Fujitsu has announced the FMV Note A, a 15.6in laptop with a built-in optical disc reader. It blends modern features and performance with old but still useful technologies to fill specific needs of its target customers. It should do as good a job as any laptop, just without the fancy slim chassis we’ve got used to.
Fujitsu’s decision to keep a built-in Blu-ray drive in its new FMV Note A series isn’t just for nostalgia; it reflects the Japanese market demands, where optical media remains important for software distribution, archival, and legacy workflows. However, this doesn’t mean you lose modern comfort; you’ll still find features such as Windows Hello webcam and Copilot. Yep, this laptop is running Windows 11.
Unsurprisingly, this laptop won’t be fighting for the thin and light trophy, nor the strong and thick for that matter. The Note A is built to be your trusty daily computer, especially if you live in Japan. In addition to its adapted keyboard layout with kana and kanji conversion keys, it features an important component known as the optical disc reader.
Jokes aside, this outdated data storage solution is still fairly widely used in the land of the rising sun, often by government offices, enterprises, and schools to distribute documents and software. Not to forget the country’s ageing population, which tends to prefer familiar technology that is more intuitive to them compared to USB drives and cloud services.
In fact, following the recent Windows 10 EOL, many Japanese flocked to stores to grab optical disc readers for their new desktop Windows 11 PCs, driving demand up. Some Tokyo retailers have reported Blu-ray drives selling out as consumers and small businesses rushed to buy them. Thus, Fujitsu’s choice to add one to its new laptop may convince some to choose it. We can even say that it was perfectly timed.
The rest of the specs include up to a 15.6in WUXGA (1920×1200) display, an 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 7735U with Radeon 680M graphics, 16GB of DDR5 SODIMM RAM – upgradable to 64GB, and 512GB of Gen 4 SSD storage. Connectivity-wise, you will find two USB Type-C – one of which is USB 4, two USB 3.2 Type-A, one HDMI, a 3.5mm audio jack, an SD card reader, plus Gigabit Ethernet. You also get the latest Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.
The Fujitsu FMV Note A is clearly a region-specific design, tailored to Japanese needs. It’s a perfectly capable machine with an extra feature that is no longer present in the West. If you pass by Japan and care to buy one, its highest variant is available for ¥214,280 (£1,050).
