Earlier this month AMD took the wraps off its Z–60 APU — a low-power chip with a CPU and integrated Radeon HD 6250 graphics on the same die. Well, the first device incorporating the chipset has just been announced, and it’s a 10.1-inch tablet from Fujitsu called the Stylistic Q572.
At 13.6 millimeters, the Q572 dwarfs the Clover Trail competition
AMD says the Q572 will weigh 1.6 pounds including its removable battery, and will feature a 1366 x 768 anti-glare IPS display, digital pen input, 5.0-megapixel rear camera, and Fujitsu idiosyncrasies like an integrated Smart Card slot and fingerprint sensor. Two USB ports (one 2.0, one 3.0), an HDMI port, and an SD card slot will round things out. Size-wise, the Q572 measures 13.6 millimeters thick; considerably higher than the Intel benchmark of 8.5 millimeters for Clover Trail tablets, and even the 10-millimeter figure for typical Z-60 tablets cited by AMD. Also, unlike Fujitsu’s other recently-announced Windows 8 tablet, the Q572 will not be waterproof, although it will have both 3G and LTE options. Judging from early tests, the biggest obstacle for AMD’s chipset is power consumption, and Fujitsu is claiming seven hours of runtime for the Q572, compared with ten hours quoted by Intel for Clover Trail devices.
At the outset, things weren’t looking very good for Z–60 adoption, with AMD having no devices to show at the platform’s announcement while Intel was able to boast over 20 Clover Trail devices in the pipeline. So far, pricing and availability of the Q572 are up in the air, but with Microsoft’s Windows 8 launch happening on Friday, we’re expecting to see more details in the near future.