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The Acer TravelMate P^ (TMP633) measures 32x22x1.5cm at the front but this swells as you go back culminating at 4cm at the back where the battery is, it weights just 2kilos. I assume there must be another configuration with a smaller battery as the back pair of rubber feet never sit on the desk.

The left side has the Kensington Lock socket, DC power input, two USB3 ports, SD Card and Express Card ports. The front has three LED’s on the left and an orange LED with slider switch to turn Wireless on/off. The right side has headphone and microphone sockets, a USB3 port, eSATA connection, HDMI port, VGA and Ethernet.

The screen goes back to around 170 degrees – the battery stops it going further – and or course there are no connections. The viewable screen is 29x16.5cm which gives the notional imperial measurement of 13.3 inches. While on the screen it is not nearly as reflective as those found on less expensive offerings, I wish they were all like this.

The base has a rubber bung hiding a external connector or some sort but as this was not supplied I can only guess as its purpose.

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There is an 89key keyboard with the alpha and numeric keys being fullsize. There is a 4cm wide area behind the keyboard that has a line of five buttons towards the right edge. There is an 8cm strip in front of the keyboard with the 9x6.5cm trackpad mounted 8cm from the left and 14cm from the right, this also contains a fingerprint reader.

My unit was matt black with the exception of the front of the case – rear of the screen – which has a diagonal stripe pattern in three shades of grey very subtle.    

It has 4GB or RAM, Windows 7 Professional, Intel Core i5 processor running at 2.5GHz with a 300GB hard disc.

The Windows Experience score is 5.9, made up of 7.1 for Processor, 5.9 RAM, 5.9 Graphics, 6.5Gaming Graphics and 5.9 Hard Disc. This is perhaps one of the most evenly balanced Windows Experience scores I have used. 

Due to certain time restrictions some tests of mine could not be completed one interesting one that was possible due to an illness just after it arrived that while fully charged and not used for seven days it only lost 2% of battery which is very good. Boot time is 65seconds and shutdown from Desktop is 20seconds.

Software that comes pre installed includes the normal Norton/McAfee security and Anti Virus as well as Backup. Absolute Data Protection, no less than six Acer applets, Acer Backup, Acer Crystal Eye software for the web cam built into the screen, Acer Motion Protect, Bluetooth Suite, Corel Win DVD, Evernote, Games Explorer that allows 60 minutes free play on a range of games, News Xpresso, Skype and Windows Virtual PC to mention just some and this probably answers why over 30GB of hard disc space is already in use.

Looking at the Acer site I see they do SSD versions as well as Hard Disc and this would improve greatly the bootup time. As a business machine security is high on the agenda and from the software included this is well catered for. The stated battery life of ‘up to 8 hours’ should be possible with the oversized battery that I was sent.

The Acer TravelMate P6 is available from the link below for £699.97 and of course should you want it you qualify for an upgrade to Windows 8 for £14.99 and then claim that back from Acer.

http://www.simplyacer.com/Acer_TravelMate_P6_Series_1257826.html

http://www.acer.co.uk/ac/en/GB/content/business-series/travelmatep6