Acer Swift 3 Laptop Specifications
The Acer Swift 3 is fast, affordable, and decent in most departments thanks to its powerful connectivity and high-resolution display. But if you want more style, battery life, or screen quality, you'll have to find it elsewhere.
Key features
Intel's Core i7-1260P processor is a mid-power processor designed for smaller laptops, and it produces excellent performance.
High-Resolution Display The 14-inch Swift panel features IPS technology with a resolution of 2560 × 1440, so it offers sharper images and more screen space than a traditional 1080p panel.
Decent connectivity, including full-size USB ports Featuring two full-size USB ports helps Acer surpass its competitors when it comes to physical connectivity – these days, you won't find any of those on smaller laptops.
Introduction
There's no doubt that the tech market is crammed with luxury, luxury laptops, but not everyone wants one of those high-end devices – or wants to spend that much money. Fortunately, mobile devices like Acer Swift 3 aim to provide high-quality computing without breaking the bank.
On the outside of this device, you'll find an aluminum casing and a QHD display that offers greater versatility than a medium 1080p panel, and internally the Acer boasts a fast Intel processor.
In the US and UK, you will get this laptop (model number SF314-512-72NG) for $ 949 and £899, but in Europe the price is slightly higher - at the time of writing, its price was 1299 euros.
However, these decent prices reduce a lot of other laptops, and should help Acer compete against some tough competitors, including the $1299/£1299/€1399 Asus Zenbook S 13 and Dell XPS 13, which cost $1099/£1179/€1499 with specifications that match Acer. However, time will tell us whether it can find its way into our best laptop scheme or the best rundown of the student laptop .
Design and keyboard
It's a good-looking and powerful notebook
Decent connection of pairs of USB and Thunderbolt ports
The keyboard is good, but you'll get more satisfying typing elsewhere
The Acer Swift 3 is a smart and accurate device. The aluminum alloy base tapers to a narrow edge, and small logos and a lack of ridiculous features make the design look mature. And although there is little flexibility in the surface of the keyboard and screen, the design quality is not a concern and this laptop is strong enough to withstand everyday life.
Acer is very practical too. Each side has a full-size USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, with one always charging port, and the device also has two Thunderbolt 4 ports – one of which is required to charge the laptop. The HDMI 2.1 jack enables high-quality display outputs.
Internally, Acer's laptop deploys Wi-Fi 6E and dual-band Bluetooth 5.2 along with a 1080p webcam. And while this webcam does not have Windows Hello support or privacy option, the power button has a fingerprint reader for biometric login.
This is a solid list of connection features. None of the competitors include a full-size card reader or USB port, both have only 720p webcams, and the Asus does not have Thunderbolt.
Going beyond this basic function, though, it becomes clear that Acer is budget-designed.
The keyboard buttons are slightly raised and soft, and the backlight is slightly uneven. It's good for work and everyday use, but Asus and Dell laptops are stronger, faster and more satisfying. Similarly, the trackpad is small and empty button presses do not inspire a great deal of confidence.
There are some disappointing touches to the design elsewhere. The card reader would have been good, and the Thunderbolt 4 ports are very close together - use one and it may obscure the other. Inside, you get two M.2 connectors but the memory is welded and therefore not available for upgrading. There is no wired internet.
And while the 14-inch Acer display is slightly larger than the 13.3-inch panels on the Asus and Dell platforms, Swift's weight of 1.25kg and the 15.9mm thickness of the chassis means that the Acer is larger than those excavators. It doesn't look luxurious either, thanks to the plastic screen edges and modest aesthetic.
screen
High resolution and amazing contrast ratio
Lack of ability for wide gradation means it's not ideal for creative tasks
Speakers frustrated
This 14-inch board has a resolution of 2560 × 1440, which is surprisingly a figure for an affordable laptop – it surpasses the Dell XPS, unless you want to pay more for a 4K upgrade.
This resolution means you have a few pixels to play with when it comes to tackling daily work tasks, and it also makes it easy to use two windows side by side.
