Acer Travelmate P645

Nicolaim on the Lenovo forum posted this:

Acer Travelmate P645: Leichtes Notebook mit mattem Display, Dock und Gigabit-WLAN - Golem.de

What do you think? Looks pretty nice to start off with. Need to know if it's got a touchscreen, which CPU it carries, and whether it will be available in the US.

 

I'm also very interested in that laptop... however it's a bit expensive.
I wonder whether i'll be better off with something cheaper like an aspire v7 482pg. Advice anyone?

 

Normally 6 series Travelmates come with Synaptics, hope this one as well, at this price Acer should not go for ELAN or ALPS.

 

it's already october and there are no reviews on the net. Has someone already bought it? Or has had a hands-on?
I'm very interested in buying this laptop, but I want to ensure that it has a good battery life first. I don't trust Acer's estimations.

 

Acer just announced yesterday that the P645 will be available in the U.S and Canada this month.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-launches-the-TravelMate-P645-ultrabook.105578.0.html

Looking forward to see some reviews.

 

It looks like the P645 is out here in the US. Provantage is selling the i7,8gb,256ssd model for $1260. ( PROVANTAGE: Acer NX.V8SAA.002 TravelMate TMP645-MG-9419 i7-450U 1.8GHz 8GB 256GB SSD 14" W7P/W8P) Anyone have a chance to get their hands on one yet?

I might pull the trigger soon, though I would prefer waiting for a review. This fits my requirements for a 14 inch 1080hd ips display <4 pounds, <1 inch, dgpu, good selection of ports, ssd, and windows 7 laptop. It is also cheaper than the hp zbook 14, and 840 g1. I don't really care if it has a touchscreen or not.

I was doing some research on the previous model; the p643 and it seems that the only issues were the tn screen which had a resolution of 1366x768 and low brightness levels, bad contrast and black color levels which I assume should be solved with the full hd ips panel that this model has. The other gripes with the past model was that it did not have a backlight keyboard which the p645 will have.

I am surprised that this model hasn't generated much traffic and information yet, since the model is in stock in the US and Europe.

 

I have the NX.V8SAA.002 (top of the line US model) on order and is currently enroute to me. I should have it by Monday or Tuesday next week due to the holiday.

PROVANTAGE: Acer NX.V8SAA.002 TravelMate TMP645-MG-9419 i7-450U 1.8GHz 8GB 256GB SSD 14" W7P/W8P

I also have the top of the line HP 840 G1 on order with them as well, both arriving at the same time.

I will post my thoughts on it as soon as I have it in hand. I will have it at the same time as the HP 840 so I can do a head to head comparison as well.

I was also able to snag a Acer Pro Docking Station on eBay for just $40 with free shipping which I couldnt pass up in case I keep the Acer over the HP.

 

Great, looking forward to your head to head comparison

 

Oh yeah! Please do a head to head comparison
Your comments will be particularly valuable since I'm torn between the hp and the acer!

 

Acer arrives Thursday and HP today. Will post thoughts as soon as I have both in hand!

 

This notebook looks like the best speced ultralight gamer that Acer has made since my old 3820TG.

 

I'm looking at picking up a new laptop very soon. This Acer with the 1080p screen and dedicated video looks like what I want. Sadly, none of the stores in Vancouver have the 1080p model in yet. I haven't been able to find any reviews for it, either. I would love to hear the opinion of any other owners if anyone has this model already!

 

Is the battery removable? That's a huge factor for me. Otherwise this laptop seems ideal. Why are there no reviews online? Is it such a hard-to-find model?

 

its barely shipped to people. its ETA for alot of IT resellers in Canada is 1-1-2014

some people are getting it just now as well but there are limited quantities

there are some reviews in Italian on youtube but nothing too detailed

HHKING - a fellow on here supposedly got his today and is supposed to write us a review!

It's lookin like a deal from the specs already...

 

Ok, I'm back. My sincere apologies for any delay... it was a late night last night testing out the laptops next to each other, but I have some thoughts on both. Im going to keep this short and as non technical as possible though. This is more of a "general use and thoughts" type comparison. I split it up into categories and just picked a winner for each.

