Acer TravelMate P256-M review

A desktop replacement that's a laptop in name only

Acer may be better known for its consumer series of laptops but, even before trends like bring your own device, the firm has constantly had a presence in the business market with the TravelMate series of laptops.

Designed to take on big players like Lenovo and Fujitsu, the TravelMate series aims to entice buyers by undercutting competitors on cost.

With prices starting at £450, the Acer TravelMate P256-M continues this trend and is designed to offer businesses an affordable Windows 7-powered alternative to Acer's more established enterprise competitors.

Design and build
Visually the TravelMate P256-M is about as unassuming as a laptop can get and comes with a single tone, black polycarbonate chassis. The only obvious design feature is the silver Acer logo on the front.

The TravelMate P256-M is designed as a desktop replacement and is a laptop in name only. The 382x257x30mm dimensions and 2.5kg weight make it too large to comfortably carry around.

Making up for this, Acer has taken advantage of the TravelMate P256-M's size and loaded the device with a full keyboard and a wealth of ports. These include HDMI, single USB 3.0, twin USB 2.0 and VGA.

Acer has also loaded the TravelMate P256-M with an optical drive and DVD burner for businesses still using disks. The inputs make turning the TravelMate P256-M into a desktop replacement and connecting it to external monitors a simple process.

We also found that the increased keyboard size is a bonus. It has a full numeric keyboard and is noticeably more comfortable to type on than most smaller laptops. This was aided by the solid and reactive feel of the keys.

Sadly, the TravelMate P256-M's touchpad is less impressive. It's a good size, but not terribly reactive.

Using the TravelMate P256-M as our primary work machine we found the touchpad slightly finicky and it wasn't always reactive to our commands, particularly when using two finger controls. This made doing things like document editing fairly tiresome.

Display
On paper the TravelMate P256-M's 15.6in, 1366x768, Active Matrix TFT colour LCD screen isn't anything to write home about, even when you consider the laptop's price.

The lack of a touch component makes the TravelMate P256-M's screen ill-suited to businesses running Microsoft's Windows 8.1 operating system, although this isn't a big problem as the device can be downgraded to Windows 7 Pro. More on this later.

The display is fairly average in terms of picture quality. Colours are generally OK, if slightly dull looking, and text and icons are more than sharp enough.

The increased size also made reading long documents and webpages a pleasant experience on the TravelMate P256-M.

The only real problems we noticed with the display are a slightly below average brightness and fairly narrow viewing angles.

The screen performs fine indoors, but we found that the low brightness made it almost unviewable in conditions such as bright sunshine. This will be a problem for people looking to use the TravelMate P256-M on the move.

This wasn't aided by the low viewing angles. Colours on the TravelMate P256-M's display quickly begin to distort when viewed from even a moderate angle.

Next: Operating system, battery, storage and conclusion

Acer TravelMate P256-M review

A desktop replacement that's a laptop in name only

Operating system and software
The TravelMate P256-M runs Windows 8 Pro by default. However, businesses can opt for Windows 7 Professional 64-bit through downgrade rights. The review unit we tested came with Windows 7 Pro.

Considering the TravelMate P256-M's lack of a touchscreen, combined with the low number of businesses currently fully migrated to Windows 8, the ability to downgrade is a nice touch.

It is worth noting, however, that Acer has loaded the TravelMate P256-M with a number of custom applications and services. It's not as bloatware-ridden as many laptops, but we found that some of the additions weren't needed or wanted, such as the Acer App store which is purely consumer focused.

However, many of the additions are beneficial. On the productivity front Acer has installed a few useful apps like Skype, but the Acer ProShield Security Manager service is the primary software selling point.

ProShield Security Manager radically improves the TravelMate P256-M's small business appeal by offering personal secure disk, encryption, credentials management and data wiping features.

The feature lets you create a secure section of the laptop's hard disk that is password protected, adding a further layer of security should the laptop be lost or stolen.

As an added bonus it also has a File Shredder that overwrites deleted data, making it impossible to recover even if the device is compromised.

Performance
The TravelMate P256-M is powered by a dual-core 1.9GHz Intel Core i3-4030U processor, and comes with 4GB DDR3L SDRAM which can be upgraded to a maximum of 16GB.

Tested on the PCMark 8, Sunspider and Kraken benchmarking tools, the TravelMate P256-M was nowhere close to top-end laptop performance, but it performed reasonably well considering the price.

A low score is better on Sunspider and Kraken, while a high score is better on PCMark. The laptop ran in with 183.7ms on Sunspider, 4,536ms on Kraken, and 2,339 work and 1,950 conventional on PCMark 8, which tests particular user cases.

The benchmarks are fairly average for a laptop in the TravelMate P256-M's price bracket and mean that, on paper, it's powerful enough for basic office tasks such as word processing and web browsing.

The benchmarks rang true with real-world use and, while we wouldn't recommend using it for intensive tasks like video editing or 3D gaming, the TravelMate P256-M dealt with basic office tasks chug and stutter free.

Battery and storage
The TravelMate P256-M is powered by a six-cell 2500mAh lithium-ion battery. Burning the battery by constantly looping a video file stored on the device showed a discharge of 20 to 30 percent per hour, which is reasonable considering its size.

With regular office use the TravelMate P256-M lasted an average of four hours from one charge.

In terms of storage, the TravelMate P256-M comes with a 500GB hard drive. Customers can expand the storage using the TravelMate P256-M's SD card slot.

Overall
Featuring a functional design that houses a good number of port options, coupled with business focused management software, the TravelMate P256-M is a solid choice for any small to medium business looking for a desktop replacement.

However, its rather bulky size, heavy weight, slow trackpad and slightly dull display hamper its usability as a mobile workstation and make it feel like it works as a laptop in name only.