Acer TravelMate P6
A beauty it may not be, but solid performance and battery life make the P6 a cost-effective all-rounder
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PRICE £997 (£1,196 inc VAT) from box.co.uk
The TravelMate P6 is one of the biggest laptops in this month’s Labs – which isn’t surprising, since it features an unusually large 14in screen. Even so, the casing is a little bigger than it strictly needs to be to accommodate a display of this size, with medium-sized bezels either side of the screen and 3cm of plastic below.
Nor, we have to say, is the display itself a stunner. Although big, it has only a bog-standard 1080p resolution, which means you don’t get any more desktop space than you would on the much smaller Dynabook Portégé X30L ( see p84) or the HP Elite Dragonfly ( see p85). The P6’s bigger screen merely makes things look larger by lowering the pixel density to a slightly grainy 155ppi.
In use, it’s fine in a functional sort of way. With a maximum brightness of 3188ccdd//mm 2 iitt’ss perfectly usable for workaday purposes, but it looks a li ttle drabb next to t he li ke s oof the Dynabook. The matte screen ensures you won’t be bothered by glarree and reflections, but images and videos can look a little washed out – something that’s not helped by a mediocre contrast ratio of 1,228:1.
The one big plus point is colour accuracy. Although the TravelMate P6’s display achieved only 93.2% sRGB coverage in our tests, it did so with an average Delta E of just 0.68. That’s a stupendous result and is better than many professional desktop monitors, indicating that its colour reproduction is absolutely spot on.
Interestingly, the screen also has full multitouch support. This is something we rarely see on matte d i sspp llaayy ss, a n d i t f e el s a l i t tl e o d d t o t a p and drag along the slightly rough surface. More of an issue is the fact that the lid wobbles and flexes under your finger as you do it. I dare say you could get used to this, but I found the experience so uncomfortable that I quickly came to instinctively avoid touch interactions.
It’s a shame because otherwise the P6 is well built. The keyboard is firm, the touchpad is of a good size, and the magnesium alloy casing helps to keep the weight of the whole assembly down to 1.21kg – a lighter load than you might expect from its size. Interestingly, while this isn’t a convertible laptop as such, the screen can be rotated through 180° to lie flat on a desk: with a claimed viewing angle of 170°, that could make the P6 a handy companion for pprreesseennttaattiioons. The speakers are far from hi-fi, buut they go pretty loud wwithout becooming tinny, annd will serve ss a ti s f ac t o r i ly for dialogue aand film or TV soundd effects.
Other strengths include a tenth-generation Core i7-10510U processor, combined with 16GB of RAM and a top-tier Samsung NVMe SSD, which is both large – offering a full terabyte of storage – and wonderfully fast. Together these powered the P6 to an overall score of 83 in our desktop benchmarks, a nose ahead of other laptops based on the same silicon.
The system we tested also includes a discrete Nvidia GeForce MX250 GPU, which visibly elevated performance in our gaming and 3D benchmarks. We enjoyed a storming average of 85.2fps in our 720p Dirt: Showdown test, and one of this mmoonntthh’ss best sshhoowwiinnggs in the GFXBench Car Chase test too, averaging 51.3fps. You’ll appreciate that if you like to enjoy a spot of gaming on at the end of the working day – or, if not, you can go for a cheaper variant which relies on Intel’s integrated graphics. Just note that non-Nvidia models come with only 8GB of RAM and a half-terabyte SSD.
Whichever configuration you choose, the P6 offers a versatile set of connection options, including twin USB-A 3.1 ports and a USB-C port that supports both ultra-high-speed
USB 3.2 and Thunderbolt 3. An HDMI socket and a Gigabit Ethernet port are built in too, plus an integrated microSD card reader – and, for wireless working, there’s an Intel Wi-Fi 6 module. Biometric authentication, meanwhile, is enabled by a Windows Hello webcam and a fingerprint reader built into the power button.
A final plus point is battery life.
The TravelMate P6 doesn’t break any records for longevity, but it lasted
9hrs 42mins in our video-rundown test, which isn’t bad for a 14in laptop and should get you most of the way through the day.
The 14in display isn’t spectacular, but the TravelMate P6 has a good few saving graces to endear it to busy professionals. That’s especially so when you consider the price: even with its discrete GPU, the TravelMate P6 comes in at under a grand, so if you don’t demand the sharpest screen on the block, this functionality-focused Acer is a great value choice.
“The TravelMate P6’s top-tier Samsung NVMe SSD is both large – offering a full terabyte of storage – and wonderfully fast”