD Graphics 620 is a refresh of the HD Graphics 620 found as an integrated solution in many ULV Kaby Lake processors. UHD Graphics 620 is codenamed “Kaby Lake R U GT2” and it’s a part of the Gen 9.5 generation.

Intel UHD Graphics 620 has roughly the same performance as HD Graphics 620, depending on the other components in the system. UHD Graphics 620’s performance is similar to AMD Radeon R5 M420X and NVIDIA GeForce 910M/920M.


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 i7-8665U (15W TDP):0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Fujitsu Lifebook U939X2.65 GHz (B+47%) @ 97°C2.29 GHz (B+28%) @ 98°C1.88 GHz (B+4%) @ 86°C
Intel Core i7-8650U (15W TDP):0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga 3rd Gen2.24 GHz (B+24%) @ 85°C1.88 GHz (B+4%) @ 85°C1.91 GHz (B+6%) @ 85°C

In a straight battle between the Lifebook U939X (Core i7-8665U) and the 3rd Gen. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga (Core i7-8650U) we see a marginally different start from what happened to be a very similar thermal performance between the two. Despite the fact that the Fujitsu was running at a higher frequency in the first segments on the test, we have to note that the temperatures were extremely high. By the time the 15 minutes were over, both laptops were working in similar frequency ranges and at almost the same temperature.

Comfort during full load

The hottest spot we measured was between the “4” and “5” keys – 46C. This is not one of the coolest devices out there, however, the palm-rest area remained cool to the touch.


Verdict

Fujitsu was going in a direction that is already well populated. There are too much ThinkPads that still bring you the sensation of industrial design in a modern package. This is not to discredit Fujitsu for their efforts. In fact, if you are more into features than in performance, you should definitely consider this device.

It brings goodies like the PalmSecure method of unlocking your machine with biometrics to your laptop. If you are not really into trying new stuff, though, fear not! The Lifebook U939X is also equipped with a very fast and accurate IR face recognition system, that is using sensors, placed around the Full HD web camera. We were pleasantly surprised that the camera had a 1920 x 1080p resolution, instead of the most common 720p one. However, there is another camera that took our eyes – the one above the keyboard. You are meant to use it as an ordinary camera for when you are using the laptop as a tablet… or for some great in-nose shots – the choice is yours.

Additionally, the I/O is so packed, that you can possibly find everything you need. Let’s not forget that we are talking about a 2-in-1, though – its display is very important. Not only it is fairly bright and punchy, but with the help of our Gaming and Web design profile, you can do some Web design work, as the average dE drops below 1.0. Sadly, it uses PWM to adjust its brightness levels until 85 nits. We’ve got you covered once again, though – installing our Health-Guard profile deals with the PWM issue.

Also, while its battery life is respectable – between 9 and 10 hours of web browsing and video playback, we’ve noticed some unsatisfactory features of the laptop with its main one being the keyboard. Although it has a long travel and decent sized keycaps, it practically lacks tactile feedback, which makes it uncomfortable for typing. The magnesium chassis doesn’t feel very sturdy, due to its 1.00 kg weight but it has passed the Military Standard MIL-STD-810G test, which means it should take a lot of beating.

One last thing – the fan of the Lifebook U939X spins up almost every time you start copying files or installing a program, which can be a little distracting when you’re in a meeting. However, we can forgive it since it’s just 16.9 mm thick and has tons of features like dual Thunderbolt connection and LTE connectivity – something rarely seen on a laptop today.

Pros

  • Very light body
  • Covers 97% of sRGB colors (LG LP140QH2-SPA1)
  • Very high color accuracy when Gaming and Web design profile is installed (LG LP140QH2-SPA1)
  • Good battery life
  • Military Standard MIL-STD-810G compliant
  • Wide I/O selection
  • Incredibly fast IR face recognition and PalmSecure option
  • Has a secondary 5MP camera
  • LTE connectivity + 2x Thunderbolt ports


Cons

  • Its fan is working hard when transferring files or installing programs
  • Mushy keyboard

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/fujitsu-lifebook-u939x/

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Johnathan
Johnathan
4 years ago

Is it just me or does this laptop also support Power Delivery 2.0 over Type-C TB3 port (one of the TB3 ports have the PD symbol next to it).

Gaurav
Gaurav
4 years ago
Reply to  Johnathan
Gaurav
Gaurav
4 years ago

If only the cooling of this laptop was outstanding, I would have bought it. Fujitsu needs to overhaul the chassis for next revision so it runs very cool and quiet.