Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14 review: A good pick for professionals

Want a Windows 2-in-1 for business and travel? Your first thoughts may drift towards Microsoft’s Surface or Lenovo’s ThinkPad line, but they’re not the only game in town. Acer’s TravelMate has long offered a more affordable alternative to the competition, and the TravelMate Spin P4 is a good example of what Acer can offer. It’s a bit boring but functional and it offers a wide range of features for the price.

Further reading: Best laptops 2024: Premium, budget, gaming, 2-in-1s, and more

Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14: Specs and features

The Acer TravelMate Spin P4 is a 14-inch 2-in-1 with specifications that are typical of the category. That includes an Intel Core Ultra 5 125U (the “U” is important, as it means the processor targets a lower power profile instead of performance), 16GB of memory, and integrated graphics.

• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 5 125U
• Memory: 16GB LPDDR5
• Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc integrated graphics
• NPU: Intel AI Boost
• Display: 1920×1200 14-inch 16:10 IPS 60Hz anti-glare touchscreen
• Storage: 512GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 solid state storage
• Webcam: 1080p 30fps camera with IR 3D camera for Windows Hello, physical privacy shutter
• Connectivity: 2x USB-C 4, 1x HDMI, 2x USB-A 3.2, Gigabit Ethernet, 3.5mm combo audio
• Networking: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3
• Biometrics: Windows Hello facial recognition, fingerprint reader 
• Battery capacity: 65 watt-hours
• Dimensions: 12.9 x 9 x 0.9 inches
• Weight: 3.26 pounds
• MSRP: $1,329.99 MSRP (approximately $1,175 retail)

Many of the laptop’s more alluring features are found on its exterior. It has a 14-inch 16:10 touchscreen with an anti-glare coat, a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, Ethernet, and two forms of biometric login. It also comes standard with an active stylus.

Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14: Design and build quality

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

I doubt most people would give the Acer TravelMate Spin P4 a second glance. It’s a simple gunmetal slab entirely lacking notable texture or flair. Even the Acer logo is small. This is typical for business laptops, but competitors like Lenovo and Dell manage to deliver a more attractive design without drawing too much attention. These competitors look business-like and functional. The TravelMate Spin P4, by contrast, looks a bit cheap.

It’s also rather chunky for a Windows 2-in-1. The chassis measures nine-tenths of an inch thick and weighs 3.26 pounds. While neither figure is excessive, both are towards the upper end of the category. Dell’s Latitude 5350 is three-quarters of an inch thick, and Lenovo’s ThinkBook 14 is .66 inches thick. The TravelMate Spin P4’s size makes it difficult to hold and use when the display is folded 360 degrees to convert the 2-in-1 to a tablet. 

There are benefits to its size, however. The chassis feels rigid; even the display lid shows only the slightest hint of flex when lifted. Acer’s competitors also offer good build quality but, when comparably equipped, tend to be more expensive.

The chassis also provides room for a stylus that tucks into the TravelMate Spin P4 when not in use. This is an uncommon feature, as many Windows 2-in-1s instead choose to use a stylus that attaches magnetically to the exterior. The Spin P4’s design means you’re less likely to lose the stylus, as it’s always secure when stowed.

It also means the stylus is small, though, which might not work for larger users. I personally found it uncomfortable to use, as the end of the stylus barely extended from my closed palm when gripped.

Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14: Keyboard, trackpad

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

The Acer TravelMate Spin P4 has a center-aligned keyboard without a numpad. The layout is spacious, as nearly all keys are close to their full size; the right-side Control and Tab keys are the most notable exception, though still large enough that they’re easy to find.

Typing feel is solid. The Spin P4’s girthy chassis offers room for long, robust key travel with a firm and clicky bottoming action. There’s a somewhat hollow quality to the sound of the keyboard that’s not ideal, but I was happy to overlook that given the springy, responsive action of the keys. I prefer this to the keyboards found on recent Dell Latitude laptops, and it’s competitive with Lenovo’s ThinkBook 2-in-1s.

