Acer TravelMate Spin P4 (TMP414-51) review – wide I/O and decent upgrade options

TravelMate Spin P4 is known for its relatively low price and uncompromised security. Ultimately, it is a 14-inch convertible that should be able to satisfy all of the small-to-medium business needs. It aims to do so via its Tiger Lake processors, and some magic on the software side.

Unsurprisingly, 2-in-1s are becoming more and more popular in the business world. This is because of their versatility since it’s easier than ever to show your work to your colleagues or clients. And if you are following us regularly, you would know, that some manufacturers, like Dell, are experimenting with “Detachables” (tablets with detachable keyboards).

Yet, the 2-in-1s are still more convenient at this point. Not only because of their more comfortable form factor for daily usage but also due to the fact that they offer a much wider port selection.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-travelmate-spin-p4-tmp414-51/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Acer TravelMate Spin P4 (TMP414RN-51) - Specs

  • BOE NV140FHM-N48
  • Color accuracy  4.4  3.7
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 1000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 16GB
  • OS
  • Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro, Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Home
  • Battery
  • 56Wh, 3-cell, 56Wh, 4-cell
  • Body material
  • Plastic / Polycarbonate, Aluminum
  • Dimensions
  • 325 x 236 x 17.9 mm (12.80" x 9.29" x 0.70")
  • Weight
  • 1.40 kg (3.1 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Thunderbolt 4, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • 2.0
  • Card reader
  • MicroSD
  • Ethernet LAN
  • 10, 100, 1000 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • optional
  • Web camera
  • HD / FHD
  • Backlit keyboard
  • optional
  • Microphone
  • 2x Microphones with Acer Purified Voice
  • Speakers
  • 2x Stereo Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • optional
  • Security Lock slot
  • Kensington Lock

What’s in the box?

Inside the package, you will find a 65W power brick, some paper manuals, and the laptop.


Design and construction

According to Acer, the corners of the body are made to absorb some of the force during an impact, thus making the laptop a lot more resilient. It even complies with a set of MIL-STD-810H tests. Its measurements are just right – 17.9mm in thickness, and 1.40 kg in weight. This makes it easy to carry in a backpack or in your hand. Additionally, the body seems to be extremely rigid, and resistant to flex.

In the world of convertibles, you can rarely see a lid that can be opened with a single hand. Frankly, this is the case with the TravelMate Spin P4 as well. Now, once you get it open, you will notice that the top and bottom bezels are pretty bulky. While the bottom doesn’t seem to be carrying any important features, the top holds the HD camera and its privacy shutter.

Looking at the base, we see a very familiar keyboard. it has a backlight, short key travel, and average feedback. Above it, you will find the speaker grill, while below it resides the touchpad.

It is probably a bit small for today’s standards. However, it is really responsive, and its tracking is accurate. Also, its clicking mechanism registers input from anywhere on its surface. On the other hand, we found that the top half is significantly harder to press than the bottom.

Now, looking at the bottom panel we see only the ventilation grill. And the hot air is being exhausted from the back.

Ports

Here is where the fun starts. On the left side, there is the power plug, an RJ-45 connector, an HDMI connector, two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, and a Thunderbolt 4 connector. Turn the laptop around, and you will find a wedge-shaped security slot, an audio jack, a MicroSD card reader, a Power button with an embedded fingerprint reader, as well as a dedicated stylus, hidden in its own housing inside of the laptop.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

To get inside this device, you need to undo 12 Phillips-head screws. Then, remove the stylus from its housing, and pry the bottom panel with a plastic tool.

Here, we see a 56Wh battery pack that powers the notebook when it’s not plugged.

In terms of memory, there are two SODIMM slots for up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM in dual-channel mode. Storage-wise, you get one M.2 PCIe x4 slot.

Lastly, there is the cooling solution. It employs one medium-sized heat pipe, a fan, and a heat sink. Nothing out of the ordinary.


Display quality

Acer TravelMate Spin P4 (TMP414-51) is equipped with a Full HD IPS display – BOE NV140FHM-N48 (BOE081D). Its diagonal size is 14.0 inches (35.56 cm). The screen ratio is 16:9 and the resolution is 1920 x 1080p which translates into a pixel density of 157 PPI. The pixel pitch is – 0.161 х 0.161 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from further than 22 inches (55 cm). From this distance, the individual pixels become indistinguishable from the average human eye.

Viewing angles are comfortable. We offer images to evaluate quality.

Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.

The maximum measured brightness is 277 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 268 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 9%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 7000K (average) – colder than the optimal 6500K for sRGB.

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. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 57% Brightness (White level = 142 cd/m2, Black level = 0.105 cd/m2).