Screen:
Both have 1080p FHD IPS displays, however there is a noticeable difference in quality. The HP (AUO123D = display ID) is noticeably superior to the Acer display (AUO311 - display ID). There is a grainy screen door shimmer going on with the Acer and colors are much colder/cooler than that of the HP. The HP display is absolutely Gorgeous in comparison. I knew by looking at both instantly which I liked looking at better.
WINNER = HP

Keyboard (& backlight):
I'm just going to say this now, both keyboards are not anywhere near Lenovo Thinkpad quality. However, between the two, the HP has a little more travel, and a more comfortable typing experience. The Acer wasn't that much worse, but in typing it felt like there was no travel in some of the keys, and it was just way to light to the touch. The backlight on the HP keyboard was also much brighter and has 2 levels to swap between. The Acer had one backlight level and it seemed awfully dim... even in full darkness.
WINNER = HP

Touchpad/Mouse:
The Hp takes this one hands down. The trackpad surfaces are about the same size, but the HP was much smoother, and nicer to use. The Acer has a bit of a texture that I didn't like at all. The buttons were also far superior on the HP because they were raised and easy to find without looking. The Acer's buttons were literally flush, if not depressed in the case, which made trying to hit the buttons cumbersome and difficult. The HP also has the small rubber trackpoint and two extra top buttons for those that prefer it over the trackpad. Both have finger print readers.
WINNER = HP

Performance:
I didn't do any tests on either, but both felt snappy for real world applications. The HP may have been slightly snappier, but it was too minimal to tell.
WINNER = None (for my use)

Build, Weight, Dimensions:
Both are 14" Ultrabook laptops, and their dimensions are very similar, however the Acer's overall physical dimensions are a hair smaller in every direction, including weight. The Acer comes across sleeker and thinner in its all black chassis. Build wise, both seemed solid, but the HP did seem a little more heavy duty and substantial. The one thing I didn't like about the HP (That I dont like about my current HP, is that they make the edges of the laptop below the keyboard so sharp that I find it not only annoying, but sometimes even painful to rest my wrists on the laptop when typing. Its where the 2 pieces snap together. This might be a personal thing, but it's annoying. The Acer has the one piece build so it was a bit smoother and more comfortable to rest my wrists on the edge.
WINNER = Acer (by a hair)


Price:
For very similar specs (minus an 8GB of RAM difference), the Acer is $600 cheaper than the HP. The CPU on the Acer is the i7 4500 vs the 4600 on the HP if that matters to anyone.
WINNER = Acer

OVERALL:
The Acer is a very capable machine, but you can also tell there is a price difference. However, whether that price difference is worth $600 depends on what is important to you. If your computer will be docked most of the time and using external monitors, the system is a steal. However, if you plan on spending any actual time on the laptop, the screen, keyboard and touchpad of the HP are far superior. The hardware specs are only sightly better.

All that being said, Im sending the Acer back for sure. However, the other thing I may be doing is sending the HP back as well. While a nice machine, it hits the $2000 mark with a dock, and I was hoping to keep my purchase price closer to $1500. Not only that, the keyboard of the HP is just a bit too mushy for me, and typing is something I plan on doing a lot of on this laptop. That said, it looks like Im going to totally switch things up and grab a Lenovo T440p. It's heavier and thicker, I know... but it will still be lighter and smaller than mu Envy 15 while still giving me access to a built in CD drive, and higher end components. Id go for a T440s but Id still like a dedicated GPU.

Anyways... I hope this overview was helpful for those considering these machines. The HP 840 G1 is a great machine, with a fabulous display!!!

 

Thanks Hking for the review, looks like I need to reevaluate my other options now. Any possibility that you can post up a picture comparing the two screens?

 

I just bought the P645 and I really like it. Specwise, the things I really like are the discrete graphics, comprehensive amount of ports, RAM and HD upgradeability, and a relatively low price. On the downside, it doesn't have a touchscreen, and lacks 802.11ac and Thunderbolt/DisplayPort.

In person, the build is extremely solid, no flex anywhere. It's very quiet, even when fans come on, and cool (rarely goes over 60C). The screen is quite good, although other Ultrabooks I've seen in Best Buy may have better ones. The trackpad is large but not a Clickpad, and it's a bit erratic, although it may be the settings. There are lots of business-related hardware and software security features.

Despite the Intel Ultrabook sticker at lower left, I actually don't think of it as a true Ultrabook - without a touchscreen, it isn't as well-suited for Windows 8's Metro interface as laptops that have them. But I love its Ultrabook-like form factor (14" screen, less than 3.5 pounds, 6hr usable battery life), and I'm getting used to not having an optical drive or removable batteries. If it plays Starcraft 2 with any decent level of details and speed, I'll be in mobile heaven!