A modest touchpad is found beneath the keyboard. It measures roughly five inches wide and three inches deep, which isn’t large for a touchpad in 2024, and can feel cramped when using more elaborate Windows multi-touch gestures like the five-finger pinch to minimize all open windows.

Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14: Display, audio

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

Of course, the Acer TravelMate Spin P4 also has a touchscreen, and it picks up some slack for the touchpad. The touchscreen is a fine alternative to the touchpad when scrolling through documents or pinching to zoom in (or out) of images and documents. Because the Spin P4 is a 14-inch 2-in-1, the display is close at hand and it’s not difficult to reach up to the touchscreen from a normal typing position.

The display’s 1920×1200 resolution and 16:10 aspect ratio are typical for a modern Windows 2-in-1, but the Acer TravelMate Spin P4 has an anti-glare coat, which is less common. Some Dell Latitude or Lenovo ThinkPad 2-in-1s offer anti-glare touchscreens, but most laptops that target consumers (instead of business customers) don’t. The anti-glare coat means the display is easier to read in bright environments and suffers less under harsh direct lighting. However, its effectiveness is reduced by the display’s paltry maximum brightness of 362 nits. The display can look dim if used outdoors or near large sunlit windows.

That’s a bit of a problem because the display also fails to stand out in color performance, contrast, or refresh rate. It’s otherwise a decent but average 1200p display. It has a solid contrast ratio of 2770:1, a modest color gamut that covers up to 85 percent of DCI-P3, and a 60Hz refresh rate. There’s nothing wrong with it, but nothing right, either: it just does the job.

To be fair, though, the same can be said of Acer’s competitors. Shoppers looking for a higher display resolution or more exotic panel technology (like OLED or Mini-LED) generally need to step up to a more expensive tier like Dell’s Precision or Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 or opt for a consumer laptop, which may not have all the features buyers eyeing the Spin P4 want.

Audio performance also follows the trend of acceptable but forgettable performance. The Spin P4 has upward firing speakers. They’re clear and crisp when the device is used as a laptop, but their placement is not great when using the device as a tablet, as the user’s hands may cover the speakers. In either case, the speakers have modest maximum volume and not much range. They’re fine for podcasts and video calls, but not ideal for music or Netflix. 

Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14: Webcam, microphone, biometrics

The Acer TravelMate Spin P4 has a 1080p webcam placed into its relatively large top display bezel. It provides good image quality for a webcam, with decent sharpness and color reproduction. The webcam also has a physical privacy shutter. A 1080p webcam is essentially the standard for business laptops in 2024, though, so the Spin P4 doesn’t have an edge here. 

The same is true of the microphone array: it captures good audio quality that’s well suited for video or voice calls on Zoom or Teams, but it’s not going to work well for recording videos or podcasts.

Biometric login is available through both Windows Hello facial recognition and a fingerprint reader placed on the power button. Both work well, though I often find facial recognition faster and more reliable than a fingerprint reader. The Spin P4 also supports human presence detection through Windows 11, meaning it can dim the display when you look away to conserve battery life, or reactivate the laptop from sleep when you approach it. 

Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14: Connectivity

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

Acer packs a good range of connectivity in the Acer TravelMate Spin P4. It has two Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C 4 ports, which support USB Power Delivery and DisplayPort Alternate Mode, but also two USB-A 3.2 ports, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, a microSD card reader, and a 3.5mm combo audio jack. That is a broad range of connectivity for a modern Windows 2-in-1. The Ethernet port is especially notable, as numerous laptops have chosen to remove the Ethernet port over the last few years.

Wireless connectivity is less impressive, but still fine. The Spin P4 supports Wi-Fi 6E, which is a step behind the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard. While disappointing, Wi-Fi 7 is uncommon and you would need to own or connect to a Wi-Fi 7 router to see a benefit from it. The laptop also supports Bluetooth 5.3. The Spin P4 does not support cellular connectivity.

Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14: Performance

The Acer TravelMate Spin P4 has an Intel Core Ultra 5 125U processor. It’s important to understand that the “U” in the model name is significant. The “U” series targets a lower power profile than the “H” series.

