After we final noticed the Acer Swift 3 in July 2020, it was an ultraportable laptop computer packing a 13.5-inch show with a boxy 3:2 facet ratio that made us declare it was hip to be sq.. The 2021 version of the Swift 3 (begins at $749.99; $999.99 as examined) reverses course with a 14-inch display screen that options the extra widespread and rectangular 16:9 ratio, and it has us pining for final yr’s taller view and lowered scrolling. When you do not thoughts the broader show (or expressly need it since you watch a number of motion pictures in your laptop computer), there’s quite a bit to love concerning the new Swift 3, from its all-metal chassis and Thunderbolt 4 assist to its luxuriously lengthy battery life and cheap worth. Nonetheless, it does not bump the Dell XPS 13 and its stellar 16:10 show from our ultraportable Editors’ Selection honors record.
Modern, Sturdy, and Silver
The 14-inch Swift 3 begins at $699.99 with an Intel Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB solid-state drive. Our $999.99 take a look at system bumps up the processor to a Core i7 and doubles the reminiscence. Whereas getting a 512GB SSD within the base mannequin is appreciated (256GB is beginning to really feel cramped lately), it makes the $300 improve much less interesting as a result of it does not internet you any extra storage. All fashions function a non-touch show with full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) decision and the 16:9 facet ratio.
The Swift 3 is a examine in silver. The all-aluminum chassis incorporates a silver lid, a silver keyboard deck with silver keys, and a silver backside panel. The one elements of the laptop computer that are not silver are the matte black plastic bezels framing the show. It provides as much as an understated, if one-note, aesthetic that appears equally at house in a boardroom or a espresso store.
The steel chassis feels stable. The lid is inflexible, lending good safety for the show, and the keyboard deck feels agency. There’s little flex to the chassis, and the show hinge is freed from the dreaded display screen wobble. This Swift 3 measures 0.63 by 12.7 by 8.4 inches and weighs 2.71 kilos, wider and shallower than the Swift 3 mannequin we examined final yr due to the distinction in display screen facet ratio. This yr’s mannequin can be barely heavier than final yr’s 2.62-pound machine, however it’s nonetheless very transportable (and lighter than the two.8-pound Dell XPS 13).
The keyboard is comfy, with shallow journey that makes the keys really feel fast and responsive however is not as unyielding as an older MacBook “butterfly” keyboard. The largest downside is the diminutive cursor arrow keys: The up and down arrows share the area of a single key, and the left and proper arrow keys are half-height as a result of Acer squeezed in Web page Up and Web page Down keys above them. It’s going to take some getting used to earlier than you cease hitting the improper keys.
The keyboard is backlit, however there’s just one brightness degree. At this worth, it is cheap to count on two- or three-level backlighting that allows you to modify for ambient gentle. The silver keys with grey lettering do not create the most effective distinction, making it troublesome to see which key’s which beneath sure lighting situations.
A fingerprint reader sits beneath the cursor arrows. With out an IR webcam for face recognition, the fingerprint reader is your solely possibility for logging in with Home windows Howdy as an alternative of typing passwords.
In distinction to the keys, the touchpad presents a hair an excessive amount of journey, making clicks really feel a step sluggish. That is a minor gripe, nevertheless, and on the entire the touchpad is greater than acceptable, with clean gliding and correct recording of mousing gestures.
A Broad, However Nonetheless Cramped, Show
As talked about, the most important departure from final yr’s Swift 3 is the return to a 16:9 show. On a 14-inch display screen, I felt the pinch of this extensive facet ratio. It is a pure match for watching movies, however the restricted quantity of vertical area leads to extra scrolling via net pages and paperwork. A 16:9 display screen is a greater match for 15.6- and 17.3-inch laptops which not solely provide extra show actual property however are extra usually used for leisure functions. With a 14-inch or smaller panel, a 16:10 or 3:2 facet ratio lends extra versatility and makes the show appear bigger than it’s.
The facet ratio is just one of three modifications to the show that makes us like this yr’s Swift 3 much less. For an additional, the decision has dropped from 2,256 by 1,504 pixels to the acquainted 1,920 by 1,080 pixels. To be sincere, full HD is ample on a 14-inch display screen, nevertheless, as textual content and pictures look sharp. Colours look correct, as effectively; Acer claims the display screen covers 100% of the sRGB shade gamut. (Extra on the quantitative display screen testing close to the tip of this evaluate.)
Whereas the decrease decision is tolerable at this dimension, our third grievance is that the display screen’s rated brightness has fallen from 400 to 300 nits with this yr’s mannequin. In the case of show brightness, you will discover 250-nit panels on funds laptops and may have the ability to count on 350 to 400 nits on a $1,000 pocket book. I had the Swift 3’s display screen set to most brightness for the entire time I used the system, largely in a reasonably lit room. The show appeared dim in my sunny breakfast nook, and I would not advocate utilizing it open air for any size of time.
The 720p webcam above the display screen captured moderately sharp video, however its movies appeared grainy until lighting situations have been superb. No matter lighting, the digital camera’s colours appeared oversaturated with pores and skin tones tending towards crimson.
