Staying power

The downside with this finish is that it errs to a more muted the colour intensity. The lid also flexes a fair bit, so some care needs to be taken when packing it into a bag to prevent any damage being done to the screen.

The battery bulge appears to be a necessary evil, as it is swappable

The chiclet style keyboard has good spacing between the keys which feel solid enough when typing. Under the keyboard sits a multi-touch trackpad and nestling in between the two mouse keys is a finger print reader which, together with the TPM (Trusted Platform Module), offers some security for the mobile business user.

With an aluminum–magnesium chassis it should survive the knocks and scrapes of everyday life on the move, although it has to be said the black finish on the lid and the wrist pads are finger print magnets.

The use of materials also makes it a nice slim line design; 16mm at the front of the unit rising to 20mm at the rear, well that’s until you fit the rather large battery which does nothing for its appearance or weight come to that matter but does angle the notebook making it easier to type.

Benchmark Tests

PCMark 7 Results

Longer bars are better

PCMark 7 Battery Life Results

Battery life in minutes
Longer bars are better

Talking of batteries, with a whacking great 8-cell 6000mAh battery and just a 1.6GHz processor it doesn’t need me to tell you that the battery life of the TM8481T-2463G32nkk is impressive, I managed to get just over six hours out of it while running PCMark Vantage in a loop which is a pretty strenuous system wide workout, but with tighter power saving settings it should easy to get nearer to Acer’s claim of eight-plus hours of battery life.

No speed demon, but the battery should get you through the day

Verdict


For the most part, any notebook aimed at the mobile business user should have good battery life above practically everything and that’s something the i5 version of the TM8481T has in spades, it could do with some more memory especially as it uses a 64-bit OS and it does lack an optical drive but overall it’s a decent enough notebook for any business where the budgets might be a bit tight. ®

Thanks to Saveonlaptops for the loan of the review model.

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