The Acer TravelMate P4 is a general-purpose machine but lends itself well to running accounting software, as it has a powerful CPU and enough RAM for most financial programs. While we're talking RAM the base model comes with 8GB of DDR4, which whilst not blazingly fast will be enough for the more popular accounting applications.
The model we reviewed has a 14in display, but there is a 16in version also available. The full HD 16:9 resolution meets the minimum requirements of most accounting platforms. While not spectacular, it also feeds into the TravelMate's base model's very reasonable price. The 256 GB SSD may be suitable for small businesses but if you need to process large amounts of financial data, you may prefer to upgrade to the 512 GB model for an additional cost.
The TravelMate also lives up to its name in that it's extremely light, weighing in at under 1.5 kilos. This makes it extremely easy to carry around if you prefer to crunch numbers on the go. During our tests we found the battery life to be around 10 hours and it also charged up very quickly, recovering around half the battery in 30 minutes.
You may want to do this as the bundled 256GB Sk Hynix BC501 SSD has a firmware issue that is well documented, where write speed drops to HDD speeds in certain circumstances such as handling large files.
This may not be an issue if you're using a cloud-based accounting platform, whose performance will be determined more by the excellent CPU and available RAM. It's also fairly easy to apply a firmware update to make the drive perform more reliably.
During our reviews we also discovered that the TravelMate is very easy to upgrade - it's relatively simple to pop the hood and memory isn't soldered in. This means it'd be fairly simple to install a super-fast SSD with a higher capacity if you prefer. The laptop's low cost means you could probably do this for less than the cost of buying a brand new laptop.
During our tests, the only real downside we found to this model was there was a large amount of bloatware preinstalled on the laptop, so it may need to be cleaned up before you install any accounting programs.
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