TECHWEEK
The coronavirus is still terrorizing the entire planet, remote work is still relevant, so the hopes for a quick return to the usual way of life are not justified yet. And something is changing for the worse: due to the shortage of components, all consumer electronics are becoming more expensive. Finding an inexpensive but decent business laptop for work is increasingly difficult. Let’s check how the 15-inch Acer TravelMate P2 fits these characteristics with a fresh AMD Ryzen 3 Pro 4450U processor. We have a modification of the TravelMate P2 TMP215-41-R9SH on the test.
Appearance
Acer TravelMate P2 received a black plastic case with a silver nameplate with the Acer logo in the upper right corner of the lid. The body itself is slightly rough. It does not slip in the hand and almost does not collect fingerprints.
The laptop can not be called not the lightest and not the thinnest. A sort of golden mean weighing 1.8 kg and 19.9 mm thick. But his body is not afraid of bumps, falls and getting wet: he was tested according to the military standard MIL-STD 810G.
The hinges allow you to tilt the lid 180 degrees. It is very convenient if you work with a laptop on your lap, which we sin so often.
Under the cover is a keyboard with a numeric keypad and navigation buttons, combined with Fn multimedia buttons. The touchpad is large enough, and while not glassy like premium models, fingers glide easily. A fingerprint scanner is built into the upper left corner of the touchpad – a rare guest in inexpensive laptops, which are usually limited to Windows Hello. By the way, this function is also available here.
Display
● Diagonal: 15.6 inches
● Resolution: 1920×1080 pixels
The laptop has an IPS display with a diagonal of 15.6 inches and a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, which is optimal for office work. Its brightness with a margin is enough for comfortable work indoors, which is facilitated by the anti-reflective coating of the screen.
The Acer TravelMate P2 screen has traditionally wide viewing angles for this type of matrix. And this is especially important for a business laptop, around which several colleagues often gather, discussing everything from numbers in a report to cute pictures with cats.
Performance
● Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 Pro 4450U
● Graphics: AMD Radeon
● RAM: 8GB DDR4-3200
● Storage: M.2 SSD 256GB
Even, it would seem, quite recently, Intel reigned supreme in the market for processors for business laptops. But after the release of Ryzen 4000, this situation has changed. Many companies, and even ordinary users, have appreciated the capabilities of fresh AMD processors, and now few people will be surprised to see them in such gadgets. So the Acer TravelMate P2 uses the AMD Ryzen 3 Pro 4450U (4 cores, 8 threads) with a base clock of 2.5 GHz and a maximum of 3.7. It is made using the norms of the modern 7nm FinFET process technology, and largely due to this it combines high performance and excellent energy efficiency.
The strength of the latest generation of AMD Ryzen 3 is the integrated Radeon graphics. It would seem that we are up to her in a business laptop that is not designed for games and resource-intensive video editors. But in fact, there are quite a lot of graphics in office scenarios. For example…
● The banal display of a presentation on a 4K monitor is not such an easy task for the processor.
● Multi-page PDF files with illustrations can also be quite “heavy” in terms of display.
● Online, static images and texts are increasingly giving way to dynamic animations and infographics. And the creation of elementary pictures for social networks is no longer always a designer’s task: now employees on laptops without serious graphic programs can do it too.
The integrated AMD Radeon covers all these needs, eliminating the need to overpay for a model with a discrete graphics card. However, it’s not just about money: the built-in video core allows you to save space in the case, that is, to make the laptop more compact.
The direct duty of any business laptop is to last the whole working day without recharging. Nominally battery Acer TravelMate P2 should withstand up to 12 hours of continuous operation. But in real scenarios, autonomy turned out to be slightly lower – about 9 hours with a brightness of 60%. Here again, one cannot but recall the excellent energy efficiency of the AMD Ryzen 3 Pro 4450U. The kit includes a 45-watt adapter with a traditional cylindrical connector. Charging via USB-C, like most basic business laptops, is missing.
Security
Since business laptops often contain fairly sensitive information, security issues for such devices are far from last. The Acer TravelMate P2 has solutions in this regard at various levels: from a banal cover that covers the camera lens, to a fingerprint scanner and Windows Hello function.
But, perhaps, the AMD Ryzen 3 Pro 4450U processor with the GuardMI technology set used in the laptop is of decisive importance in the security of stored data. These include the familiar TPM 2.0 Trusted Platform Module and fTPM, a co-processor that provides secure authentication and protects company data. And the unique TSME encryption technology protects the laptop’s RAM, because it is the data stored in it that often becomes the target of intruders – all Ryzen Pro processors received this feature. The technology works independently of the operating system and software and can be used with any software.
In general, security has become one of the most important distinguishing features of AMD processors, and they operate most effectively in a company with the latest Windows 11 operating system.
Conclusion
TravelMate P2 on AMD is not uncompromising, but perfectly balanced. Here, in principle, everything is in abundance. 8 GB of RAM and even 256 SSD for office use will last for several more years, the fresh processor does an excellent job even with many typical tasks. At the same time, autonomy, one might say, is at the level of exemplary. And in terms of integrated graphics (another weak point of thin laptops), the Ryzen 3 Pro 4450U is one of the best solutions in its segment. Recently, AMD has made a big splash in the corporate notebook segment, and many top manufacturers use their platform in their models.
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