There are some fun aspects to screen quality levels: The 1619:1 contrast ratio is a huge number for any IPS screen and it basically drops to a deep black dot of 0.21 nits. These two factors ensure that the Acer panel has depth and vividity, so movies, TV shows, and other media files always look bold and fun.
But elsewhere, things seem a bit ordinary. While the Delta E 1.68 is fine, the Acer palette only displays 91.8% of the sRGB color gamut and less than 70% of the Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 color spaces. This means that you only have the ability to daily workloads, media playback, and beginner creative tasks. The screen is not flat either.
The brightness level of 340 nits is a bit restrictive too – it's good for indoor use but that means you'll have a hard time seeing the screen properly outdoors.
Both competitors are better. Dell, by default, includes an IPS 1920 × 1200 display – but while it doesn't match Acer's resolution, its brightness level of 500 nits improves versatility and has more accurate colors and a wider range than Acer. It is also possible to upgrade to OLED, although prices start at £1619 and the OLED panel is only available at United Kingdom time of publication.
The Asus device is the clear winner: by default, this device worth 1299 USD / £1299 / 1399 euros has a 2880 × 1800 OLED display with great contrast and colors thanks to the near-perfect sRGB, Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 processing. Both competitors also use 16:10 aspect ratios, so each has more vertical space than the 16:9 Acers.
If you want to get a little bit of Acer's OLED charm, US buyers can pay $1199 for an upgraded version of this 2880 × 1800 laptop and a better Core i7-12700H processor.
Don't expect too many speakers, no matter what screen you buy – it's small and confusing, with no noticeable bass. Headphones or headset will be much better.
performance
Intel Core i7-1260P Premium
Will only handle basic games and creative workloads
Never hot or loud, no matter what the task is
Intel's Core i7-1260P is quickly becoming a popular choice for laptop processing, and no wonder - this mid-power segment offers versatility thanks to four Hyper-Thread performance cores, a top speed of 4.7GHz, and eight electronic cores at a lower cost. Difficult tasks.
Elsewhere, although the specifications are milder. There is 16GB of dual-channel memory but it is DDR4 - both of which use faster DDR5 RAM. 1TB SSD read and write speeds of 3642MB/s and 3645MB/s won't slow you down, but both Asus and Dell laptops have faster storage. And there is no suitable graphics kernel here - only the integrated Intel Iris Xe chip.
Despite these cuts, the Core i7 processor does not let down the aspect in standards . The results of the Geekbench single and multi-core 1714 and 10297 are enormous for this class of devices: Asus used the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor and it was much slower, and the Dell i5-1230U and i7-1250U are lagging behind.
CPU speed improves the versatility of Acer. Never get stuck when running multiple applications, including a browser with lots of tabs open along with media and office tools, and the Intel chip can handle some basic images and video editing too — you'll never get that kind of power from Asus and Dell laptops.
When Asus costs $1299/£1299/€1399 and the Dell Core i7 starts at $1099/£1179/€1499, that's impressive.
The Acer is also great thermal performance - even when performing the most difficult tasks, the fan noise is modest and the exterior is very impressive. It won't cause any problems here.
The only downside to performance is that the Intel Iris Xe graphics core. Its 3DMark Time Spy score of 1,998 indicates that it will only handle basic games and won't offer much help to creative workloads, and Radeon's heart along with the Ryzen 7 6800U in Asus is faster.
Better value is available if you don't need a multitasking processor and creativity. For only $796 / £649 / €999, you will get a copy of this device with a Core i5-1240P and 8GB of memory. It's a good chip for web browsing and office work, but that's it.
Battery life
Struggles to last all day
On less intensive tasks, you easily got more than ten hours of Swift
I derived mixed results from Swift's relatively modest 56Wh power package. With the screen brightness increasing and loading the daily work standard, Acer lasted 7 hours and 42 minutes.
It will be difficult for you to complete a workday unless you reduce the brightness of the screen or do not use a lot of potential processor power.
In a standard test of the film with the screen brightness dropped, Swift was much better, with a result of 14 hours and 15 minutes.
This longevity matches your Asus and beats Dell, but you won't always get a full day of use from Swift before you need to plug in. Also remember that if you buy the OLED version of the device, the battery life will decrease even further.