Acer TravelMate P6 14 review: 2.6 pounds and 13 hours of battery life is a potent combination

The Acer TravelMate P6 14 is an impressively thin and light business laptop for hybrid or office workers who are frequently on the go. When it comes to the best business laptops on the market today, 14 inches sits smack-dab in the middle of my Goldilocks Zone of portability: big enough to avoid squinting at the screen during my daily duties yet small enough to toss into a laptop backpack or briefcase without adding much bulk during my commute.

Featuring a 13th-Gen Intel Core i5-1335U CPU and Intel Iris Xe graphics under the hood, you won’t find many surprises in the TravelMate P6 14 benchmark performance. After weeks of using this laptop, however, I’d say this premium 14-inch laptop can handle the average daily grind — especially if that grind involves your favorite tunes. 

Is this one of the best 14-inch laptops to cross our paths this year? Read on to find out if the Acer TravelMate P6 14 belongs on your shortlist.  

Acer TravelMate P6 14: Specs

Acer TravelMate P6 14: Price and configurations

The Acer TravelMate P6 14 comes in five different configurations, including the critical display decision: touchscreen or non-touchscreen. The non-touchscreen base model I reviewed (TMP614-53-565S) costs $1,329 and includes a 13th-gen Intel Core i5-1335U CPU, Intel Iris Xe graphics, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage. In short, it’s a pretty standard array of specs you can expect at this particular price point and form factor. You can find this model on Acer’s website.

On the premium end of the spectrum, the $1,849 touchscreen model includes a snazzy WUXGA (1920 x 1200) 16:10 IPS 60Hz display, a more powerful Intel Core Ultra 7 165H CPU, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. If you can put it on the company card, go for it!

Is 14 inches just a tad too small for your eyeholes? Check out our favorite 15-inch laptops and best 16-inch laptops. 

Acer TravelMate P6 14: Design

The super-slim Acer TravelMate P6 14 sports a classic yet elegant design you’ll barely feel in your bag. The chassis is partially constructed from PCR (Post-Consumer Recycled) plastic to achieve an EPAT Gold rating, but that doesn’t mean it’s not tough. This MIL-STD-810H-tested business machine features a Corning Gorilla Glass touchpad and I/O ports reinforced with metallic brackets to protect the whole package when you’re on the move. The lid is adorned with a subtle Acer logo on the top corner, but is otherwise lacking in any additional flair…besides my fingerprints.  

Lift the lid, and you’ll find an island-style backlit keyboard flanked by two top-firing speakers. The layout is a little more cramped than larger laptops like the HP Envy x360 or HP ZBook Fury 17 G8, but there’s still plenty of room on the deck for that smooth-as-butter 5 x 3-inch touchpad — and a little space left over on either side to rest your wrists as you type.  

In this ultra-modern age, every business laptop should house decent optics for the occasional video call, which the Acer TravelMate P6 14 delivers with aplomb. If you can lift your gaze from the dazzling 1920 x 1200 IPS LED-backlit display, you'll find a 1080p FHD webcam nestled between dual mics, an IR sensor, an RGB sensor, a ToF sensor, and a manual privacy shutter. (More on that below.)

Flip the laptop upside down, and you'll find two long rubber feet to elevate the machine's lower thermals. In short, it's a premium machine in a discreet, no-frills package  —  on the outside. 

Measuring 12.3 x 8.9 x 0.8 inches and weighing 2.6 pounds, the Acer TravelMate P6 is roughly the same size as its rivals, the similarly utilitarian Dell Precision 5470 (12.2 x 8.3 x 0.7 inches, 3.3 pounds) and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 (12.4 x 8.8 x 0.6 inches, 2.5 pounds).  

Acer TravelMate P6 14: Ports

When it comes to connectivity, Acer maintains a minimalist vibe. On the laptop's left side, you’ll find two USB4 Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI port, a battery indicator, and a power indicator.  

The left side of the chassis houses a singular USB 3.2 Gen 1 slot, a microSD card slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a Kensington lock slot. It's a reasonable selection of ports for a laptop that is this thin and light, but if you have more extensive port needs, peruse our best USB Type-C hubs and best laptop docking stations pages. 

Acer TravelMate P6 14: Display

The Acer TravelMate P6 14 features a 14-inch, 16:10, 1920 x 1280-pixel display, which adds 120 more vertical pixels to the typical 1920 x 1080-pixel screen—a useful perk for business users who do a lot of web scrolling. 

While watching a 4K trailer for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, I could easily spot the scraggly gray hairs in Kong’s gorilla beard as he thumped across the screen. Colorful CGI effects came through clear and bright during the trailer’s truncated battle sequences — especially when Godzilla’s supercharged scales began to glow bright purple — but the overall image quality was nothing to write home about. (If having a dynamite display is a priority on your end, check out the Dell Precision 5470 I reviewed last year, which has a slightly higher resolution at 2560 x 1600; OLED displays on 4K laptops also boast much higher image quality across the board, though some can be overly reflective.) 

