We all think of wireless when it comes to smart home and home entertainment—Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Bluetooth, Thread, Z-Wave, and what have you—but a surprising number of smart devices depend on good, old-fashioned wired ethernet for the best performance.  The Philips Hue Bridge? Needs an ethernet cable. Got an Apple TV streaming box? It does Wi-Fi, but ethernet makes it better. That smart hub? An ethernet cable would certainly boost its reliability. Running a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X? A respectable K/D ratio demands ethernet.  All those ethernet cables and ports will add up, though, and most Wi-Fi and mesh routers only serve up a handful of ethernet connections—or, most likely, only a single extra port.   That’s why I’ve been investing in ethernet switches, and my favorite—this unmanaged 5-port gigabit ethernet bridge from TP-Link—is just $13, good for a 35% savings. Plenty of other configurations are also available, including an 8-port gigabit switch for $27.99 (30% off), 16 ports for $59.99 (33% off), and even 48 ports for $179.99 (25% off).  I have three of the 5-port TP-Link bridges in my smart home: one sits under my desk, connected to my PC, my Philips Hue Bridge, and my HDHomeRun over-the-air TV tuner. The link port is connected to my mesh Wi-Fi router, and the fifth port is connecting to… yes, another ethernet bridge.  My second bridge lives in a steel cabinet in the corner of the office, and it’s all about the Raspberry Pi’s–four of them, to be exact. Those Raspberry Pi boards run a series of locally hosted applications, including HomeBridge, an app that lets me bring non-HomeKit smart devices into the Apple Home app; Home Assistant, an open-source smart home platform I’ve been tinkering with; and Plex, a self-hosted media server and DVR that works with my HDHomeRun TV tuner. My Raspberry Pi systems will work just fine over Wi-Fi, but a rock-solid ethernet connection makes them far more reliable, especially for streaming media.  Finally, my third TP-Link ethernet switch sits in the living room behind my TV, where it’s connected to my Apple TV 4K, my PlayStation 5, and my Denon AVR-x1600H, ensuring perfectly smooth streaming video, cutting down on gaming latency, and preventing audio dropouts when streaming tunes via AirPlay.  Setting up these TP-Link ethernet bridges is a snap; because they’re unmanaged (meaning they can’t assign IP addresses on their own), it’s really just a matter of connecting the link port to a nearby Wi-Fi router or mesh hub and then plugging in your ethernet devices. You can have multiple ethernet switches downstream, meaning you can daisy-chain them if necessary. An AC adapter with a small wall wart supplies the power.  I’ve been rocking these particular TP-Link switches for years now and have never had any problems; I highly recommend them if you’re running out of ethernet ports in your smart home or home theater setup—the more the merrier.  Snag a TP-Link TL-SG105 5-port gigabit ethernet switch for $12.99Buy on Amazon Read...

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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Extremely thin and light Enjoyable keyboard and touchpad Lots of connectivity for a thin laptop Solid integrated graphics performance Good battery life Cons Display isn’t the most immersive or colorful Speakers don’t impress So-so CPU performance for the price Our Verdict The Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI is all work and no play, but a great choice if you want a super-light business laptop.    Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Acer Travelmate P6 14 AI Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Buying a business laptop sucks. That’s not because the laptops are bad. On the contrary, they’re often great, with better keyboards, lighter materials, and more ports than mainstream machines. The problem is the price. A “business laptop” will often cost you hundreds, if not thousands, more than mainstream alternatives with the same hardware inside. Enter the Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI. Though still not inexpensive, the TravelMate limbos below $2,000 without sacrificing the portability and connectivity business laptops are known for. Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI: Specs and features The Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI’s specifications are generally typical for a business laptop, though there are a few things to get excited about. The laptop has a 2880×1800 webcam, a much higher resolution than the 1080p webcams most laptops provide. It also has a lot of physical connectivity, and although it lacks a physical Ethernet port, a USB-C to Ethernet adapter is included in the box. Model number: TMP614-54T-79DF CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Memory: 32GB LPDDR5X Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140V NPU: Intel AI Boost up to 47 TOPS Display: 14-inch IPS-LCD 1920×1200 with 60Hz refresh rate Storage: 1TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Webcam: 2880×1800 webcam with Windows Hello support and physical privacy shutter Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C, 1x HDMI, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 1x 3.5mm combo audio jack Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Facial recognition, fingerprint reader Battery capacity: 65 watt-hours Dimensions: 12.4 x 8.9 x 0.7 inches Weight: 2.29 pounds Operating System: Windows 11 Pro Additional features: USB-C to Ethernet (RJ45) adapter Price: $1,999.99 MSRP, $1,750 typical retail The Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI isn’t inexpensive. It carries an MSRP of $1,999.99, which is discounted to around $1,750 to $1,800 at most online retailers. That’s a high price for the hardware it delivers, but it’s not bad for a business laptop. A similar Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon or HP EliteBook will often cost $2,000 or more. The TravelMate P6 14 AI is targeted at frequent fliers and business travelers. It doesn’t prioritize display quality or maximize performance. Instead, it focuses on portability, productivity, and connectivity. Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI: Design and build quality IDG / Matthew Smith Acer’s TravelMate P6 14 AI looks bland at first glance (and second, and third). It’s a simple, matte black slab with no details or design quirks to speak of. With that said, the laptop’s details hold up on closer inspection. I like the look of the matte black materials, which have pleasing luster. The design also has rounded corners and smooth edges that make the laptop feel nice in the hand. Picking up the TravelMate P6 14 AI reveals why it’s a bit pricey. The laptop tips the scales at just 2.29 pounds. That’s remarkably light for a 14-inch Windows laptop. The TravelMate weighs less than the current LG Gram 14 (which is 2.5 pounds) and the MacBook Air M4 13-inch (which is 2.7 pounds). It’s not the lightest 14-inch laptop around; the Asus ZenBook A14 is 2.16 pounds. But the TravelMate is close. Better still, the light chassis doesn’t come at the cost of luxury. The TravelMate P6 14 AI has a carbon-fiber lid and magnesium-aluminum chassis, both of which prove strong and rigid. The laptop feels solid when typing on the keyboard or pulling it out of a bag, and while it can be forced to slightly flex when abused, I really had to yank on it. That stands in contrast to super-lights like the LG Gram 14 which, in my experience, feels flimsy. Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Matthew Smith The Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI’s keyboard, much like its design, isn’t much to look at but delivers on functionality. The keyboard offers a spacious layout. Most keys are large with only a few, like Caps Lock and Tab, looking a bit slim. Key feel is good, too, with reasonable travel and a taut bottoming action. I used the keyboard to bang out a few thousand words in an afternoon, and didn’t feel tired or cramped when I was done. A keyboard backlight is standard (as should be expected at this price). It’s a simple white LED backlight with two brightness settings. The key lighting looks uneven and more light leaks around the keys than shines through the keycaps. It does the job, but it’s not a great keyboard backlight. While I like the keyboard, it picked up fingerprints quickly, and they proved difficult to remove. That’s often true for laptop keyboards but it seemed worse here than with most laptops I’ve used. The touchpad is good, though not exceptional. It measures a bit more than five inches wide and roughly three inches deep, which is typical for a 14-inch Windows laptop. The touchpad surface is smooth, responsive, and handles multi-touch gestures well. Tapping the lower half of the touchpad reveals a physical left/right click, but the travel is shallow. I’d prefer a haptic touchpad. Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI: Display, audio IDG / Matthew Smith The Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI’s display may well be the feature that makes you decide to buy, or skip, the laptop. It’s a 1920×1200 IPS-LCD display with a 16:10 aspect ratio. While not unusually sharp, it provides a clear image that’s easy to read. The display also has a semi-gloss coat that diffuses reflections. It’s not as aggressive as a matte display (which is my personal preference) but kept the display usable when I sat near a sunlit window. The display isn’t particularly colorful or immersive, however. Price-competitive laptops with OLED displays, like the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1, will provide a far more attractive experience when playing a game or watching Netflix. The TravelMate’s display is only 60Hz, too, and the lack of motion clarity is noticeable when scrolling through text. I think the TravelMate’s display is a good fit for its category. This is a laptop for office productivity and business travel, so a bright, clear, low-reflection display is a perk. If you want a display that’s also great for on-the-go entertainment, however, this isn’t it. The speakers keep up the TravelMate’s focus on productivity. They provide good volume and clarity to conversations but can sound shrill when playing music. Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI: Webcam, microphone, biometrics Acer boasts that the TravelMate P6 14 AI has a webcam with 2880×1800 resolution, which is far beyond the 1080p resolution most competitors deliver. However, the webcam doesn’t look as sharp or vibrant as that specification suggests. It’s good enough for video conferences but, like most webcams, the image is often grainy and dull. The webcam provides a physical privacy shutter that fully obstructs the camera. Windows’ AI-powered Studio Effects are supported, too, so you can easily blur the background or use AI framing to keep the camera focused on you. Biometric login is available through a fingerprint sensor on the power button and facial recognition. I prefer facial recognition, which I find quicker and more reliable login method, but the fingerprint reader works well too. Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI: Connectivity IDG / Matthew Smith Travelers are likely to be pleased by the connectivity stuffed into the Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI’s flanks. It has two Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C ports, both of which support Power Delivery and Display Port. But it also has two USB-A ports, so you can connect to older peripherals with ease. The laptop also has HDMI-out and a 3.5mm combo audio jack. The laptop doesn’t have a physical Ethernet (RJ45) port, but a USB-C to Ethernet adapter is provided in the box. This is an excellent range of connectivity for a laptop in this category. Mainstream laptops, like the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 and Asus ZenBook A14, have fewer USB-A ports and sometimes skip HDMI-out. Other business laptops, like Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon, usually have similar ports but tend to be more expensive. The TravelMate also has good wireless connectivity with support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. These are the latest versions of each wireless standard. Most new Windows laptops have the same wireless connectivity, but it’s still good to see the latest standards supported. Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI: Performance The Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI I reviewed had an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor. It’s an eight-core processor with four performance cores and four efficient cores, as well as a maximum Turbo clock speed of 4.8GHz. It’s paired with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB PCIe NVMe solid state drive. IDG / Matthew Smith PCMark 10, a holistic system benchmark, puts the TravelMate off to a middling start with a score of 6,615. That’s not the least impressive score in this test, but certainly not the best. However, all of these scores are fairly tightly clustered, so we need to tap other benchmarks to have a better picture of the TravelMate’s performance. IDG / Matthew Smith Handbrake adds a disappointing, though not unexpected, chapter to the TravelMate’s tale. It required nearly half an hour to complete our CPU-focused transcoding test of a feature length film. That’s not a great result, but it fits with what I’ve come to expect from Intel Core Ultra chips, which often fall behind in this test due to their lack of CPU performance cores. And while the TravelMate’s score isn’t great, it defeats the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s, which was also tested with an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V inside. IDG / Matthew Smith Our last CPU benchmark is Cinebench R24, another heavily multi-threaded test, though one that tends to be shorter in duration than our Handbrake test. The TravelMate didn’t do well here with a score of 369, which is behind all the competitors including the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s. IDG / Matthew Smith The TravelMate’s Intel Core Ultra 7 258V doesn’t impress in CPU performance, but it strikes back in integrated graphics. Intel’s Arc 140V is a great integrated graphics solution and, in the TravelMate, was able to trade blows with the HP EliteBook X G1a, despite the fact that laptop had AMD’s top-tier Radeon 890M integrated graphics. To summarize, the TravelMate P6 14 AI delivers typical performance for a laptop with Intel’s Core Ultra 7 258V processor and integrated graphics. It’s not the quickest, not the slowest, and provides good enough performance for day-to-day productivity. Even gaming and video editing can be enjoyable if you stick to less lower resolutions and can tolerate an occasional hitch or dip. The TravelMate’s middling performance comes with a bonus. It’s quiet. Though not silent, the laptop’s fans were rarely noticeable in day-to-day use and modest even when I benchmarked the machine. It runs cool, too, warming only during long benchmark runs. Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI: Battery life and portability A 65-watt-hour battery powers the Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI when you’re away from a power outlet. That’s a middling size for a laptop sold in 2025, but it’s not bad considering the laptop’s slim profile and weight. Factor in Intel’s power-sipping Core Ultra 7 chip and you’ve a recipe for great, if not spectacular, battery life. IDG / Matthew Smith The TravelMate endured the PCWorld battery test, which loops a 4K file of the short film Tears of Steel, for nearly 17 hours. Though not a chart-topping result, it’s certainly long enough for most people. My real-world experience closely mirrored the test. Using the laptop for two to three hours in my typical workflow, which includes writing in Word, browsing the web, watching YouTube videos, and editing photos, drained about 20% of a charge. I expect the laptop would endure an eight-hour workday with a couple hours of juice in the tank, and perhaps more, depending on the programs you typically use. Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI: Conclusion Make no mistake: this isn’t a laptop for everyone. The TravelMate P6 14 AI is targeted at frequent fliers and business travelers. It doesn’t prioritize display quality or maximize performance (though the IGP is quite good). Instead, it focuses on portability, productivity, and connectivity. If that’s what you need, though, it’s a great option. Acer even undercuts the competition on price, too, as alternatives like the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s, ThinkPad X1 Carbon, and HP EliteBook Ultra G1i are often at least a few hundred dollars more when similarly equipped. Read...

