Pros
Stylish, sleek, and lightweight
Powerful processor
Excellent security/enterprise features
Cons
Build not very durable despite implications of MIL-STD-810G endurance rating
Experiences slowdown and needs a reboot every now and then
Display sensitivity can get finnicky
Quick Take:
The Fujitsu Stylistic M532 is a lightweight enterprise tablet that may not be particularly tough, but it's an extremely attractive option for business users looking for an Android device to carry around with them.
Despite a handful of successes, Android devices still have yet to achieve a major breakthrough in the enterprise market, what with the omnipotence of the Apple iPad. So Fujitsu, looking to create a respectable contender, has released the Stylistic M532, a 10.1-inch, Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) tablet designed for business users.
With powerful specs like an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, a 1280 x 800 display, and a durable build that meets a series of military endurance standards, the Stylistic M532 looks to be a capable device on paper. Did it fare just as well in practice?
Fujitsu Stylistic M532 Top
Fujitsu Stylistic M532 Bottom
Build & Design
The Stylistic M532 is one seriously sleek tablet, so it looks and feels great in the hands, but above all, it makes its MIL-STD-810G endurance surprising. This particular standard indicates that the M532 can not only survive, but can be operated in high altitude, extreme temperatures (-20 degrees Celsius to 55 degrees Celsius), and humidity up to 95%, while also providing protection from heavy vibration and dust. For a tablet that's meant for enterprises and usage in the field, it's good to know that the M532 is so tough.
That being said, seeing as the tablet measures only a third of an inch thick (8.6 mm), weighs only 1.2 pounds, and, at least on the outside, appears to offer little in the way of protection, I would be surprised if the M532 could actually survive anything but the smallest of drops. It may provide decent protection from the elements, but it just doesn't feel very rugged or like it could withstand that much rough and tumble, so I looked into the notes from the M532's testing (rather than testing it myself and risking being held financially responsible for a broken review unit).
The MIL-STD-810G drop test that the M532 was put through was a one meter drop onto two inches of plywood, once on each corner and once on each face. Sure enough, while the test results indicated that the unit "passed functional performance test" after each drop, it specifically noted that "some minor mechanical damage was observed."
Fujitsu Stylistic M532 Left Side
Fujitsu Stylistic M532 Right Side
So while the M532 should be lauded for maintaining such a svelte form while also offering protection from so many different hazardous environments, it loses points for not being able to withstand drops, the most common source of damage to a device being used in the field. What's more likely? That someone handling the M532 in a doctor's office accidentally drops it on the floor or that someone is attempting to use it in -20 degrees Celsius weather at 15,000 feet?
Its durability issue notwithstanding, there is very little to dislike about the design of the M532. Aside from the fact that it's light and feels good in the hands, it has a nice matte finish on the back to compliment the subtle Fujitsu branding (just the logo) and the red trim around the camera lens. Everything is logically positioned, with the rear speakers down towards the bottom to avoid being covered by the hands when being held, and both cameras being centered on the top edge of the front and back.
The top edge plays host to the power/standby button and 3.5mm headphone jack, while the volume rocker, micro USB port and a (covered) micro SD card slot are on the right side. The tablet does not charge via the micro USB port, however, which is a mild inconvenience. That's handled via the proprietary port found on the bottom of the device (which can also be used with an optional docking cradle accessory).
Display and Speakers
The 10.1-inch display on the M532 looks great with its 1280 x 800 resolution, and the sheen from the Gorilla Glass gives it a very sleek, professional look. That's not to say that it's a particularly reflective screen, though; at maximum brightness, the display looks great and the wide viewing angle certainly doesn't hurt.
Unfortunately, I did experience some issues with the screen's sensitivity. I regularly experienced issues with taps not registering, but the biggest problem was with commands that involved dragging my finger around the screen. If I was, for example, dragging my finger across the screen to move an item, the connection would arbitrarily get severed sometimes, and the item would get dropped. For a tablet that could ostensibly be used in situations that would call for the user to drag his or her finger around the screen to mark up documents, this could prove to be especially frustrating when the lines being drawn are broken up halfway through when the screen suddenly no longer detects the user's finger.
Fujitsu Stylistic M532 Angled
The speakers are a little on the weak side, even for a tablet. Part of this could be due to the fact that they're both small and rear-firing, which is never a good combination. Either four rear-firing speakers (e.g. Lenovo IdeaTab S2109) or two front-firing speakers (e.g. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1) should do the trick, but not two diminutive, rear-firing speakers.
Specs
Google Android OS 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
10.1 inch, 1280 x 800 display
1.4 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3 Quad-core Processor
1 GB RAM
32 GB storage, expandable via micro SD
2-megapixel front-facing camera, 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with flash
802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS, Supports HSPA+
262.6 mm x 175.4 mm x 8.6 mm (10.33" x 6.90" x 0.33")
560 grams (1.23 pounds)
Price at launch: $549.00
Performance
As far as hard numbers are concerned, the quad-core Tegra 3 processor that powers the Stylistic M532 makes for an absolute monster of a tablet. As you can see in the benchmarks below, the M532 smokes the competition, easily ranking as the fastest tablet we've reviewed so far based on Quadrant scores. Admittedly, part of this probably has to do with a slight change in Quadrant's benchmarks/scores which have only been in effect for the past three or four tablets that we've reviewed. But that can only account for so much; the discrepancy is so large between the M532 and the next highest-ranking tablets (one of which is the Google Nexus 7, which was tested using Quadrant's new benchmark numbers) that it's clear that M532 has a significant edge in performance over the competition?at least on paper.