On the benchmark side, the Acer TravelMate P6 reached a decent score of 86.7% on the DCI-P3 color gamut. This easily outpaces the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 (69%) and is nearly on par with the Dell Precision 5470 (92.7%). In terms of luminosity, the Acer TravelMate P6 averaged 395.4 nits in our testing, which is below the premium laptop average (459 nits) but sufficient to handle most lighting conditions.

Acer TravelMate P6 14: Keyboard and touchpad

Sitting front-and-center on the backlit keyboard deck, the touchpad supports two-finger scrolling and multi-gesture controls; its hidden mouse buttons are easy to find, with plenty of bounce and clickiness as I navigated between Chrome tabs, edited photos, and scrolled through various documents. At 5 x 3 inches, this silky-smooth square is conspicuously more spacious than the 4.2 x 2.6-inch touchpad you’ll find on the Dell Precision 5470 and is an absolute pleasure to use in my testing. 

In terms of durability, the touchpad is made from MIL-STD 810H-tested Corning Gorilla Glass, so I think we can safely assume it’s gorilla-proof (or at least gorilla-resistant), though my home office currently lacks a test gorilla. 

The Chiclet-style keys provided tip-top travel in my testing; despite that oversized touchpad, there was still ample room to rest my weary wrists on either side of the keyboard deck. Regrettably, the deck picks up fingerprints just as easily as the outer chassis, incidentally. During the 10FastFingers.com test, my delicate digits achieved 68 words per minute with a 95% accuracy, which fell in line with my normal typing speed of 65 to 70 wpm with 90% accuracy. I prefer mechanical keyboards over Chiclet-style ones, but I was pleasantly surprised at how speedily I click-clacked through my workday.

There’s also a hidden fingerprint sensor underneath the power button, which works well for one-touch log-ins. 

Acer TravelMate P6 14: Audio

No matter how "slim yet powerful" the form factor, 14-inch laptops don't leave much space inside the chassis for acoustic resonance, and business machines aren't exactly known for their bass-thumping capabilities. (Audiophiles will definitely want to invest in a solid pair of wireless headphones.) 

When I fired up the official trailer for F1 on YouTube with default settings engaged, the soundtrack's iconic "stomp-stomp clap" from Queen's "We Will Rock You" was loud enough to fill up my bedroom. This laptop is perfectly capable of keeping you entertained when you're on the road or reclining in your bed. Still, the acoustics were predictably tinny overall. 

But wait! To my surprise, you can tweak the speaker settings from the system’s DTS Audio Processing app, which includes dedicated sound profiles for music, movies, and games, and the ability to create your own custom profile. I’m happy to report that audio quality is dramatically improved when using this app in Music or Movies mode; the resulting soundscape is much more robust, with cleaner vocals and a much more defined bassline. When I blasted “I Hope You’re Happy” by Blue October via the Spotify web player, the lead singer’s throaty melodies came through loud and clear, with much more acoustic depth than I expected from those skinny, skinny speakers. Truly, the future is now. 

Acer TravelMate P6 14: Graphics

Powered by the one-two punch of Intel's 13th-Gen Core i5-1335U CPU and Iris Xe graphics, the TravelMate P6 isn't for gaming, and it shows. The laptop scored a predictably weak 4,167 on our 3DMark Fire Strike test — roughly half the Dell Precision 5470's score of 9,238 and a tad behind the ThinkPad X1 Carbon's score of 5,070. 

Similarly, on the Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (1080p) benchmark, the TravelMate P6 limped along at 21.8 frames per second, far below the Precision 5470's impressive 76.3 fps (not to mention our 30-fps threshold). The ThinkPad X1 Carbon, on the other hand, could only achieve 19 fps in our testing. Ouch.

In short, you can get away with playing casual titles on the TravelMate P6, but a gaming laptop this is not. 

Acer TravelMate P6 14: Performance

For this configuration, Acer pairs an Intel Core i5-1335U CPU with Intel Iris Xe graphics and 16GB of RAM. With 50 Google Chrome tabs open over Wi-Fi (10 playing 4K YouTube videos), music streaming over Spotify, and the laptop connected to an external display, the TravelMate P6 kept chugging along with minimal buffering issues until those last YouTube videos started playing.

We put it to work in our testing lab to give you an idea of what the TravelMate P6 can handle on the benchmark side of things. Clocking in at 9,121 on the Geekbench 6.2 overall performance test, the TravelMate P6 fell well behind the Dell Precision 5470 (11,040) with its 12th-Gen Intel Core i9-12900H CPU, but was enough to beat the similarly Intel Core i7-1355U-powered Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 (8,628).