If people have questions, I'll try to answer them as I get more familiar with it.

 

Congrats on your purchase!

Can you comment on the keyboard and also the touchpad? Also, really interested in seeing what the screen looks like since the last poster observed some sort of screen door effect for the screen. Pictures of the screen and laptop would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

 

I'll try to post some pictures later this week. Regarding your other questions, this is my first laptop with a MacBook-style chiclet keyboard. I've never been a fan, but after a few days of typing it's actually quite good. The key travel when you press is very shallow, but because the body is so rigid there's no flex at all. Therefore, it's actually very easy to type on. Another advantage is that it has dedicated Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys. Supposedly it's easier to keep clean (no crumbs in the spaces), which I hope is true. The main thing I dislike is that the Ctrl-keys are so small; it's leading to lots of typing errors when I use keyboard shortcuts. I'm sure you can adjust, but it is a little annoying.

As for the trackpad, it's much bigger than the one on my old Dell, but not quite as large as on other Ultrabooks. I really wish it had the Clickpad--no mouse buttons, just press on the whole pad, and the lower-right corner click is for right-click. The main thing I'm still working on is how to make the cursor move quickly across the whole screen. There are lots of configuration options, so I'm still working on it. Right now, I have it set up so the cursor keeps 'gliding' if you gesture quickly, then coming to a stop. It sorta works. Haven't really been able to master multitouch gestures, and the trackpad is a little small to use them effectively, but this isn't a major concern of mine. Like I said, without a touchscreen it's not as convenient to use the Metro interface on the Acer P645, but I'm willing to wait till Windows 9 and my next laptop, lol. The other major issue I have with the trackpad is that it is off-center, and I'm not exactly sure why. Ideally it should be shifted an inch to the right.

As for the screen, I think you definitely need to use scaling, as native 1920x1080 is really tiny! For me 125% is perfect; it makes the 'effective' resolution look a little larger than the 1440x900 on my Dell, which has a 14.1" screen. With a light desktop background icon text is a little blurry. However, font smoothing in browsers and Office works really well; I have a 1080p 23" monitor at work with Windows 7, and several months with Windows 8 made the fonts look very jagged and ugly even! I'll try to post equivalent images from the Acer and Dell for comparison.

The one other comment is that I'm not entirely sure the color balance looks right; either it's slightly off, or it's correct and I'm just used to bad color calibration on my Dell, lol. Rest assured, the screen looks good, especially in darker environs - in the evening, at full brightness it's quite bright and crisp, a little less so in the daytime. It's still very legible even at 20-30% brightness.

Hope this helps!

 

Hi fred,

Would you please tell me what's the format of the SSD? (M.2, Msata or 2.5 Sata). I bought one and i will received it soon. I'd like to put a bigger SSD harddrive, but i really don't know which format Acer choses for the P465.

Thank You

Gilles

 

In Device Manager it says the SSD is a Toshiba THNSNH256GMCT, which is a 256GB mSATA drive. Bit of a bummer, I was hoping it would be 2.5 SATA for cheaper upgrades. Hopefully in a year or so mSATA drives will drop in price and increase in capacity to upgrade to 512GB.

 

Hi Fred,

Thank you for the feedback!! i really needed to know before buying a new drive. I have received the laptop, but unfortunately i am abroad at the moment and i will only be able to see it on next week Tuesday. I order it from pcconnection in the US and have it sent to France. I am in Austria (Vienna), and be going back home for the festive period.

Thanks

Gilles

 

IS 8750M soldered on the motherboard, or is it swapable?

 

Hi propolkin,

I will let you know as soon as i get my hand on my brand new laptop. As i said earlier i will be going back home next week Tuesday.

 

Hi Gilles, good news! I was curious, so I opened the bottom, and lo and behold there is an empty 2.5" SATA bay along with the RAM slot. So it looks like you can add another drive, even a regular HD. The mSATA must be on the motherboard, and I have no idea how to access that, lol.

 

Hi Fred,

Thank you for the information. So the msata hdd drive maybe underneath or soldered. If soldered then it's a bad move from Acer, my guess will be its located somewhere else. For the 2.5 sata slot i will be acquiring an samsung Evo 500gb or 1 tera.

