Acer TravelMate P6 (2022) Review

We had some quibbles with the 2020 edition of Acer's TravelMate P6 ultraportable: It had a slightly awkward design, puzzling touchpad placement, and too much bloatware for a business laptop. That's now all in the past, as Acer has addressed many of those issues with the current version, which starts at $1,299.99. The weight drops to 2.2 pounds; Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics and vPro support are now available; and a bunch of other improvements elevate it. This is functionally a new laptop and a credible choice for the hard-traveling business user.

Is it as good as our current favorite business ultraportable, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9? Well, not quite. But the ThinkPad is more than $2,000, versus $1,499.99 for the TravelMate P6 configuration we reviewed (model TMP614-52-73EJ), which means the much-improved Acer is worth an IT department's serious consideration.

A Full-Featured Laptop in a Light Package

The new TravelMate P6 offers an Intel 11th Generation Core i7 at 2.8GHz, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 1,900-by-1,200-pixel display with Intel Xe Graphics. That should be plenty of power for business apps such as spreadsheets and word processing with moderate graphics needs. Yet this laptop weighs just 2.2 pounds, hitting the 1-kilogram milestone that signifies the very lightest of the ultraportable laptop market. The unit measures 0.66 by 12.28 by 8.9 inches (HWD).

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The TravelMate is well-equipped with ports, including two USB-C connectors with Thunderbolt 4, one USB 3.2 Type-A port, and an HDMI 2.0 jack on the left side. On the right are a 3.5mm audio-out, a microSD slot, and a Kensington-style locking port.

(Photo: Molly Flores)

The TravelMate's audio supports STS Audio and Smart Amplifier for distortion-free sound, even at high volume. In testing, it did provide a clean sound. To enhance conference calls, the dual upward-facing speakers and dual mics can pick up vocals up to 6.5 feet away. Noise-canceling technology aims to minimize background noise. When a conference has ended, a tiny slider can cover the camera.

(Photo: Molly Flores)

In addition to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, other comparison systems we used to test the TravelMate's performance include the Dell Latitude 7420, the HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8 (both with the Intel Core i7-1185G7 and Intel Iris Xe Graphics) and the 2020 Apple MacBook Air. All three are svelte ultraportable laptops that frequently populate IT fleets.

The TravelMate's keyboard, though perfectly functional, doesn't quite reach the high bar that the ThinkPad X1 Carbon sets. Likewise, the TravelMate's display, though quite legible indoors, has a slightly dimmer 340-nit rating, versus 400 nits for the ThinkPad's equivalent full HD display option. Our 50% brightness score may be more relevant than the full-brightness rating, though, since most users don’t crank up the screen to 100%, unless outdoors or in a very bright environment. At half brightness, the TravelMate managed just 97 nits, second to the Latitude (188 nits).

On the other side of the ledger, the TravelMate includes a microSD card slot, a 1TB SSD versus a 512GB one, weighs over a quarter pound less, and is about $600 cheaper than the ThinkPad. The TravelMate is also at the top (or tied) in reproducing a full color gamut. Ganut coverage tests for sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 are expressed as a percentage of the full gamut. Here, the TravelMate excels, offering a highest percentage for all three color spaces, although the HP and the ThinkPad were in a three-way tie on sRGB, at 100%. 

However, while the TravelMate's battery is good for about 12 hours, the ThinkPad's lasts nearly 20 hours. (Of course, 12 hours will get you from Portland, Maine, to LAX, even with a plane change.)

The Core i7-1185G7 processor on the EliteBook and Latitude is an 11th Generation chip that draws slightly more power than the Core i7-1165G7 (2.8GHz) that's on both the Acer TravelMate P6 and the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Running at up to 3.0GHz, the processor in the EliteBook and Latitude offers a small performance boost, though the one on the TravelMate and X1 Carbon (which maxes out at 2.8GHz) draws less power, making it ideal for a truly light laptop. In general, units based on the 3.0GHz i7-1185G7 processor will need larger batteries to maintain comparable runtimes with those using the 2.8GHz i7-1165G7, though again, the very light TravelMate lags behind the others on battery life.

(Photo: Molly Flores)

You can also order the TravelMate with the upgraded Core i7-1185G7 in the top-end $1,599.99 configuration if you prefer. Meanwhile, the $1,299.99 base configuration of the laptop has a Core i5 processor and halves the storage space to 512GB.

Other than the MacBook Air, the four comparison systems all have the latest Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics. The Air is also the only one of the bunch without an Intel CPU; that's because Apple developed its own ARM-based processor, the M1, which also includes integrated graphics as part of the chip. The M1 doesn't run all of the performance benchmarks PCMag uses (we'll get to the rest below), but it excels on those it does run.

Ultraportable Laptops: Lighter, But Just as Powerful

Today, we take an ultraportable to mean a laptop no thicker than 0.75 inch and weighing no more than three pounds. Of course, many push well below those limits. 

