When we’re talking about laptops, we tend to talk about the big brands that everybody knows about, like Apple, Dell and Lenovo. In most cases, it’s best to stick with these top names, as you’re going to end up with a more reliable laptop with better customer service.
But in some circumstances, it might be worth looking outside of the top laptop brands for your laptop. One example of this is the Fusion 5 laptop, which isn’t that well known, but is still pretty popular amongst users. It was first released back in 2017, and the fact that it is still talked about today can only be a good sign.
But is the Fusion 5 laptop any good, or should you be looking elsewhere when purchasing a laptop? It made it into our list of the top laptops for £300, so it must have done something right. Let’s look at the Fusion 5 in closer detail.
Fusion 5 Laptop Review
Seemingly coming out of nowhere, the Fusion brand have got a bit of a reputation for their small budget Windows and Android devices.
They generally make products for casual web browsing, but you can still use Windows 10 on these laptops. You can use them in the same way as you can with any laptop, computer or Notebook, even though they’re at a much lower price point.
The brand are more well known for their tablets than they are anything else, which are known to be a safe budget buy. But for now, we’ll stick with the Fusion5 laptop – let’s look at the different elements of the Fusion 5 individually.
Design
In terms of the design of the laptop, I’ll be totally honest and say that it’s not going to win any awards for appearance any time soon. It sort of looks and feels like an old Dell laptop – it’s pretty clunky and weighty, too.
The good thing about the Fusion 5 is that it has a lot of the features you expect from expensive laptops. That means it has integrated Bluetooth, an easy to use webcam and a good display.
Speaking of the display, this model is 14.1 inches in size (you can get Fusion notebooks with a smaller screen size out there). Generally at this price, you’d be expecting more of an 11.6 inch Notebook size, but the Fusion 5 shows you can get a full laptop experience for a reasonable price.
Usually, you can’t expect a lot for this sort of price. But for what it’s worth, the 1080p display is actually pretty good, and it uses IPS technology with the LCD display too. This means that it gets less glare and is easier to view at different angles.
It has a 2MP camera built into the top of your display too, which makes it a good cheap choice if you’ve got weekly Skype meetings you need to attend. One of the good things about this laptop is that for the price, the internal components are actually quite good.
Power
This laptop comes with 4GB of RAM installed and a Intel AtomTM x5-Z8350 processor, which is one of the older quad-core processors that Intel make. It is well known for being one of the better processors at the cheapest end of the market, so it’s good value for money.
4GB is probably going to be enough power for the very casual users, but it’ll struggle when you have several programs open at the same time. However, the Intel Quad-Core processor is particularly impressive, as typically you’ll be looking at a dual-core on this sort of budget.
Storage
This laptop comes with 64GB of eMMC storage, which in fairness to it, is all you can expect from a laptop of its price. You aren’t generally going to get a laptop with SSD storage for this price, so it’s pretty fair really.
Nowadays, with many people using cloud storage for most of their documents, you won’t need a laptop with a ton of storage space. If you can maximize the value you have with your free Google Drive account, then this will likely mean you don’t even need to worry about any additional form of storage later down the line.
Touchpad/Keyboard
This is one part of the laptop that I’m not really a fan of, and it could be a little better. Even if it’s a cheap laptop, you can still make a decent trackpad for a pretty low cost. However, this trackpad isn’t the best of quality, and it’s a little small too.
For best use, you could pair this laptop up with a cheap mouse as well. This way, you’re going to be able to take advantage of its good quality display, without having to worry about the touchpad not being up to standard.
Performance
In terms of performance, as long as you’re not expecting too much of this laptop, it’s actually pretty good. You can easily browse the internet or watch YouTube videos on this device without an issue.
The only problem comes when you have a lot of different tabs open at the same time, which is when the lack of power becomes a problem. You’re going to find this with any budget laptop though, and unless you’re willing to loosen your purse strings, there’s no other solution.
Ports and Charger
If you’re looking for a laptop that you can easily connect to your devices, then this model is likely to suit you pretty well. It has a lot of different ports and places to plug your devices in, so it is actually pretty good in this aspect.
This includes USB ports, ethernet ports and a HDMI port to connect to your television as well. It also has a headphone jack, meaning you can connect to it if you want to listen to videos without others hearing.
Pros
Cons
Conclusion
All in all, this laptop is pretty much as you’d expect for something of this price. in comparison to most laptops on the market, it’s a below average performer with an adequate amount of power and an okay screen (matched with awful speakers).
However, compared to other laptops within a similar price range, it’s probably not a bad choice. You may want to consider it if you’re on the looking for a new model.