Gilles

 

Ok, I took some pictures with my camera phone, they're not that accurate, but hopefully it will provide some insight.

This one is a head on shot.



The other machine is a Dell E6400 Latitude, with a 14.1" 1440x900 native screen. It's about 1.2 inches thick, versus 0.8 inches for the Acer. The difference is very noticeable visually and in the hand.



Using the same backgrounds for each. It may not be noticeable, but the colors are slightly more saturated in the Acer. Since the Dell is over 4 years old, this may be a function of age. The Acer is set to 125% magnification while the Dell is standard. Notice the larger size of the 16:10 Dell screen, compared to the 16:9 Acer.



Finally, here's a shot showing a blank white screen in Word 2007 and Word 2010 on the Dell and Acer, respectively. The white appears slightly brighter on the Dell than the Acer. This is the color calibration I'm not sure is accurate.



Again, note that these pictures are taken in a room with relatively poor overhead light at night, using a crappy phone camera - actually the phone is very good at taking daylight pics, but darker pics are very poor. Hopefully someone else can post better pics.

 

Hi, Pitt

Is the screen a 1920x1080 anti-glare screen? Thanks for your pics. I am considering to grab this machine if it has anti-glare hi-res screen.

 

Yes, it's a matte screen (not glossy), and the native resolution is 1920x1080. At native resolution text is IMO too small to read, you need to use scaling (125%). When you use scaling, it's possible to have artifacts, or more commonly, some program menus display things in tiny native res. Text actually looks very legible, but I'm not sure about images - they may be slightly less sharp, as the pictures show.

 

I got mine. However, I notice that it is required you to buy additional hard drive transfer cable in order add 2nd HDD/SDD. Does anyone know where I could get this cable? Thanks.

 

So, can somebody tell me, is 8750M in this notebook swapable?

 

Good question - you probably need some kind of internal motherboard SATA cable that also has a full connector for the drive. There are some other issues:

<strike> - Examining the empty bay, there doesn't seem to be any place for mounting screws, so I'm not sure how the drive would be secured inside.</strike>

- Where do you connect the cable on the motherboard?

To answer these questions (and because I have nothing better to do this New Year's Eve, lol) I decided to bite the bullet and take a peak at the motherboard. It's very easy to remove the bottom cover, there are 10 screws on the outside edges (use a 5/64" screwdriver head), and 3 screws surrounding the docking port. Once removed, this is what it looks like:



Here is the entire motherboard, with some interesting parts highlighted. As stated earlier, the main drive is a mSATA SSD. There is tape across it, suggesting that Acer doesn't want you to remove it. So please be advised: I take no responsibility if you do so and thereby void your warranty!

Based on the motherboard info (Socket 1168 BGA), unfortunately I don't think the CPU is upgradeable. To answer propolkin's question, I highly doubt the GPU is swappable.



It's exciting to note that the wireless card appears to be replaceable. Intel makes an -AC version of the Dual-Band Wireless N 7260 card inside. Could it be replaced with the -AC version? I don't see why not!

In the second picture, I highlighted what may be a SATA connector for the internal HD. <strike>But like I said, the real question is how to physically secure the drive? Note that the bottom of the empty drive bay appears to be a removable covering. Have no idea what's underneath...</strike>



Finally, here's an up-close picture of the RAM module. Since it's 4GB, I assume 4GB is soldered on the motherboard somewhere. Upgrading to 12GB seems like a breeze; I wonder if a 16GB RAM module, if and when it becomes available, will work.

Ok, if anyone has answers about the internal drive, please share!

----

EDIT: I experimented putting my extra 2.5" SATA drive in the bay. It's actually a very smug fit, and once you screw the plate cover back on, I don't think the drive can move at all (takes some effort to push down so the lid is set). That being the case, even though I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea, I think you could put even a regular moving HD inside. The only remaining question is the type of cable needed. Will check out MicroCenter this weekend to find something compatible.


EDIT #2: See post below

 

Thank you for the photos. The card is not swapable - it is soldered in mainboard.

 

Unfortunately, it looks like adding another SATA hard drive underneath may not be possible. As I stated earlier, the RAM and HD bay can be accessed by removing the cover (held down by 4 screws). While the RAM is easily upgradeable, inside the HD bay I could not find a standard SATA connector in which to plug a 2.5" SATA drive into. In older, larger notebooks (like my Dell E6400), the hard drive is typically contained in a removable module which plugs into the SATA connector built into the motherboard. This connector provides both data and power, so that single connector is all that's needed.

