Acer launched a number of business-centric products today, and one of them is the Acer TravelMate P614. It’s a premium, productivity-focused laptop, and not surprisingly, it demands an equally premium price tag too.
That being said, the TravelMate P6 promises up to 20 hours of battery life. If the laptop can really deliver anywhere close to this quoted battery life, that would make it an incredibly attractive productivity laptop. Let’s see what it has to offer.
Without a doubt one of the highlight features of the TravelMate P6 is its promised battery life of up to 20 hours. That’s a very lofty estimate, and it will be very interesting to see if the laptop can last that long. Besides that, the TravelMate P6 can charge up to 100% within two hours of charging. If you’re in a rush, you only need 45 minutes to charge it up to 50%.
Another impressive feature of the TravelMate P6 is its lightweight nature. Tipping the scales at only 1.1kg, this is a very light 14-inch laptop. On top of that, it’s relatively thin too, measuring 16.6mm thin. Portability is important for productivity-focused laptops, and in this regard, the P6 fares very well.
So how is the TravelMate P6 so light? Acer achieved this through the use of magnesium alloy, which is both lightweight and durable. After all, this laptop is MIL-STD 810G certified; it can withstand drops from 122cm and 60kg of pressure. Needless to say, this is one durable laptop.
This durability really shows in the TravelMate P6’s build quality. Despite its lightweight chassis, the laptop feels really solid. It doesn’t creak with applied pressure, it feels premium, and there’s no extreme flexing either.
But in terms of aesthetics, the TravelMate P6 does not look all that premium. This comes down to the thick bezels surrounding the 14-inch display. Yes, the bezels are not that thick, but it definitely pales in comparison to the slim bezels of, say, the Asus ZenBook 13.
Looks aside, I love the security-centric features of the TravelMate P6. The laptop’s webcam, for one, can be completely hidden behind a physical cover. Acer isn’t the first brand to come up with this, of course, but it’s certainly a very nifty feature.
In terms of biometric security, the webcam comes with Windows Hello support, which allows you to log into the laptop by just looking at the webcam. If this isn’t convenient enough for you (especially if you prefer to disable the webcam completely), you can always use the fingerprint sensor that’s built into the power button itself.
Sporting a 14-inch 1920 x 1080 IPS touch display, the TravelMate P6 has a decent-looking screen. While I do wish the maximum brightness could be better, it’s still a reasonably good display with great viewing angles and punchy colours. For its intended use (productivity tasks), this display would do just fine.
Now, let’s talk about two of the most important hardware for a productivity laptop: the trackpad and keyboard. The TravelMate P6’s trackpad, for one, is protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass NBT. My fingers can glide effortlessly on the smooth surface of the trackpad, and it’s pretty darn accurate too, thanks to the use of Windows Precision drivers.
Unfortunately, the TravelMate P6’s keyboard isn’t quite as impressive. The key travel is quite short, lending to a “shallow” feeling keyboard. Thankfully, the keys are pretty tactile, so the typing experience is still relatively good. It’s not great (not by a long shot), but I can certainly live with it.
The Acer TravelMate P614 will be arriving in Malaysia sometime in the third quarter of 2019, and it will retail at RM5,699. For that kind of money, the P6 is equipped with an Intel Core i7-8565U processor, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD. Warranty wise, it comes with a three-year on-site warranty.
At this price point, the TravelMate P6 is certainly not an affordable productivity laptop, but that’s how much you’ll have to pay for a business-class notebook anyway. Plus, if the laptop can indeed deliver 20 hours of battery life, I would gladly fork out the money for it. That kind of battery life, in itself, is a very good selling point.