Processing & Optics
The laptop is held up on the hinges in a discreet, matte black. The not quite smooth surface feels metallic cold. According to the manufacturer, the housing made of carbon fiber, aluminum and magnesium alloy is made. The gaps are even and very tight, with the base unit is produced almost the impression as if it were made of one piece. The torsional stiffness and compressive strength selbiger is excellent, the display is weakening here but a little, probably because of the very thin design. The hinges hold the display firmly in all positions, but could be a little tighter. Transported to the laptop with open display, it can happen at times jerky lifting or lowering it slightly adjusted.
Maintenance
RAM and HDD / SSD can be reached via a fortified with four screws maintenance flap. Can be used here a normal 7 mm 2.5 SATA HDD or SSD. As RAM expansion a standard 204-pin DDR3 module can be used with up to 8GB. The factory-installed 4 GB are soldered on the mainboard. Contrary to some sources is 1600 MHz memory used. Furthermore, the laptop has an mSATA slot that is occupied by a 24GB Kingston SSD. This should serve in the version with 500 GB HDD as SSD cache.
At the mSATA slot and the battery to get screwed by removing the entire base plate. The battery can then be easily replaced, because it is not glued. Working with two or more batteries can be used here due to the concept unfortunately, unless you want to go disassemble the laptop.
The fan and radiator has to be able to easily remove an extra service access for compressed air to dust that accumulates like here without Schrauberei.
Display
There is a full HD IPS display from AU Optronics. It is matt and has excellent viewing angle in all directions. Even from 170 ° to the side or from above, it is still readable without heavily inverted colors. The illumination is a laptop display fine. In everyday slight irregularities do not fall on. Provides you a completely black or very dark picture represents, you can see light halos. Pixel fault I could find with my model no. The sharpness is excellent, as are the colors. Only the maximum brightness could be even higher for outdoor use. For the
Indoor operation I use in daylight brightness between 60 and 80%, with low ambient brightness between 30 and 40%.
Input Devices
The keyboard is backlit and has a very short stroke of approximately 1 mm. However, the pressure point is good, the short stroke some getting used to. Then it can tap very well. (10 finger system) is in contrast to the mouse buttons, which have no real pressure point and have a very large stroke of about 3 mm. A real problem is the touchpad from Synaptics for Windows 8.1 users. This is because it is not possible, nor, etc. by means of the tips from the web as Registry changes to disable the mouse gestures. This leads to frequent, accidental calling the right Charms bar and the home screens. In previous versions of the driver could still turn this from me incomprehensible reasons that goes not in the current version. Unfortunately, a downgrade does not work on an old driver. In operation with external mouse this problem does not occur.
UPDATE to Charmsbar problem: In the meantime I have found a solution to the problem. One can simply use an older, signed by Acer driver that does not support the mouse gestures. The driver must be signed, which was directly from Synaptics not accepted. I have the Win7 x64 driver from Synaptics Acer TravelMate 8371 installed (you can download in the Support section at Acer) and the problem solved. The useful features such as tap and scroll with the touchpad still working, even zooming in and out with two fingers can be used to continue, but the Charmsbar always remains in the background.
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, WWAN
The wireless in my device a controller from Intel is built to work reliably. Ranging width is fine, the speed also. A good network because I have available everywhere, I can not tell how it reacts when the signal is weak. Bluetooth also works quickly and easily. Surfing with WWAN I have not tried yet. A slot for a SIM card, and the appropriate hardware is built into the laptop.
Battery life and operating noise
The battery life exceeds at low load (Office, Internet via W-Lan, youtube, movies etc, ~ 80% brightness) without problems The 7 hour mark. Saves even on wireless are possible even 10 hours. For compute-intensive applications that cause a high CPU load, the duration decreases naturally considerably. The fan noise stays at low load always in the background, to the inaudible. At high load, it still remains little disturbing, because the frequency is quite low.
Performance
I deliberately chose a simple Core i5 with integrated GPU, since I no longer need mobile power and the charge for i7 and dedicated GPU is very high. In addition, the battery life should be as long. When i5 is the widespread 4200U with two cores and hyperthreading, so it has 4 logical cores available. The iGPU is a HD4400. For everyday tasks is enough processing line available, even one or the other 3D game is playable with reduced details.
Sound
The sound is much better than many laptops. It is sufficiently loud and sounds relatively bulky and not by telephone. For presentations in smaller rooms or to go to watch a movie, all the speakers are good. However, one should not expect a full living room with music to provide sound in great quality.
Conclusion
The Acer P645 is an excellent business laptop with excellent workmanship, pleasant quality materials and long battery life.