The updated Acer TravelMate P645 ($949, £645, AU$1,250) is designed
specifically for the business user with ants in his or her pants.
Stripped of the bells, whistles and heft of traditional mobile
workstations, the P645 is a somewhat lightweight laptop with loads of
ports, tremendous battery life and not much else.
It's ideal for
anyone who needs to grab their laptop and go, regardless of where
they're headed or the type of work they're going to do. If Don
Draper/Dick Whitman had a laptop, it would be the Acer TravelMate P645.
There
are very few adequate comparisons for the P645 – which was recently
upgraded with a fifth-generation Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor –
because it is designed for the same user who might be interested in something ideally suited for business use, like the HP ZBook 17 ($4,630, £2,950, AU$5,500), or something portable and capable, like the Dell XPS 13 (starting at $799, £520, AU$980) ultrabook. Think of the P645 as a compromise between high-end consumer notebooks and low-end enterprise workstations.
However,
unlike other laptops on the market, the P645 doesn't try to lure you in
with a fancy touchscreen, a super lightweight frame, loads of storage
capacity, or the versatility of a hybrid. In fact, it does little more
than compute things for a long time on one charge.
If what you're after is a sexy device that can perform 3D modeling or play Call of Duty in stunning detail, check out something else in our Best Laptop roundup. If what you need is something easy to use that can be plugged in almost anywhere and won't die before the workday ends, you're in the right place.
Design
Built almost exactly like last year's P645, the 2015 model comes with a black, carbon-fiber chassis with silver-trimmed ports. Both the chassis and the silver hinges connecting
the laptop's upper and lower panel are incredibly sturdy (although you
won't want to perform any drop tests). The palm rest and bottom cover
are reinforced by magnesium alloy, which should allow you to put a good
amount of pressure on the device, but not enough to label this notebook
rugged.
The chiclet, spill-resistant keyboard features a left
offset trackpad with a fingerprint sensor dividing the two-inch-wide
left- and right-click buttons.
The P645, which prides itself on
portability, weighs 3.31 pounds (1.5kg), which is superlight for a
mobile workstation, but quite heavy when compared to consumer ultrabooks
and Chromebooks, most of which probably weigh about 70% of what the
P645 weighs. At just 0.8 inches slim (2 cm) and 12.9 inches (32 cm)
wide, the P645 slides nicely into any backpack or desk space.
Unfortunately,
what you're getting beneath the slim panels isn't very sexy. Packing a
totally mediocre HD (1,366 X 768) resolution screen that features no
touchscreen functionality, the P645 is not meant for viewing content.
Seriously, you'd be better off watching Netflix on your smartphone than
on this strictly utilitarian screen.
Not only is the screen image
uncomplex given its low pixel count, it's also very grainy and dull.
Pretend you're looking at the squishy plastic screen of an old 1990's
desktop monitor: that's what looking at the P645 feels like. Yes, you
can upgrade to a full HD (1,920 X 1,080) screen, but why should you even
have to at this point?
What Acer didn't provide in terms of sexiness, it certainly made up
for in terms of connectivity. The P645 is one of the most port-heavy
devices you'll find at this price point. And at just 3.31 pounds, that's
a pretty impressive feat. Unfortunately, in an era when companies like
Apple and Google are figuring out ways to do away with multiple ports,
the P645 feels like a relic from a long forgotten time.
What
it doesn't have is the storage capacity to rival the mobile
workstations with which it's trying to compete. I suppose the increase
in cloud adoption has made it acceptable to provide only 256GB of
storage for an enterprise device, but it'll behoove anyone who deals
with high resolution images to look for a device in the 1-2TB range.
Here is the Acer P645 configuration sent to TechRadar for review:
Spec sheet
CPU: 2.2GHz Intel Core i5-5200U (dual-core)
Graphics: Intel HD 5500
RAM: 8GB (DDR3L SDRAM)
Screen: 12.9-inch, 1,366 x 768 resolution
Storage: 256GB Serial ATA/600 SSD
Ports: 3 x USB 3.0 ports, VGA, RJ-45 ethernet, HDMI, Headphone jack, Microphone jack
Size: 12.9 x 9.3 x 0.8 inches (W x D x H) (32 x 24 x 2 cm)
Features
The
keyboard, trackpad and display are the holy trinity of laptop features
(in this humble journalist's opinion). When you sit down at your laptop
to work or play, you interact with those features more than any others.
Unfortunately, the P645 fails in each of these three categories.
