Acer TravelMate 8481T-6873: Remarkable Road Warrior

Battery Life

Where Acer's TravelMate 8481T really excels is in its running time off the mains. Acer gets good mileage out of that substantial 8-cell battery and makes the extra bump pay off.

While the relative battery life isn't the greatest, it's certainly more than enough. Remember that the TravelMate is boasting a larger screen and faster processor than the Toshiba Z830. There's probably still work that could be done here to improve battery life (and Sony makes a convincing argument for the Vaio SB in places), but it won't disappoint.

Heat

Acer's TravelMate 8481T also runs reasonably cool and quiet to boot; even under load the fan's inobtrusive, and at idle the notebook is almost totally silent. The only problem with the fan is the same problem notebooks this small and thin often have: whine. Under load I can see the pitch bothering somebody, but it's no worse than Toshiba's Portege Z830 was and I'm not sure what kind of magic anyone buying a notebook this small is really expecting.

Thankfully it runs pretty frosty, as we've come to expect from Intel's low voltage Sandy Bridge chips. The left palm rest warms up a bit, but that's honestly the worst I've seen from the TravelMate and it's very mild compared to some of the other notebooks we've tested.

Display

Unfortunately Acer cheaped out in one other place. While I'm not apt to be quite as critical of poor displays on notebooks that are clearly designed to be portable word processors (the screen on my Lenovo ThinkPad X100e is absolutely horrible), I still really wish manufacturers would at least try to produce a notebook screen in quantity that doesn't completely suck.

Truthfully I'm not sure what's going on with the Delta-E of the TravelMate 8481T's panel, but whatever it is, it isn't good, and when the screen loads the calibration there's a very noticeable color shift. White and black levels are also some of the worst we've seen, and contrast is absolutely terrible.

Viewing angles really aren't big winners either, and for this one there's not much in the way of a sweet spot. Like I said before, it's fine for word processing and some internet browsing, but lousy for anything color sensitive. You may be better off buying a ThinkPad X220 with the IPS panel before going with the TravelMate 8481T if color is important to you.