If you look on a standard 2.5" internal laptop drive (SSD or regular), the drive usually only has the single connector; there is no port to plug in a motherboard power connector, like there is for 3.5" internal hard drives. The port as seen in picture #2 (underneath the Intel wireless card) looks like a SATA port, but if it's only a data port, as I suspect it is, another cable must be branched off and plugged into an available power port on the motherboard. Look at this SATA cable for an example, although its power connector would be too large to use inside a laptop:

Bytecc Sata and Slim Sata Power 7+6pin Cable, for Sata Slim OD 18 SATA-XP118 - Micro Center

This is a trivial task to do on a desktop machine, but with a laptop it's far more difficult. I'm sure there are power ports on the motherboard in which a branching power cable could be plugged in, but that would be a dicey thing to do on a laptop, and I would not want to run cables willy-nilly across the motherboard; there might not even be space to do so. It's possible that, because this is an Ultrabook-class machine, to save space and weight Acer simply deleted the normal SATA hard drive port, leaving no alternative.

However, I will not entirely rule out being able to add a hard drive until the repair/service manual for the P645 becomes available. Once it does, it should provide enough technical information to answer the question.

----

EDIT: If that port is a SATA data-only port, and if there is a free power port on the P645 motherboard, or enough space to insert a branching power cable, it should theoretically be possible to power an internal SATA hard drive, but it would require several SATA converters attached to multiple SATA cables to make it work, and practically I don't think that would be a good idea. Perhaps there is a connector buried deeper in the chassis, but until the service manual comes out I'm not going to do any more disassembly on my machine.

EDIT #2: Even if we cannot add a 2.5" HD, in theory you could upgrade the mSATA drive. In addition to upgrading RAM, you could also in theory upgrade the wireless to 802.11ac.

EDIT #3: Final remarks on the topic - I bought an internal SATA cable, and it doesn't seem to fit that port (or whatever it is) in picture #2. I think it's a SATA port for connecting a hard drive (the label says 'JHDD1', which suggests it's HD related based on the labeling conventions on the motherboard), but some other cable is needed.

More importantly, I carefully examined the motherboard again and I couldn't find anything resembling a free power port. Without one, an internal HD cannot be added. Will wait until the P645's service manual comes out before completely ruling out the possibility, but if that's the case, just have to wait until those sweet new 1TB mSATA drives come down in price!

 

It may be possible to connect to the USB bus and use a standard USB interface to power and connect to the drive. Since these support USB3.0 it should be fast enough. The question is if you can easily connect to any of the USB ports easily and fit the adapter somewhere inside. I may look into doing this. The space is more useful and whether is attaches with USB or SATA doesn't matter to me.

 

HKINGS, Pitt Fred, thank you both so much for your insight!

I have been playing around with an HP Spectre 13t-3000 for the past week, but have become annoyed with certain things (keyboard [esp. the right shift key, which doesn't register way too often], significant light leak in the screen, Windows 8, mediocre touchpad) and am probably going to send it back and order the fully loaded P645 instead. The fact that it comes with Windows 7 Pro preloaded is great (and that implies that drivers will be available for that OS for the foreseeable future, whereas some drivers for the HP already don't exist for Win7).

It's too bad the screen isn't a bit better, but I think I can live with that, plus matte is just awesome for working on the move (bus, train, etc.). But I can see why the HP in your comparo won, $600 is a big load of green (basically the price of a whole, middle range laptop), so that's a lot of resources to allocate around the laptop to improve it.

Did anybody end up keeping the P645 for a bit? Are you satisfied overall, taking the great price into consideration?

 

Another update: I asked about adding a second HD on the Acer tech support discussion forums, and an Acer tech support guy said that there is a P645-MG model that has 2 HDs, the P645-MG-9659. So I presume it's technically possible.

Looking at the second picture, the Intel wireless card does not connect to the left, but to the bottom - that black tape covers the port. Therefore, that port to the left of the wireless card might be empty, and it might be where you can plug in the power cable for a SATA HD. That being the case, the only question is what kind of SATA cables will fit into the JHDD1 port and that (possibly) empty port.