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We all think of wireless when it comes to smart home and home entertainment—Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Bluetooth, Thread, Z-Wave, and what have you—but a surprising number of smart devices depend on good, old-fashioned wired ethernet for the best performance.  The Philips Hue Bridge? Needs an ethernet cable. Got an Apple TV streaming box? It does Wi-Fi, but ethernet makes it better. That smart hub? An ethernet cable would certainly boost its reliability. Running a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X? A respectable K/D ratio demands ethernet.  All those ethernet cables and ports will add up, though, and most Wi-Fi and mesh routers only serve up a handful of ethernet connections—or, most likely, only a single extra port.   That’s why I’ve been investing in ethernet switches, and my favorite—this unmanaged 5-port gigabit ethernet bridge from TP-Link—is just $13 for Prime Day, good for a 35% savings. Plenty of other configurations are also available, including an 8-port gigabit switch for $27.99 (30% off), 16 ports for $59.99 (33% off), and even 48 ports for $179.99 (25% off).  I have three of the 5-port TP-Link bridges in my smart home: one sits under my desk, connected to my PC, my Philips Hue Bridge, and my HDHomeRun over-the-air TV tuner. The link port is connected to my mesh Wi-Fi router, and the fifth port is connecting to… yes, another ethernet bridge.  My second bridge lives in a steel cabinet in the corner of the office, and it’s all about the Raspberry Pi’s–four of them, to be exact. Those Raspberry Pi boards run a series of locally hosted applications, including HomeBridge, an app that lets me bring non-HomeKit smart devices into the Apple Home app; Home Assistant, an open-source smart home platform I’ve been tinkering with; and Plex, a self-hosted media server and DVR that works with my HDHomeRun TV tuner. My Raspberry Pi systems will work just fine over Wi-Fi, but a rock-solid ethernet connection makes them far more reliable, especially for streaming media.  Finally, my third TP-Link ethernet switch sits in the living room behind my TV, where it’s connected to my Apple TV 4K, my PlayStation 5, and my Denon AVR-x1600H, ensuring perfectly smooth streaming video, cutting down on gaming latency, and preventing audio dropouts when streaming tunes via AirPlay.  Setting up these TP-Link ethernet bridges is a snap; because they’re unmanaged (meaning they can’t assign IP addresses on their own), it’s really just a matter of connecting the link port to a nearby Wi-Fi router or mesh hub and then plugging in your ethernet devices. You can have multiple ethernet switches downstream, meaning you can daisy-chain them if necessary. An AC adapter with a small wall wart supplies the power.  I’ve been rocking these particular TP-Link switches for years now and have never had any problems; I highly recommend them if you’re running out of ethernet ports in your smart home or home theater setup—the more the merrier.  Snag a TP-Link TL-SG105 5-port gigabit ethernet switch for $12.99Buy on Amazon Amazon Prime Day is slated to run four days this year, concluding on July 11. You must be a Prime member to take advantage of the discounts, but you can always sign up for a 30-day free trial.  Be sure to visit out Amazon Prime Day Tech Deals 2025 hub for more great sales across all the tech categories. Read...

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