Over a month before Acer reveals its next batch of goodies for the upcoming holidays during IFA Berlin in August, the company has introduced the TravelMate X3 commercial notebook series heading to professionals and small businesses this October here in the United States. They’ll be packed with Windows 10 Pro (and likely Anniversary Update), which provoked Microsoft to show a little love for Acer regarding the first model, the TravelMate X349, in a blog on Thursday.
Unfortunately, Acer and Microsoft are lite on the details regarding the business-class laptop’s hardware specs. What we know after weeding through Acer’s press release and the Microsoft blog is that the series on a whole will support processors up to sixth-generation Intel Core chips, up to 8GB of DDR4 memory, internal storage via an SSD up to 512GB, and a battery promising up to 10 hours on a single change.
What we know from the teases provided by Acer and Microsoft is that the TravelMate X349 will be on display in Acer’s booth during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference taking place in Toronto, Canada, between July 10 and July 14. It will sport an all-aluminum chassis enhanced by a brushed-metal finish, weigh a mere 3.3 pounds, and measure just 0.7 inches thin, perfect for working abroad.
The upcoming laptop will consist of a 14-inch IPS screen (1,920 x 1,080) that can recline 180-degrees to lie fully flat, allowing users to easily share content with business partners. There will also be an LED backlit chicklet-style keyboard for working on dimly-lit airplanes, a 720p HDR webcam that’s perfect for mobile video conferencing, a wide Precision Touchpad, “fine-tuned” speakers and microphones, and a touch fingerprint sensor that can be used with Windows Hello to quickly unlock the laptop without the need for passwords or PIN numbers.
“It also ships a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 chip that increases platform integrity and provides hardware-based protection for passwords and encryption keys,” Acer said. “The TravelMate X349 is preloaded with Acer ProShield Manager, a suite of security and management tools to safeguard sensitive data, and Acer Office Manager, allowing IT professionals to quickly deploy security policies and monitor assets from one simple-to-use interface.”
Finally, the upcoming laptop will supply users with a cool USB Type-C port. This detail is rather important, as the laptop will be able to connect to Acer’s USB Type-C Dock (sold separately, of course) for charging the laptop, adding peripherals, and connecting up to two separate 4K displays.
Acer’s TravelMate X349 will have a starting price of $650 when it lands in the United States in October. However, Acer indicates that it will arrive first in EMEA (€480 and above) and China (¥5,999 and above) this September, so maybe we’ll get a better idea of the hardware specs will be at that time.
