Acer TravelMate B1 (B118) review – a tiny tank in disguise

To be honest, the TravelMate B118 won’t catch your eye from the first sight. It is clunky, plasticky and has a rubber all around it. In fact, it looks more like a toy, than as professional hardware. However, don’t let your eyes fool you. Acer state that this notebook has passed is MIL-STD 810G compliant.

What is more impressive is the numbers – a spill-resistant keyboard, which can protect against up to 330 ml of water, a rubber bumper, which should protect against 122cm drops, as well as a wide working range in terms of temperature – from -32C to +49C.

Okay, but who is in the most need of such a device. In the first place, probably children. Indeed the hardware is not extremely powerful – just an Intel Pentium Silver N5000, but with all of the chassis enhancements, it should withstand even the most careless of kids.

Additionally, we find the strength of this machine very useful in industrial usages – like in workshops, factories, or places people need a robust machine that will do the job.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-travelmate-b1-b118/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Acer TravelMate B1 (B118) - Specifiche

  • Innolux N116BGE-EA2 (CMN1132)
  • Precisione del colore  12  3.5
  • HDD/SSD
  • fino a 1280GB SSD + fino a 1000GB HDD
  • RAM
  • up to 4GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro
  • Batteria
  • 48Wh, 4-cell
  • Dimensioni
  • 291 x 211 x 22.3 mm (11.46" x 8.31" x 0.88")
  • Peso
  • 1.53 kg (3.4 lbs)
  • Porte e connettività
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 2.0
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • HDMI
  • Lettore di schede
  • SD
  • Ethernet LAN
  • 10, 100, 1000 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ac
  • Bluetooth
  • 4.0
  • Jack audio
  • 3.5 mm combo
  • Caratteristiche
  • Lettore di impronte digitali
  • Telecamera web
  • HD
  • Tastiera retroilluminata
  • Microfono
  • Altoparlanti
  • 2 Stereo Speakers
  • Unità ottica
  • Fessura del blocco di sicurezza
  • Kensington Lock

Tutti Acer TravelMate B1 (B118) configurazioni

#CommissionsEarned

What’s in the box?

Besides the laptop, inside the package, we found a 45W power brick with a proprietory barrel-style plug and some paper manuals.


Design and construction

As we mentioned, plastic is the predominant material in the build of this device. Additionally, there is a rubber “bumper” all around the base, which should protect it well against drops and accidental hits in objects. And although the device has a rather small footprint (still big for an 11-incher), the 22.3mm thickness and 1.53 kg weight make it feel a bit clunky. However, this surely adds to the structural integrity of the notebook.

Despite the heavy base, the TravelMate B118’s lid cannot be opened with a single hand. Keep in mind that the lid, itself, is not as strong as the base, but here, the small size is its biggest friend, as this is the only reason it doesn’t bend too much.

Another setback here is the huge bezels. This surely adds to the overall footprint of the machine. Actually, we’ve seen 13-inch devices that take arguably the same amount of space as this one.

Next, let’s move to the keyboard. All of the aforementioned setbacks result in larger keys, which are pretty comfortable to work with. They have a decent key travel, as well as a clicky, yet quiet feedback. The only issue we found here is the proximity of the “Page Up” and “Page Down” to the arrow keys, which will surely result in some unwanted presses.

As of the touchpad, it has ELAN drivers and actually feels good. The tracking is fine, and the surface is smooth, in contrast to the rest of the base, which has a rough finish.

Turing the laptop upside down, we see only the speaker grills and a service lid for quick upgrades.

Ports

Despite being an 11-inch machine, the TravelMate B118 has a pretty formidable I/O. On the left, you’ll find the power plug, followed by an RJ-45 connector, an HDMI port, a USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) port and an audio jack. Then, on the right, there is a USB Type-A 2.0, and an SD card reader. The Power On/Off resides there, as well.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

Interestingly, this laptop has a service lid. A piece of smart designer thought, fading away in the menace of ultra-stylish aluminum/magnesium unibodies. Even though you won’t be able to upgrade the RAM of this device, you still have the option to put a larger SSD inside.