MrPlus, I am keeping my P645 and I'm almost completely satisfied. The screen might not have the same 'pop' a glossy screen has, and it might not be as good as the best matte screens, but it's still pretty good. Of course, if you can't see the machine for yourself before buying (I don't think it's in any store) it might make one hesitate about buying it sight unseen. In my case, I was looking for a Haswell i7 Ultrabook with discrete graphics, and the price and features of the P645 were too good to pass up. The main regret I have is that it doesn't have a touchscreen, but I knew that going in.

As for upgrades, I'm still hoping I can add a SATA HD. If not, I'll consider upgrading the mSATA drive a year or so from now (they have 1TB ones now, although for $800+, lol). I just added 8GB RAM to bring it to 12, no problems. Finally, it may be possible to swap out the Intel Wireless-N card for a Wireless-AC one, which will be nice in a few years.

----

EDIT: Reinstalled ProShield, everything works.

 

Thanks for the update, Fred. I placed an order for a fully loaded P645 last night, from a retailer that has a 30 days return policy just in case

Hopefully it gets here fast enough for me to be able to compare it head-to-head with the HP Spectre 13t 3000 before I send it back.

I plan on replacing the Intel 7260 802.11 card with the AC version in the near future (based on pictures of the inside, it should be doable), and probably upgrade the SSD at some point. Adding a 2.5" SSD would be awesome too.

Quick question on upgrades though. When you went from 8gb to 12 gb of DDR3 RAM, did the computer maintain a dual channel configuration despite having 2 different RAM modules? It used to be that the 2 modules had to be (ideally) the same brand and timing, but at least the same capacity. An easy way to test would be to run HWiNFO64, it's reported in the main screen.

 

I installed HWinFO64 (neat program), and it says the machine is dual-channel with 12GB.

Some other info from the program:

- The SATA interface is SATA-III (6Gb)
- The screen has 6 bits of color per primary channel - so it's an 18-bit screen and not a true 24-bit screen.
- Battery capacity is 55.5 Whr. After a month's use it's already lost 3.4% capacity. Not sure if this is good or bad.
- It says the integrated graphics is Intel HD Graphics 4600, which isn't what the official specs say. Also says the original CPU frequency is 2.4GHz, versus 1.8GHz

 

Hehe, you posted this the very day I got mine. Bad weather didn't stop Fedex from making it an overnight delivery even though I paid for ground. I love both them and ProVantage who shipped it on MLK day.

I played around with it a tiny bit today (14h day at work, so I had time to mess around with benchmarks and stuff). So far I'm really liking it. The touchpad is miles more accurate and useable than the one on the HP Spectre 13t-3000, and the battery life so far is stellar. I ran Pulp Fiction (154 minutes) and Jack Reacher (130 minutes) back to back on WIFI from Netflix with max brightness and keyboard lit up, and the battery was down to about 20% (pre-break-in). That's pretty impressive for nearly 5h of movies being streamed. My 3DMARK and PCMARK8 scores are in line (though slightly higher) with reviews/database entries.

HWiNFO reports the same battery specs, and though the battery is only going through its first break-in cycle (as per the manual, full charge and nearly complete discharge) and reports 2.5% wear so maybe it's not that accurate. Regarding the screen, it's a bit disappointing that it's not a full 24 bit screen. However, I quickly booted all my laptops (Lenovo T500 with 1680x900, HP Spectre 13t-3000 with FHD screen, and the P645) and put the same photograph I took on all 3, and I ended up preferring the colors on the Acer slightly (the T500 is not in the running...) but it's too soon to judge on that. In general use, the matte screen of the Acer is far better than the reflective as hell HP.

For the processor, it's normal. Basically, the 4500U runs at 1.8 normally, boosts up to 2.4, and can go up to 3 if one of the cores is not well utilized by a given software.

So far I'm liking it, but I will have to play around some more to make a decision on which of the HP or the Acer to keep. Two things I noted on the Acer so far that I'm not a fan of:
1) the screen flexes really easily, which may be fine but it's not great news
2) my specific computer does not sit evenly on a table. Top left and bottom right are on the table, but top right and/or bottom left will make the computer "swing" back and forth if I alternate a tiny bit of pressure on each one of them.

Does your exhibit symptom #2 as well, or is it just my specific unit?

 

I haven't noticed any flex with the screen or the body - the build of the Acer P645 is very solid and rigid, compared to a machine like the ASUS ZenBook which is very pliable. And nothing about sitting unevenly. Perhaps it's defective.

