After impressing with the F series of big screen laptops, Acer has come up with a new P series of notebooks in the TravelMate series. The P series is meant for users looking for a robust, dependable notebook which is easy to carry around. The 14-inch TravelMate P645-S is priced at Rs.65,000, and is a good option for professionals who travel a lot.
Design: Compact and easy to carry
The TravelMate, as the name suggests, belongs to Acer’s professional category of notebooks designed to make life easier for users on the move. The new laptop fits that description very well. It is sleek, and measures 20.8mm when closed. It weighs 1.5kg and is easy to carry around. The compact size means you can slip it into a small bag or brief case comfortably. The lid is well built and has a fine matte finish, making it smudge-free. The lid rests on two sleek metal hinges which feel a bit flimsy. While it flexes backward and forward easily, it doesn’t feel very reassuring.
Keyboard: Well spaced, with backlit keys
The TravelMate P645-S doesn’t offer a full keyboard, but the keys are pretty big and they are also backlit. This makes typing comfortable especially in darker rooms. The keys are well spaced out. They are designed for spill resistance, which means that an accidental spill of the morning coffee or a splash of water won’t damage anything. The touchpad supports multi-touch gestures such as pinch to zoom. Even the regular scrolling is spot on. While Acer has wasted some space by creating separate buttons for left and right click, it is easier to make left and right clocks. The palm rest is surprisingly wide for a 14-inch laptop and allows users to type or use it in the lap very comfortably. Acer has added a finger print scanner so one can unlock the PC instantly. It is placed between the right and left click button.
Display: Non-reflective and colourful
The 14.1-inch LCD display looks perfect for watching movies, web browsing and reading. It looks smart as the bezels on the top and side of the display are quite sleek. The display packs in a screen resolution of 1366x768p and has an anti-glare coating which makes it completely non-reflective. For laptops meant more for entertainment and gaming, this resolution might come across as a tad on the lower side, but for business users, this might just about do. The display remains clearly visible in brightly lit rooms. The wide viewing angles are not the most brilliant. We noticed the colour shift but the text was legible.
Power: Works fast
The Acer TravelMate P645-S is powered by Intel’s latest 6th gen (Skylake) Core i5 processor clocking at 2.2GHz, with 8GB RAM. It is fast, can handle multi-tasking, web browsing, a few games and even play 4K videos without any hiccups or slowing down. The battery backup is quite acceptable, as the laptop can muster 6 hours of backup under most usage scenarios. Storage is a bit limited as it offers just 500GB HDD. Even the more affordable laptops offers at least 1TB of HDD these days. It runs Windows 10 out of the box and offers a security feature by Acer called Pro Shield which allows user to encrypt files and save personal files into a personal secure drive on the laptop.
Connectivity: Offers all options
While there is no optical drive, the laptop has all the key connectivity options which a user might require on a day-to-day basis. The left side has the HDMI port, a USB 3.0 port, a VGA port and a LAN port, while on the right side, there are two USB 3.0 ports. There is an SD card reader on the front.
Verdict
Acer’s new laptop is handy, has a great keyboard and delivers a blazing fast performance. However, if you are looking for something that is slightly heavier (2.2kg), you can check out Dell’s new Inspiron 14 5000 series laptop, which at Rs.54,990 offers Intel’s Core i5 6th gen processor, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD and an optical drive.