See, it's not all aces with the M532, as I found on a couple of occasions that the tablet was experiencing some lag in its performance, to the point that commands were being executed either on a severe delay or just not going through at all. It never hung up completely, but it would get to the point where I had to just take my hands off the tablet and let it sit there for about 30 seconds or so before it unstuck itself.
Eventually I just took to rebooting the tablet whenever this started to occur, which would ameliorate the situation, but this obviously is not an ideal solution for those who are using the M532 in the field or in the workplace; the enterprise audience may have an understandable aversion to a device that occasionally requires them to put all of their work on hold and wait for it to catch up. There's no two ways around it: the amount of slowdown it would experience periodically was disconcerting and the M532 loses serious points for that.
Web browsing, on the other hand, was a smooth experience that never presented any hitches. It is worth pointing out, however, that the M532 runs the stock browser by default (as opposed to Chrome, for example, which is the default browser on the Nexus 7). This accounts for the M532's Sunspider benchmark ranking a little lower than the Nexus 7, as the stock browser is just a little bit slower. Nevertheless, users should be satisfied with surfing the web on the M532, as the difference isn't anything too drastic and the average user is unlikely to even notice.
Quadrant measures CPU, 3D, and memory performance. Higher numbers are better.
Sunspider is a Javascript benchmark for measuring browser performance. Lower numbers are better.
Software
The Stylistic M532 ships with Android OS 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, with Fujitsu promising that an upgrade to version 4.1, aka Jelly Bean, is coming sometime in the future. For enterprise purposes, this isn't much of a knock on the device, as many of the new features of Jelly Bean are focused towards the consumer audience anyway (see: strong Google Play integration, Google Now, voice search, cards, etc.). Although, those looking to have a few apps on their tablet for downtime or during travel will still have access to them, since the M532 has access to the Google Play store.
Aside from that, ICS users are left missing out on only handful of very minor tweaks like having a launch tray for apps on the home screen, or having the notifications bar on the top instead of the bottom. It's relatively inconsequential, and ICS absolutely gets the job done as far as enterprise needs are concerned. If anything, I'm just happy to get a precise battery meter percentage back in the notifications tray, a feature that was oddly removed in Jelly Bean.
As far as preloaded apps, Fujitsu made a concerted effort to keep the M532 bloatware-free, and they succeeded. Aside from Google's standard suite of basic apps that come as part of the operating system, the only other additions to the preloaded apps are a link to the online users' manual and a shortcut to install the Computrace Mobile app (the launcher uninstalls and removes itself from the app listing after installing the software).
Software
The Stylistic M532 ships with Android OS 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, with Fujitsu promising that an upgrade to version 4.1, aka Jelly Bean, is coming sometime in the future. For enterprise purposes, this isn't much of a knock on the device, as many of the new features of Jelly Bean are focused towards the consumer audience anyway (see: strong Google Play integration, Google Now, voice search, cards, etc.). Although, those looking to have a few apps on their tablet for downtime or during travel will still have access to them, since the M532 has access to the Google Play store.
Aside from that, ICS users are left missing out on only handful of very minor tweaks like having a launch tray for apps on the home screen, or having the notifications bar on the top instead of the bottom. It's relatively inconsequential, and ICS absolutely gets the job done as far as enterprise needs are concerned. If anything, I'm just happy to get a precise battery meter percentage back in the notifications tray, a feature that was oddly removed in Jelly Bean.
As far as preloaded apps, Fujitsu made a concerted effort to keep the M532 bloatware-free, and they succeeded. Aside from Google's standard suite of basic apps that come as part of the operating system, the only other additions to the preloaded apps are a link to the online users' manual and a shortcut to install the Computrace Mobile app (the launcher uninstalls and removes itself from the app listing after installing the software).
Cameras and Battery Life
I had mixed feelings about the rear-facing camera on the M532. On the one hand, it actually took some relatively sharp pictures and had a very capable autofocus. On the other hand, its low-light shooting was awful (the noise was so bad that at times, you could actually see lines through the image like a static-filled TV), the auto white balance could be thrown off easily (whites often came out yellowish in some indoor shooting scenarios), and artifacts could be seen on the edges of finer elements like text.
Perhaps the biggest issue, however, was that a reddish tinge almost always showed up on the edges of the pictures. It was subtle, but almost always present; its consistent appearance made me wonder if it was a problem with the image sensor. Whatever the cause, it hampered the quality of a tablet camera that otherwise had some redeeming qualities.
The front-facing camera was actually one of the more impressive ones that I've ever seen, with a slightly higher-than-average resolution of 2-megapixels. Obviously, in the grand scheme of things it still looked pretty bad, but since it's essentially just meant for video chatting, all I'm looking for is a camera that provides video feed that doesn't look horrifically dark, rough, and grainy. The front-facing camera of the M532 could do that, so I was satisfied.
The battery life isn't stunning, but it's definitely serviceable, especially for a tablet that's so thin; usually the compromise with such slender form factors is a smaller (lighter) battery, and therefore a noticeably shorter battery life. This isn't the case with the M532, the battery life of which is a shade above average. I was disappointed that I couldn't get through a work week with it, but with Wi-Fi and notification pushes on -- and never turning the tablet off -- I could get just shy of four days with short sustained sessions (never more than a half hour at a time).
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