Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14 Review: Ready to conqer the road with you

At Computex, ACER announced a slew of new laptops, including their latest TravelMate series. The series includes the TravelMate P4 Spin 14, a convertible business laptop which has begun hitting stores, so it’s time to take it for a test drive.

Priced from $3,499 AUD the TravelMate P4 Spin 14 is a versatile laptop using the latest Intel Core Ultra processors and comes with 14″ Touch Display with stylus and options for up to 64 GB dual-channel DDR5 SDRAM and up to a 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD – all powered by a battery that promises up to 14.5 hours of use.

It’s business focused, though available to anyone, giving you the opportunity to have a full array of ports, including Ethernet built-in as well as getting MIL-Spec certification to keep your laptop safe on the road. 

I’ve spent two weeks with the Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14 and here’s how it went.

Hardware and Design

There’s a functional look to the TravelMate P4 Spin 14, with the laptop coming in a grey only colour. Its shape and size is defined by the 14” display which has a 16:10 aspect ratio.

It’s got a slightly squared off, chunky look to it with an 18.9mm profile, but it’s fairly lightweight weighing just 1.49kg. 

That thicker profile allows for a few extras including MIL-Spec (MIL-STD 810H) rating making it one tough laptop. It also allows for a good array of ports including a full-sized ethernet jack on the right, as well as a USB Type-A port on either side and of course HDMI and Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left, with a conveniently placed microSD card reader on the front. 

For anyone wanting to really utilise the convertible form-factor, the TravelMate P4 Spin 14 has a docked stylus on the right. The pen is easy to pull out and then dock back in when you’re finished, making it easy to take out, spin the screen around using the 360° hinge, and start taking some quick sketches or notes on the fly.

There’s a 6-row, back-lit keyboard included which takes up almost the entire lower deck, except for the speakers located at either end. 

The keys have a good feel to them, with large keycaps making it easy to hit the key you’re after. They have 1.55mm travel making it not too mushy, yet giving some room to get some feedback. 

The TravelMate P4 Spin 14 keyboard includes both a Windows CoPilot button next to the arrow keys for quick access to the Microsoft AI assistant, and an ACER key (top row next to Delete) gives you fast access to the TravelMate Sense app – their config app for activating workflows, device optimisation and health checks, and of course personalised settings including the Hardware performance profile.

The power button includes a fingerprint sensor tied to Windows Hello, and there’s also a Windows Hello compatible FullHD IR camera built-in above the display – which has a privacy shutter to easily disable that component when you need it.

Lastly is the spacious multi-gesture secure touchpad, covered in Gorilla Glass. It’s responsive and doesn’t pick up accidental touches. 

There’s a couple of rubberised feet on the bottom to stop the laptop moving around on the desk, they’re also raised to keep the base of the laptop free for air-flow – as this is where the exhaust vents for the internal fans are. 

Overall, it’s a utilitarian sort of look for the laptop, but it’s got all the functionality you could want. 

Display and Audio

ACER has chosen to use an IPS LCD for the 14” Touch Display which offers WUXGA (1920 x 1200) resolution and there’s dual up-firing speakers located either end of the keyboard for audio. 

The display is pretty decent, offering wide viewing angles up to 170°, though an OLED panel is always a preference for me with deeper blacks and more vibrant colours. With a peak brightness of 400 nits, the Acer ComfyView panel does well with the anti-glare matte display, great for working in brighter areas.

The touch panel is multi-touch (10 points) and offers a responsive option – especially paired with the Acer Stylus included in the side. You can take notes in anything from simple Notepad through to word, or just sketch some stuff in MSPaint. 

There are some fairly significant bezels around the top and sides, though admittedly it makes the unit easier to manage when you have it in tablet mode. 

The dual up-firing speakers include DTS: Audio support, which ACER says offers optimised bass response and micro-speaker distortion prevention. They’re not the greatest speakers, with a tinny quality to them. You can hear the difference with and without the DTS support byu opening the DTS Audio Processing app and playing with the settings. 

Overall, it’s not terrible, but you’re much better off plugging in earphones, or pairing some bluetooth headphones. 

Performance

Using the latest Intel Core Ultra processors, the TravelMate P4 Spin 14 includes an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor 155U with ‘Intel Graphics’ and 32GB of Dual-Channel DDR5 memory (upgradeable to 64GB) with a 1TB gen 4 M.2 SSD.

It’s a pretty good combination, offering a fast boot up from power off, and easily handling any office work and even some higher end creative work in Adobe’s suite of apps, or their more affordable counterparts. 

It’s certainly not a ‘gaming’ machine as such, with games like Cyberpunk tending to run in the low teens FPS – even on lower end graphics settings. The Xbox GamePass streaming works pretty well though, letting you stream from their catalogue without the overhead of having a gaming GPU in your laptop – though you need a strong internet connection.

As usual, I ran it through 3DMark and here’s how it went. 

Battery and Charging

There’s a 65 Wh 4-cell Li-ion battery inside the TravelMate P4 Spin 14 offering battery life up to 14.5 hours. The laptop includes a 100W USB Type-C charger in the box which facilitates the fast charging support.

Battery life is not an issue with the TravelMate P4 Spin 14. A full day is easy on just the battery, with plenty to spare at the end of the day to start catching up on your daily news, YouTube or social media feed and more. 

Even if you do manage to put a significant drain on the battery, the 100W power supply that comes with the laptop will have you topped up in no time. My tests showed a pretty fast charge time, with the laptop able to get to 25% charge in 15 minutes, 50% charge in 30 minutes, with a full charge in just over an hour and a half.

Software

The Travelmate P4 Spin 14 of course runs Microsoft Windows 11 Pro offering more network connectivity options. 

There’s the usual smattering of apps installed including a 30-day McAfee LiveSafe trial which includes the usual annoying reminders of trial status. Microsoft offers an Office 365 trial and there’s a number of utilities for your hardware including DTS: Audio, apps from Intel.

Acer have thrown a few utilities into the mix, including a number of AI features including Acer LiveArt for image editing, offering options including removing the background of an Image as well as generating stickers, and depth maps on 2D images. Acer Acer PurifiedVoice Console offers AI Noise Reduction to improve video calls and Acer User Sensing which can lock and unlock your display when you’re not present and more. 

Overall, it’s a decent software load which you can easily clean up if you don’t want these additional apps – or try them out and see how you can use them in your workflow.

Should you buy it?

The TravelMate P4 Spin 14 is a very solid option for those who want a laptop that’s versatile enough to suit any form factor and tough enough to survive a trip on the road just about anywhere.  

There’s few downsides, though the bezel around the display could do with some thinning out and of course an update to an OLED panel wouldn’t go astray. The speakers could definitely be improved, though the wired headphones still work a treat.

Overall though, the TravelMate P4 Spin 14 has a processor that has plenty of grunt and a battery that just wouldn’t quit. There’s also that nice big, bright IPS display that has great viewing angles, as well as loads of connectivity options including ethernet.

The Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14 (TMP414RN-54) will be available in Australia at the end of Q4 2024 from $3,499AUD. You can check it out on the Acer Australia website where you’ll be able to order when it’s available.