The new Travelmate P6 14 was unveiled earlier this year at Computex alongside Acer’s gaming and smart monitor range. The updated Travelmate P6 14 is a premium AI business laptop powered by the Intel’s Core Ultra 7 processor 165H.

The laptop offers a lovely 14” 2.8K resolution OLED display, with a powerful processor and loads of connectivity options. It’s fairly lightweight, and includes MIL-Spec certification to protect against bumps, knocks and even spills. 

Priced from $3,699AUD, the Travelmate P6 14 is set to hit stores later this year, with stock expected around the end of Q4. Ahead of the launch, ACER have given me the chance to give it a look before it goes on-sale. 

They’ve sent over aTravelmate P6 14 – the only colour option it will be available in – and I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks. It’s been a good laptop overall, but here’s how it went. 

Hardware

Design

The Travelmate Series tends to be more business focused, meaning a more utilitarian design than the consumer focused models. That said, the P6 14 has a fairly thin profile at just under 19mm at the thickest part, and weighs in at just 1.19kg, so it’s pretty lightweight thanks to the recycled materials used in the manufacture. 

The laptop only comes in that one colour – Black, but it’s classic for a reason and looks fairly discrete. There’s a simple Acer logo on the front etched into a panel as the only branding, and while the top has a matte feel, it does tend to show up fingerprints.

The base of the laptop does have a metal cover over the battery for protection, and the rubberised feet on the bottom lift the laptop up off the desk allowing for airflow into the vent underneath. 

There’s a small ridge at the back of the laptop, allowing the hinge to lay flat at a full 180°. when you open the laptop. 

The laptop is in a rectangular shape, defined by the 16:10 aspect ratio of the OLED panel inside. The display has minimal bezels either side, with a thicker one at the top to house the Windows Hello compatible FHD webcam with privacy shutter – though you also get a fingerprint scanner built into the power button for additional sign-in options. 

The lower deck houses the backlit chiclet keyboard and spacious trackpad with multi-touch support. The keyboard itself is ok, though has a lot of travel making it a ‘mushy’ to type on, but it’s fairly easy to get used to. 

The keyboard does include several shortcuts – with the Function keys for volume, brightness and more,  as well as the now standard Windows key, and newer Copilot key for summoning Microsoft’s AI assistant. Acer also includes a Travelmate Sense shortcut key to easily access the settings app – a great idea when trying to find the settings on your new laptop.

Display and Audio

The Travelmate P6 14 has a gorgeous 2.8K resolution OLED panel, with audio coming from DTS compatible upfiring speakers on either side of the keyboard. 

The OLED panel is a highlight, adding a bright and colourful panel to a business laptop adds that lick of flair and comfort to make it feel nice to use. The panel includes support for 100% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, and has TrueBlack HDR500 certification – so colours look vivid and bright, and the blacks are the true blacks you only get with OLED panels. 

The panel doesn’t get the high refresh rates of other higher end laptops, capping out at 60Hz, though it doesn’t present any issues when using it. 

The audio is disappointing. The default tuning has the audio coming through clear, though very “tinny”, with echoes. Even tuning in the DTS Audio app didn’t seem to overcome the underwhelming audio – though it’s certainly good enough to get the job done. 

All that said, the audio jack on the side lets you plug in some decent cans, or the bluetooth connection can connect you too. 

Performance and Connectivity

There’s an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor 155H with Iris Xe graphics, and  32GB of DDR5 memory and a 1TB M.2 Gen 4 SSD inside.

The performance is great, with fast boot up times and quick login thanks to the Windows Hello compatible fingerprint scanner in the power button and FHD webcam. 

The spec is fairly consistent with business laptops, with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor relatively power efficient, comfortably powering through your office work, web surfing and watching some videos through the day. 

While the Travelmate P6 14 is great for the office, it’s definitely not a gaming machine, struggling in the low to mid-teens in FPS – even on more modest graphics settings. In terms of benchmarks, I ran it through 3DMark and here’s how it went. 

On the connectivity side,the team at ACER have understood the remit for a business laptop extremely well, with plenty of connectivity options inside and out. 

On the right you get a microSD card slot, USB Type-A port and audio jack on the right, and dual Thunderbolt 4 ports and HDMI port on the left. 

My only criticism here is again the lack of USB Type-C ports for charging – having to loop the cable around you if the power outlet is on the other side is a real bug-bear of mine. 

On the wireless front, ACER doesn’t disappoint with support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 – but there doesn’t appear to be an LTE option for the Travelmate P6 14, which would be handy for professionals on the road.

Battery and Charging

There’s a 65 Wh 3-cell Li-ion battery with Fast Charge – and a 100W USB Type C charger in the box. ACER says this battery in the Travelmate P6 14 will comfortably hit 12 hours – and I’m loving these new extended life battery estimates. 

I’m pleased to say that the battery estimate is fairly accurate, depending on how hard you push. Most days I got easily through a full work day, with a fair amount left to watch a movie, or stream some shows. You can wear it down by blasting the display to full power and running some intensive video capture and rendering, but for the most part it’s great.

That said, I’ve been using more laptops powered by the newer Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) processors which are showing quite promising improvements in battery life – however this does offer a decent comparative option. 

On the charging front, the ‘Fast Charge’ support netted a 30% charge in just 15 minutes which will do in a pinch, but you can get over 50% charge in 30 minutes and a full charge in a shade under 90 minutes. 

Software

Windows

The Travelmate P6 14 comes running Windows 11 Professional – as you’d expect for a business focused laptop. The licence includes all the Home features, with the addition of Bitlocker, Hyper-V support, Remote Desktop control and a few other features more geared towards corporate environments. 

The Windows 11 install looks and acts just as any you’d find on other PC’s, with of course a few pre-installed apps and utilities. Again I have no issues with utilities like DTS:Audio, Intel Graphics control Centre and more, however you do get McAfee and a load of Microsoft trial apps like Office pre-installed alongside. 

As with all new PCs, you really should take a few minutes to uninstall any bloatware you don’t want, and install your personal apps instead. 

Should you buy it?

The Acer Travelmate P6 14 is a great business focused laptop, though at almost $3,700 it’s out of the range of most students. 

The processor is fast, and offers efficient computing while offering all-day battery life, however there is the spectre of newer, more efficient processors which are already starting to appear in the market at similar prices. 

There’s also the speakers which could use some work and the keyboard is also a little less than desirable, with a little too much travel to be truly comfortable.

That said, the laptop includes that gorgeous OLED display and the body is light and compact, fitting easily into a bag without adding much weight. It also includes Windows Hello compatible camera and fingerprint sensor for fast, touchless login, as well as a load of connectivity options to help you work, and connect all your devices as well. 

Overall, the ACER Travelmate P6 14 is a great little device that’s ready to hit the open road, or just sit in the office taking care of business.