I've
already discussed the putrid screen so I won't hammer that nail into
the ground. The trackpad, which is equally abysmal, feels as if you're
scrolling on ice. No, this isn't a symptom of high sensitivity
calibration. No matter how much I toggle the tracking I feel like the
pad isn't reading exactly what my fingers are trying to communicate.
Additionally,
the left- and right-click buttons are utterly useless in this day and
age. Anyone reading this has likely interacted with pads that let you
left and right click on the pad itself, rather than requiring buttons to
guide you on your journey. The buttons, which are thankfully the same
height as the pad itself, are elegant enough to not provide too much of a
physical distraction, but they are dreadfully ugly to look at.
The
same goes for the fingerprint reader, which Acer has unthinkably placed
at the center of the click buttons. Most manufacturers have wisely
begun placing the reader at the right-hand-side of the keyboard, where
it is out of your way once you're done scanning in. Acer has placed a
feature you use only a few times a day at the very origin of your
interactions with the P645.
Benchmarks
Here's how the Acer TravelMate P645 performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
3DMark: Cloud Gate: 5,197; Sky Diver: 49,661; Fire Strike: 702
Cinebench CPU: 239 points; Graphics: 29 fps,
PCMark 8 (Home Test): 2,579 points
PCMark 8 Battery Life: 5 hours and 9 minutes
The P645 performed comparably to the year's best Ultrabooks in its benchmark tests. It ran much faster than the Asus Zenbook UX305 and the Dell XPS 13, scoring a 2,579 on the PCMark 8 Home
test, compared with the Zenbook's 2,107 and the Dell's 2,104. As a
comparison, top-of-the-line mobile workstations, such as the HP ZBook
17, generally score above 3,000 points. The ZBook, for example, scored a
4048.
The P645 scored a 702 on the 3DMark Fire Strike test,
which measures graphics rendering. The XPS 13 scored a 739 and the
ZenBook scored a 594. The ZBook blasted all of these devices out of the
park with a score of 4,385.
For gamers and designers, the
Cinebench graphics test proved that the P645 was capable of producing 29
frames per second, which is slightly better than consumer hybrids like
the Surface Pro 3 (25 fps) and the Chi (25 fps), but nowhere near as
powerful as the HP ZBook 17, which was able to crank out an insane 118
FPS.
Battery life
Here's where the P645 shines. Not only
did this notebook score a 5 hour and 9 minute rating on the PCMark 8
battery test, which is one of the top 10 scores we've ever recorded, it
also played video for a whopping 12 hours and four minutes with the
volume and screen brightness set at 50%. Other than the Toshiba
Kirabook, which scored an 11 hour and 15 minute rating on PCMark 8, the
P645 can hang around almost as long as any device on the market.
Bundled software
The
Acer TravelMate P645 is loaded with security software and hardware,
which will entice IT decision-makers to purchase this device. However,
these tools are likely to turn off the business user who shops for him
or herself.
For example: Acer ProShield Manager is a suite of
security and management tools that encrypt data. If your device is lost
you can set this software up so that no one can access your information
without a passcode or without swiping the fingerprint reader. I don't
know about you all, but for my typical day-to-day computing needs, a
start-up menu password is secure enough. With that being said, I'm sure
Future US, the parent company of TechRadar, wouldn't mind if my data had
a second level of protection.
We liked
For a laptop with
so many ports and such an impressive battery, the P645 is relatively
lightweight and slim. Although its screen isn't much to look at, the
laptop itself, built with carbon fiber and magnesium alloy is pretty and
inoffensive.
Battery life on this device is stellar. I've never
achieved anything quite like the 12 hours of video streaming that I got
on the P645. If all you need is something that can power through a
workday, then this should be among your top considerations.
We disliked
The
screen, keyboard and touchpad are just not up to snuff with other
laptops in this realm. When you combine a jumpy touchpad with a
low-quality non-touch HD screen, you're basically ruining any
possibility for an enjoyable laptop experience. Sure, this won't serve
as a bad backup laptop that you take on the road in a pinch, but it
isn't enjoyable enough to use to make it your number one device.
Final verdict
If
your main concern is battery life, then you should totally spend almost
$1,000 on this laptop. However, I highly doubt anyone really needs an
extra hour or two of juice that badly. The P645 performs adequately, it
looks okay and it's sturdy enough to withstand the bumps and thuds of
constant travel. It's got so many ports that you'll be able to park
yourself almost anywhere and get to work immediately. Unfortunately,
what you do on this device won't be so pleasant. A wack HD screen and an
inaccurate touchpad make for a clumsy and frustrating experience.
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