(Photo: Molly Flores)

Of our comparison laptops, the Acer TravelMate P6 is lightest, at 2.2 pounds, followed by the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (2.49 pounds) and the HP EliteBook A840 Aero G8 (2.54 pounds). The Dell Latitude 7420 comes in at a relatively portly 2.7 pounds. Finally, the Apple MacBook Air (M1, 2020) tops them all at 2.8 pounds, despite its 13-inch screen (all others are 14 inches) and a thickness of only 0.63 inch, the thinnest of them all.

Generally, true rugged notebooks are more expensive and heavier than “standard” business laptops. But three of our comparison units offer the same MIL-STD 810 G or H ratings, meaning they are just as durable and moisture-resistant as machines like the Acer Enduro N3 or the Getac S410 G4 under some conditions, but at no penalty of weight or size. That makes the Acer TravelMate P6, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, and the Dell Latitude 7420 particularly attractive to business users whose travels may occasionally take them into the rough.

Productivity Testing

Best of all, their MIL-STD 810 rating doesn't inhibit performance: The three laptops with the durability rating scored close to within 300 points of each other on the PCMark 10 productivity test—from 4,811 points for TravelMate to 5,130 points for the ThinkPad. The HP also scored in that range, at 4,883 points. A score of 4,000 points and above is considered solid productivity performance, and all surpassed that, so no complaints on that score. The PCMark 10 suite simulates Windows apps, giving an overall performance score for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing.

We run both the main benchmark and PCMark 10's Full System Drive storage subtest, which measures program load time and throughput of the boot drive. Both tests yield a numeric score, where higher numbers are better. The TravelMate scored lowest on the storage test, at 1,254 points, with the ThinkPad at 1,713 points and the HP at 1,831 points.

Other tests in the chart above include HandBrake 1.4, our video transcoder test, which measures the time to convert a 12-minute 4K video to a 1080p format. The TravelMate excelled here, with the second-best score, the ThinkPad edging it by 12 seconds; thus both units are getting excellent use of the CPU for this type of activity. (Lower times are best on this test.)

Cinebench R23, a muti-core CPU test, uses the company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene. Here, the TravelMate came in third, behind the MacBook's high score of 6,804 points and the HP's 4,730 points, just 20 points ahead of the TravelMate. Both the ThinkPad and the Latitude lagged the TravelMate by more than 1,000 points. 

Primate Labs' GeekBench 5.4.1 Pro simulates multi-core performance of popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Here, the TravelMate was second only to the MacBook's 7,679 score, at 5,080 points.

All four laptops able to complete Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop benchmark use Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics, which is strongly exercised by the test, using Adobe Photoshop 22 to measure a range of content-creation and multimedia functions, harnessing both general and GPU-accelerated tasks. Here, the TravelMate and the ThinkPad tied for second, at 595, while the Latitude topped the rest, at 640.

Graphics Testing

For graphics and rendering, we ran two tests each from the 3DMark and GFXBench 5.0 suites. 3DMark tests multiple GPU functions and software APIs. GFXBench is a cross-platform GPU performance benchmark that stress-tests both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. Higher scores are better for all four tests.

The ThinkPad topped 3DMark's Night Raid test, at 16,228 points, followed by the EliteBook (14,538 points), the TravelMate (14,534) and the Latitude (14,015). The Night Raid test is modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics—though the Intel Iris Xe GPU may be advanced enough to have pushed the four systems employing it nearly into what was in the past low-end dedicated-graphics-card territory. 3DMark's Time Spy is more demanding, suitable for higher-end computers with advanced graphics. Here, the Latitude scored best, at 1,676. The TravelMate was last, at 1,643, but note the tiny 33-point gap.

GFXBench 5.0 is a cross-platform GPU performance benchmark that stress-tests both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. We run two tests: Aztec Ruins (1440p) and Car Chase (1080p), which exercise graphics and compute shaders—but Aztec Ruins relies on the OpenGL application programming interface (API), while Car Chase uses hardware tessellation. We record the results in frames per second (fps); higher numbers are better. On Aztec Ruins, the MacBook was far in front at 78fps, followed by the TravelMate at 48fps, on down to the Latitude at 40fps. With Car Chase, likewise, the MacBook blew the others away, at 178fps. Again, the TravelMate was second, at 114fps, down to the Latitude, at 97fps.

Setting aside from the MacBook's strong performance on GFXBench, the TravelMate was the top graphics performer among the laptops with Iris Xe, but they are a close clustering.

Becoming a Better TravelMate

Acer’s latest rev of the TravelMate P6, with its very light weight and modest price—backed by shock and moisture resistance and vPro remote management capability—makes a strong appeal to business users, from mom-and-pop operators to large enterprises. 

(Photo: Molly Flores)

For anyone who travels often or uses a laptop away from the office, today's ultraportables are exceedingly capable for workloads short of workstation-grade, especially when they are light, durable, and fairly fast. The TravelMate is a strong contender in this category. Last year's model was a clear step below top-class, but today, you can look at the 2022 model as a viable alternative to the ThinkPad.