In order to get to the other parts, you’ll need to remove the SSD, as well as its bracket. Then unscrew one Phillips-head sucker sitting in the same bay, as well as 9 more of the same type, found all around the bottom plate. Then, just pop the panel open with a plastic pry tool and you should be able to lift it away from the chassis.

Inside, you’ll see the passive cooling solution, consisting of a copper plate, nearly the same size as the motherboard, itself.

As for the battery, this 11-incher is equipped with an enormous 50.3Wh unit – definitely exceeded our expectations.


Display quality

Acer TravelMate B1 (B118) is equipped with a WXGA TN panel with a model number Innolux N116BGE-EA2 (CMN1132). Its diagonal is 11.6″ (29.5 cm), and the resolution 1366 х 768 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 135 ppi, and a pitch of 0.19 х 0.19 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 64cm (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).

As expected from a TN panel – the viewing angles are terrible. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

The measured maximum brightness of 250 nits in the middle of the screen and 240 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 8%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 8000K – considerably colder than the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K – our profiles fix that.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source.

Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work. The contrast ratio is mediocre – 370:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Acer TravelMate B1 (B118)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 51% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Acer TravelMate B1 (B118) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 17 ms.


PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Acer TravelMate B1 (B118)’s display backlight uses PWM to adjust the brightness up until 66 nits. Moreover, it does it with a high-enough frequency, so you wouldn’t notice it in long working sessions.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Conclusion

Acer TravelMate B1 (B118) in this modification is equipped with a low-budget TN panel. Some of its disadvantages include narrow viewing angles, poor contrast ratio, and modest color coverage. On the bright side, its backlight doesn’t use harmful PWM for brightness adjustment.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Acer TravelMate B1 (B118) configurations with 11.6″ WXGA TN Innolux N116BGE-EA2 (CMN1132).

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

Oltre a ricevere profili efficienti e rispettosi della salute, comprando i prodotti di LaptopMedia sostenete anche lo sviluppo dei nostri laboratori, dove testiamo i dispositivi per produrre le recensioni più obiettive possibili.

Lavoro in ufficio

Lavoro in ufficio dovrebbe essere usato soprattutto dagli utenti che passano la maggior parte del tempo a guardare pezzi di testo, tabelle o semplicemente a navigare. Questo profilo mira a fornire una migliore distinzione e chiarezza mantenendo una curva gamma piatta (2.20), una temperatura di colore nativa e colori percettivamente accurati.

Design e gioco

Questo profilo è rivolto ai designer che lavorano professionalmente con i colori, e anche per giochi e film. Design and Gaming porta i pannelli di visualizzazione ai loro limiti, rendendoli il più accurati possibile nello standard sRGB IEC61966-2-1 per Web e HDTV, al punto di bianco D65.

Salute-Guardia

Salute-Guardia elimina la nociva Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) e riduce la luce blu negativa che colpisce i nostri occhi e il nostro corpo. Essendo personalizzato per ogni pannello, riesce a mantenere i colori percettivamente accurati. Salute-Guardia simula la carta, quindi la pressione sugli occhi è notevolmente ridotta.

Ottenete tutti e 3 i profili con il 33% di sconto


Sound

Acer TravelMate B1 (B118)’s speakers are rather quiet. They have deviations from clarity throughout the entire frequency range.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/7825?b=1

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the 50.3Wh battery was able to deliver around 15 hours and 20 minutes of Web browsing and 14 hours and a half of video playback.


CPU options

Our unit features the Intel Pentium Silver N5000 processor. It is rated at 6W of TDP and has four cores/four threads configuration. It’s equipped with 4MB of cache, which is pretty much, given the performance you should expect from this CPU. As of the frequencies, it goes from 1.10 GHz up to 2.70 GHz.


GPU options

As there is no way, Acer could cram a dedicated GPU inside, you are stuck with the Intel UHD Graphics 605 – the iGPU, of the Pentium Silver N5000. Its base frequency is 200 MHz, but in heavy loads, it can go up to 750 MHz.


Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Pentium Silver N5000 (6W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Acer TravelMate B1 (B118)2.59 GHz @ 58°C2.02 GHz @ 52°C1.76 GHz @ 61°C
ASUS X5432.59 GHz @ 70°C2.59 GHz @ 84°C2.59 GHz @ 78°C
Acer Aspire 3 (A317-32)2.20 GHz @ 70°C1.93 GHz @ 68°C1.74 GHz @ 70°C
Acer Aspire 1 (A114-32)2.60 GHz @ 68°C1.85 GHz @ 58°C1.84 GHz @ 64°C
Acer Aspire 3 (A315-34)2.60 GHz @ 80°C2.15 GHz @ 79°C1.69 GHz @ 76°C
HP 15 (15-da0000)2.60 GHz @ 55°C2.30 GHz @ 53°C2.10 GHz @ 55°C

While the TravelMate B1 (B118) sits far away from the semi-actively cooled ASUS X543, it is comfortable to say, that the laptop remained cool at all times, with a maximum temperature on the core of the only 61C.

Comfort during full load

Expectedly, the laptop remained completely silent throughout the test, and it didn’t heat too much on the outside, as well.


Verdict

Indeed, the TravelMate B1 (B118) might seem a bit too big for what it offers. However, its 11.6-inch display is surrounded by a lot of quality. Not only is the machine sturdy enough to withstand a lot of abuse, especially from younger individuals, but it is also very comfortable to use. Its keyboard is great, thanks to its long key travel and clicky feedback. Also, it features spill-resistance, for volumes of up to 330ml of water.

Now, this doesn’t mean you should start pouring different kinds of liquids on top of this thing. Instead, be less worried, when handling your cup of tea, next to your laptop. Despite the comfortability in a lot of ways, this device has a poor display.

Acer TravelMate B1 (B118) in this modification is equipped with a low-budget TN panel. Some of its disadvantages include narrow viewing angles, poor contrast ratio, and modest color coverage. On the bright side, its backlight doesn’t use harmful PWM for brightness adjustment.

More on this site, there is a pretty wide I/O selection. An SD card reader, two USB Type-A ports, and even HDMI and RJ-45 connectivity. Not every 2020 laptop can boast such a useful port lineup.

Keep in mind, that our unit was completely silent, even under super heavy load. This is because of two reasons. Firstly – it lacks a fan, since the cooling is passive, and secondly – there are no spinning drives inside, only an M.2 SATA SSD. Sure, you can put a larger M.2 drive, or swap it for a 2.5″ SATA device, but keep in mind, they cannot exist together on this machine. Sadly you won’t be able to upgrade your system memory, as well.

Would we recommend this laptop? Sure, the combination of useful features and fool-proof chassis makes it great for kids and education – plus its battery lasts for ages.

Pros

  • Decent price tag
  • Great keyboard
  • SD card slot and Ethernet connection in a very well populated I/O
  • Very good battery life
  • Doesn’t use harmful PWM for brightness adjustment
  • Very rigid body with a rubber “bumper” and spill-resistant keyboard


Cons

  • Dated design
  • Covers only 51% of sRGB
  • Poor viewing angles and contrast ratio
  • Lacks a USB Type-C port

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-travelmate-b1-b118/

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Rick
Rick
3 anni fa

your cooked shit laptop

gem
gem
2 anni fa

Mine sucks. Would definitely not recommend it. its microphone is rubbish, if I’m calling someone it sounds like I’m giving them a bomb threat from underwater. It weighs a ton and is really really thick. It downloads updates and completely wrecks my desktop without permission, has extremely laggy everything, especially if you’re playing a game. Is prone to simply not turning back on if you accidentally brush the off button. The arrow keys are stupidly tiny. The light on top constantly flashes every few seconds and inaccurately says orange, even when it’s fully charged. I feel like I need to… Read more »

dsdd
4 mesi fa

gay laptop dont buy