 

Does anyone know if there will be a price drop on this laptop anytime soon?

 

Umm, well, try to push a bit on the "Acer" symbol at the bottom the screen, there's a fair amount of flex there on mine. The body is really solid though, and once the screen is closed (which is when things are likely to get rough for the laptop), the rigidity is rock solid and the screen seems really well protected.

The warp that caused the uneven rest of the laptop on a surface I was talking about is fixed. I just grabbed the 2 corners that would shift and warped the frame a little bit and the laptop now sits evenly on all tables I've tested so far. Weird that it would happen but easy to fix apparently.

The more I use both laptops, the more I'm convinced I'll keep the Acer. The HP is nice, but it has just too many drawbacks IMO. The keyboard is the one of the biggest offender. I know reviews were positive on that front, but I much prefer the feel of the Acer, though my T500 still rules in this area. Trackpad is also not great, missing some left/right clicks even in the center zone.

One thing that's funny in the Acer is that it had the Acer MotionProtect software installed, but it's useless on an SSD since there is no moving part. I turned that off but I wish I could uninstall without uninstalling the drivers of the accelerometer too.

 

Hey Pitt Fred, when you get the chance, can you let me know what your RAM or memory score is in the Windows Experience Index?

I'm just curious to compare the speed of your setup with 2 different sticks of ram (4gb soldered on and 8gb as an add-on) against the stock symmetrical setup (if one goes for the 8gb models). Mine is 7.6. I'm curious to see if dual channel ram is really properly implemented in an asymmetrical setup, and/or whether there is a speed penalty due to difference in timing or dual channel implementation.

Thanks!

 

I have no idea, but I can tell you that the current price (I got mine for $1,200 with shipping) is pretty much one of the best game in town for what you get in terms of performance, build quality, noise level, and battery life.

I'm really happy with the Acer and will call HP in the coming days to request a return for the Spectre 13t-3000.

 

Ok, here are my #s. Looks like performance is the same:

System 5.5

Memory 7.6
CPU 7.4
Graphics 5.9
Gaming 5.5
Disk 8.1

If people are curious, you can still run Windows Experience Index in 8.1, you just have to do it through the command prompt. Right-click on the Windows Start and run Command Prompt (Admin). Type 'Winsat formal -restart', and it will run the complete test. Then go to Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore and open the most recent file with 'Formal.Assessment' in its name.

 

Thanks for the response. I'm thinking about stepping up from my Acer 3820TG, which has served me well for the ~3 years I've had it, and the p645 seemed like a worthy successor.

 

That's awesome. I'm probably going to upgrade the RAM pretty soon as well in this case. Did you pay particular attention to find a RAM stick that had the same timings as those of the stick built-in?

BTW, it's strange, my other #s are somewhat different than yours:
Overall: 6.6
Processor: 7.1
RAM: 7.6
Graphics: 6.6
Gaming graphics: 6.6
System disk: 7.9

Maybe when you ran it in 8.1, the 8750M did not turn on automatically, and your scores are based on the Intel 4400 iGPU? That would explain the graphics. For the difference in CPU and system disk, I have no clue. We both have the i7-4500U... Maybe Windows 8 has a different algorithm to compute the index than Windows 7?

 

I went to Crucial.com, where I've always bought my laptop RAM, and used their Memory Configuration tool. They didn't have the exact model of TravelMate P645-MG-9419, but they did have a 645-MG-xxxx, which I figured was close enough. It's about $80; actually bought the RAM from Amazon Marketplace (still from Crucial) to use a Christmas gift card!

To be honest, I didn't really need to upgrade, but I read elsewhere that if you have an SSD and not enough RAM, the SSD will take many more hits. Since it's only 250GB and as yet you can't add a 2nd HD, I wanted to maximize its lifespan.

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EDIT: MrPlus if you're runing Win 7 Pro on your Acer, that's probably the reason for the discrepancy as I did it under Win 8.1 Pro.

 

As I used the laptop, I tried to turn off all radios a few times. I found that the lit "radio" button doesn't seem to do anything when pressed (or held), but that fn+f3 takes care of it.

However, the "radio" button stays lit up with radios off (fn+f3), which is nonsense. I really wish the lit up button was the one turning wireless on/off and that it would turn off when radios are off. Or light up orange

Also, how does one program the "P" button?