Fujitsu Stylistic M532 review

Fujitsu’s Stylistic M532 comes with Android 4.0 and a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor with 1GB of RAM. It’s a powerful tablet, and will run anything comfortably. An ample 32GB of storage is built in and there’s a microSD card if you need to expand.

The M532 is comfortable to use thanks to its light 560g weight. Build quality is acceptable but isn’t quite up to standard of some of the competition; we found it flexed and creaked quite a bit when pressure was applied towards the edges. The screen is a 10.1in display running at a resolution of 1,280 x 800, with acceptable brightness levels and decent viewing angles. The use of Gorilla Glass should keep it safe from all but the worst mistreatment in the classroom.

As well as built-in Wi-Fi, you can insert a mobile SIM card and use the web out of school. Although probably not of much use to students it could be a useful tool for teaching staff to take on trips.

There’s a micro-USB port for transferring data, and the tablet shows up as a removable drive in Windows, allowing drag-and-drop file transfers without the need for extra software. The M532 has impressive 8-megapixel rear-facing and 2-megapixel front-facing cameras, though pictures aren’t a big improvement on those from other tablets. Unlike the Asus and LearnPad tablets, there’s no external display output.

Fujitsu hasn’t messed around much with the default Android 4.0 user interface, but it has packed in a few useful extras, albeit ones aimed at business users rather than schools. One is a licensed copy of the ThinkFree Office mobile office suite, while another is a one-year subscription to Norton Security. Citrix, VMware and RDP clients, allowing Windows apps or desktops to be run from the tablet, might also be handy if you use these technologies in school.

There’s nothing wrong with the M532; it’s a fast performer with some useful features and decent software. However, it doesn’t have anything special to put it above the competition.