On the Handbrake video transcoding test, converting a 4K video to 1080p took 9 minutes flat, which lags behind the Precision 5470 (6:28) but is neck-and-neck with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which completed the same task in 9 minutes and 5 seconds.

The TravelMate P6 earned impressive marks in terms of transferring data. Its 1TB SSD duplicated a 25GB multimedia file in 15.4 seconds at a rate of 1,739.4 megabytes per second. In comparison, the Precision 5470’s 1TB SSD duplicated a 25GB multimedia file in 15.8 seconds at a rate of 1,699 megabytes per second, with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon bringing up the rear with a rate of 1,703.9 MBps.

Acer TravelMate P6 14: Battery life

If you want a business laptop for the long haul, you’ll expect more battery life than the casual consumer. Good news: when it comes to endurance, the TravelMate P6 14 holds its own. It lasted 13 hours and 3 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery test, which involves continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits. That’s a little more endurance than the Dell Precision 5470 (11:39) and just a tad behind the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (13:45). 

To gauge real-world expectations, I left the TravelMate P6 14 unplugged between 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. during one day of testing. I used it intermittently for 8 hours to surf the web, watch YouTube videos, and listen to music on Spotify, with 34% of battery to spare at the end of my workday. Not too shabby.

Acer TravelMate P6 14: Webcam

Complemented by Acer PurifiedVoice’s AI-powered noise-reduction technology, the TravelMate P6 14 is equipped with an FHD IR webcam—complete with a dedicated privacy shutter. There’s even a built-in RGB sensor to detect ambient light in the surrounding environment and adjust your display’s brightness accordingly. 

Acer’s dual microphone array performed reasonably well during video calls; you can adjust mic sensitivity in the Acer PurifiedVoice Console app, which utilizes AI-powered noise reduction to distinguish between human speech and background noise. (In Personal Call mode, the mic focuses on your voice and minimizes other voices in the area, whereas in Conference Call mode, the mic detects all human voices while minimizing nearby sounds.  

In a test call over Google Meet (with Personal Call mode turned on), my friend said the video came through well on her end, though the audio became somewhat garbled when I moved around the room; my voice was clearer in Conference Call mode. Finer details were lost on my background furniture, but the inner optics did a decent job of adjusting the video’s brightness and focus as I experimented with different lighting scenarios. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with the webcam’s image quality per se…it’s just nothing to write home about.

Acer’s AI-powered noise-reduction tech did a solid job of isolating my voice during testing; when I turned on some tunes in the background (about eight feet to my right), my friend could barely hear the music at all  — even though it was practically loud enough to drown her out on my end. If you do a lot of streaming, however, you'll want to check out the best webcams.

Acer TravelMate P6 14: Heat

As expected for a premium business laptop of this caliber, the Acer TravelMate P6 stayed pretty cool during testing. In our computer lab, the touchpad reached a reasonable 76.8 degrees Fahrenheit, whereas the center of the keyboard and underside of the chassis climbed up to 86.2 and 90.1 degrees. 

From an anecdotal perspective, the bottom of the laptop rose to 94.2 degrees while simultaneously playing several high-res YouTube videos at full volume, which just squeaks under our 95-degree comfort threshold. As I continued to stress out the system with multiple apps open, however, the underside climbed all the way up to 107 degrees. Yikes!

Acer Dust Defender is uniquely configured to automatically detect and clean out dust whenever the system is powered on (and after every 6 hours of use), a nifty feature for frequent travelers. 

Acer TravelMate P6 14 Software and warranty

It’s nice to see a Windows laptop that isn’t bogged down with too much bloatware, especially if you plan to use it for your job. The Acer TravelMate P6 14 comes with Windows 11 Pro out of the box, and you can expect the standard array of preloaded Windows and Microsoft apps, including Microsoft Edge, the Xbox app, and trial versions of the Microsoft Office apps, along with a variety of business-savvy apps like Acer ProShield Plus (an all-in-one security solution) and Acer User Sensing. For an AI-powered boost, the premium models of this laptop come with dedicated hotkeys for Microsoft Copilot and Acer TravelMate Sense. Jetsetters, rejoice!

The Acer TravelMate P6 ships with a one-year international traveler’s warranty. See how Acer fared during our annual Tech Support Showdown. 

Bottom line

If you’re looking for a premium 14-inch business laptop for your daily grind, the Acer TravelMate P6 is worth a gander. In my testing, there was plenty of power under the hood to accommodate my weekly hustle, and I love the minimalist chassis design. 

Granted, the persnickety pairing of Intel’s 13th-Gen Intel Core i5-1335U CPU and integrated Iris Xe graphics leaves this laptop wanting in terms of overall performance (especially in the graphics department), but if your workday relies heavily on productivity apps and the web with modest multimedia expectations, it'll handle your workload just fine. Moreover, the oversized touchpad and comfy Chiclet keyboard make this laptop an excellent choice for frequent travelers.