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 (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is good – 1340:1.

Color reproduction

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 on 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 Spin P4 (TMP414-51)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers just 53% 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 Spin P4 (TMP414-51) 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 = 28 ms.

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.


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.

Sadly, Acer TravelMate Spin P4 (TMP414-51)’s screen uses PWM throughout all brightness levels. In addition to that, the flickerings are with a pretty low frequency, which is quite a disadvantage.

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.

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 Spin P4 (TMP414-51) configurations with 14.0″ BOE NV140FHM-N48 (BOE081D) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS.

*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.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

Acer TravelMate Spin P4 (TMP414-51)’s speakers produce a sound with okay quality. On the other hand, there are deviations across the entire frequency spectrum.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/GB/content/support-product/8802?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. This device’s 56Wh battery pack lasts for 15 hours and 10 minutes of Web browsing, and 8 hours and 51 minutes of video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

As of the moment of writing this review, the device can be purchased with the Core i3-1115G4, Core i5-1135G7, and Core i7-1165G7.


GPU options

Respectively, the graphics options include only the integrated solutions, implemented inside of the aforementioned processors.


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS49 fps40 fps16 fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS61 fps37 fps23 fps

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 Core i3-1115G4 (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Acer TravelMate Spin P4 (TMP414-51)3.89 GHz (B+30%) @ 91°C @ 31W3.51 GHz (B+17%) @ 93°C @ 25W2.86 GHz @ 75°C @ 16W
Lenovo ThinkPad L13 Gen 23.61 GHz (B+20%) @ 90°C @ 26W3.37 GHz (B+12%) @ 90°C @ 22W2.97 GHz @ 80°C @ 15W
MSI Modern 14 (B11)3.89 GHz (B+29%) @ 90°C @ 35W3.69 GHz (B+23%) @ 92°C @ 32W3.57 GHz (B+19%) @ 93°C @ 29W
Dell Inspiron 14 5406 2-in-13.49 GHz (B+16%) @ 99°C @ 27W2.79 GHz @ 89°C @ 17W2.61 GHz @ 86°C @ 15W
Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 23.99 GHz (B+33%) @ 77°C @ 31W3.99 GHz (B+33%) @ 92°C @ 31W3.58 GHz (B+19%) @ 87°C @ 26W

The TravelMate Spin P4 (TMP414-51) definitely doesn’t sit on top of the food chain in this particular test. However, it maintains a relatively cool 75°C at the end of the torture, while not being too far off the base clock.

Comfort during full load

Thankfully, the laptop remains both quiet and relatively cool after 15 minutes of stress testing.


Verdict

Drawing a conclusion on this notebook is less easy than we expected. Although Acer does a great job on the marketing department, using all the terminology to describe their product and build up the hype, in reality, things stay a bit different. To be fair, we can’t complain about either the battery life or the performance.

Also, the laptop comes with a privacy shutter on the camera and a stylus that lives in its own compartment inside the laptop. Not to mention the upgrade options, which are on point for a 14-inch convertible.

Acer TravelMate Spin P4 (TMP414-51)’s touchscreen panel has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, a good contrast ratio, and adequate default settings. However, it covers only half of the colors on the sRGB gamut and uses aggressive PWM for brightness adjustment. Thankfully, our Health-Guard profile fixes the issue.

However, we live in a world, where almost newly announced device lacks PWM. Yet again, the TravelMate Spin P4 (TMP414-51) uses it. It’s more worrying here because this notebook is intended to be used for at least 8 hours at a time. As we said, grab our Health-Guard profile and forget about this issue, if you happen to own one of these.

In terms of usability, the laptop is okay. Well, the keyboard could have been better, and we would love to see an IR face recognition scanner. Nevertheless, you receive a brilliant I/O selection, which even includes Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, and a MicroSD card slot.

Indeed, this 14-inch 2-in-1 is not too expensive, but we can definitely see where Acer can improve. Once they put a decent display (arguably the most important part of any convertible), and figure out a more modern-looking design. This will be one for the winners.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-travelmate-spin-p4-tmp414-51/

Pros

  • Thunderbolt 4 and MicroSD card reader on board
  • Included stylus
  • Decent battery life
  • Its Full HD IPS panel has comfortable viewing angles and a good contrast ratio (BOE NV140FHM-N48)
  • Good aluminum build
  • 2x RAM SODIMM slots + 1x M.2 PCIe x4 slot


Cons

  • Thick top and bottom bezels
  • Covers only 53% of sRGB (BOE NV140FHM-N48)
  • Uses aggressive PWM for brightness adjustment (our Health-Guard profile fixes that) (BOE NV140FHM-N48)

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