The 125U has a total of 12 cores, but only two of those are performance cores. Eight are efficient cores, and the final two are low-power efficient cores. The processor also has a modest maximum Turbo frequency of 4.3 GHz. The processor was paired with 16GB of DDR5 memory and a 512GB PCIe 4.0 solid state drive.

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

The Spin P4 gets off to a modest start in PCMark 10, a general synthetic benchmark, as it reached a score towards the middle of the pack and almost exactly ties the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 2-in-1 Gen 4, which also had an Intel Core Ultra 5 125U processor. It generally falls behind Intel Core Ultra 7 155H-powered machines, though it does defeat the HP Envy x360 14-inch.

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

Cinebench R20, a heavily multithreaded CPU benchmark, reported a slightly more favorable result for the Spin P4. Here the laptop is closer to the middle of the pack, and it even defeats the HP Envy x360 14. However, the other two Intel Core Ultra 7 155H laptops still manage to significantly outperform the Spin P4 with each laptop at its default power settings.

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

Next up is Handbrake, where we perform a real-world encoding test of a two-hour 1080p film from MP4 to MKV format. The Spin P4 did not perform well in this heavily multithread, long-duration test, though it did manage to beat the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 2-in-1 Gen 4. 

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

With the processor-centric benchmarks handled, we turn our attention to 3D performance. Here, again, the Intel Core Ultra 5 125U has limitations. It does not offer Intel Arc graphics but instead the more limited Intel Graphics solution.

The performance downgrade is apparent in the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark. The Spin P4’s score of 1,728 is just half that of leaders like the Framework Laptop 13 and the Acer Swift Go 14. 

That makes a big difference in 3D games. Even older titles with less demanding graphics do not run well. I’ve recently enjoyed Battletech, a title developed by Unity and released in 2018. Despite its age, the game was playable but jittery even at 1080p and Low detail settings. 

Clearly, the Spin P4’s performance has its limits. But the same can be said of its direct competitors. The Acer trades blows with the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 2-in-1 and HP Envy x360 14-inch. And while we have not reviewed the current incarnation of the Dell Latitude 5350 2-in-1, it does come standard with the same Intel Core Ultra 5 125U processor, so I expect its performance would be in a similar range.

Strange though it may seem, entry-level business and prosumer 2-in-1s generally don’t place much importance on performance and instead sell themselves based on connectivity, biometrics, and functional design.

Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14: Battery life

The Acer Travelmate Spin P4 isn’t the thinnest or lightest 14-inch Windows 2-in-1, but it’s still portable enough that its weight becomes hard to notice in a typical backpack or messenger bag designed for a laptop of its size. It also has a 65 watt-hour battery, which is about average for the category, but enough to satisfy the power-sipping Intel Core Ultra 5 125H processor.

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

IDG / Matthew Smith

As a result, the Spin P4 endured almost 17 hours of our standard battery test, which loops a 4K file of the short film Tears of Steel. This is a light load test and the laptop is capable of chugging down a charge more quickly if processor-heavy apps are opened. In general, though, the laptop can easily handle an eight-hour day of mixed web browsing, productivity, and video.

The laptop is charged over USB-C and it ships with a 100-watt USB-C charger. That’s great, as it provides more versatility when charging the laptop. You could leave home with the charger provided with the laptop or pack a smaller third-party GaN charger. Most of the Spin P4’s competitors also charge over USB-C, but it remains a useful perk.

Acer TravelMate P4 Spin 14: Conclusion

The Acer TravelMate Spin P4 is a decent pick for professionals and prosumers looking to buy a 14-inch Windows 2-in-1. Though not great for tablet use, it’s still an enjoyable laptop with a good keyboard, plenty of physical connectivity, a bundled active stylus, and acceptable battery life. It’s not very quick for the price and the display could be better. However, these flaws also tend to be found in price-competitive business laptops. The Spin P4 isn’t a laptop that will get anyone excited, but it gets the job done at a modest price.