The audio system hearth downward—by no means the most effective place, as a result of their output is directed away out of your ears—however produce surprisingly wealthy sound for a laptop computer. There is a modest bass response to present music playback a little bit of a punch, and the audio system attain a reasonably loud degree at most quantity with out shedding a lot readability.
You will not want to hold any dongles with the Swift 3. The laptop computer options each Sort-A and Sort-C USB ports; there’s one USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 assist on the left edge, together with a USB 3.2 Sort-A port and an HDMI video output.
One other USB-A 3.2 port and a mix headphone/microphone jack be a part of a safety lock slot on the correct aspect.
Testing the Acer Swift 3: ‘Tiger Lake’ Sedate
Our Swift 3 take a look at system incorporates a quad-core Intel Core i7-1165G7 “Tiger Lake” CPU that runs at 2.8GHz and options Iris Xe built-in graphics, together with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive. For our benchmark charts, I in contrast the system to different ultraportables together with Acer’s personal Swift 3X, which options the identical eleventh Technology CPU however makes use of Intel’s not often seen Iris Xe Max discrete graphics. The Microsoft Surface Pro 8 incorporates a barely quicker Core i7, whereas the HP Pavilion Aero flaunts AMD’s eight-core Ryzen 7 5800U. The Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 2 depends on an eleventh Gen Core i5 chip. All techniques function 16GB of reminiscence and (apart from the Swift 3X) built-in graphics.
Productiveness Exams
The principle benchmark of UL’s PCMark 10 simulates a wide range of real-world productiveness and content-creation workflows to measure general efficiency for office-centric duties equivalent to phrase processing, spreadsheeting, net looking, and videoconferencing. We additionally run PCMark 10’s Full System Drive take a look at to evaluate the load time and throughput of a laptop computer’s storage. (See extra about how we test laptops.)
Three benchmarks deal with the CPU, utilizing all obtainable cores and threads, to charge a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 makes use of that firm’s Cinema 4D engine to render a fancy scene, whereas Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Professional simulates widespread apps starting from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine studying. Lastly, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to transform a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p decision (decrease instances are higher).
Our final productiveness take a look at is Puget Programs’ PugetBench for Photoshop, which makes use of the Artistic Cloud model 22 of Adobe’s well-known picture editor to charge a PC’s efficiency for content material creation and multimedia functions. It is an automatic extension that executes a wide range of common and GPU-accelerated Photoshop duties starting from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving a picture to making use of masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The Swift 3 and the opposite quad-core Intel laptops have been left wanting up on the eight-core, AMD-powered Pavilion Aero in most of our CPU-focused checks. The Swift 3 did effectively among the many Intel techniques, apart from trailing in PCMark 10’s storage take a look at; in actual fact, it eked out wins within the Geekbench and Photoshop benchmarks.
Graphics Exams
We take a look at Home windows PCs’ graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Night time Raid (extra modest, appropriate for laptops with built-in graphics) and Time Spy (extra demanding, appropriate for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
We additionally run two checks from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses each low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like picture rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Automotive Chase checks, rendered offscreen to accommodate completely different show resolutions, train graphics and compute shaders utilizing the OpenGL programming interface and {hardware} tessellation respectively. The extra frames per second (fps), the higher.
None of those ultraportables set our graphics checks on hearth, together with the Swift 3X with its Iris Xe Max graphics. That Intel GPU shines in some situations equivalent to AI-assisted photograph modifying, however presents little or no benefit for gaming and 3D graphics. The Swift 3 did moderately effectively, however neither it nor every other system right here has the pixel-pushing muscle to play greater than informal or browser-based video games. See our examination of laptop integrated graphics efficiency.
Battery and Show Exams
We take a look at laptops’ battery life by taking part in a regionally saved 720p video file (the open-source Blender film Tears of MetalTears of Steel) with show brightness at 50% and audio quantity at 100%. We be sure the battery is absolutely charged earlier than the take a look at, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
We additionally use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Home windows software program to measure a laptop computer display screen’s shade saturation—what proportion of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 shade gamuts or palettes the show can present—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per sq. meter).
The Swift 3 excelled in our battery rundown, lasting practically 17 hours. That is a powerful end result even amongst environment friendly ultraportables. Its display screen brightness rating of 330 nits surpassed its 300-nit ranking, however as I stated I do not think about the Swift 3’s display screen to be greater than common at finest. It was additionally a tick away from full protection of sRGB together with creditable protection of the DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB area, giving artistic professionals one thing to work with (in the event that they’re content material with a 1080p slightly than 4K show).
Verdict: Wider Is not At all times Higher
The Acer Swift 3 has a number of good factors—it is an ultraportable that gives a wealth of options, a pinch of fashion, and aggressive efficiency (particularly its nice battery life) for the cheap worth of $999.99. Like its rivals, it is no gaming laptop computer, however it checks the packing containers you’d need for a touring productiveness companion.
What prevents a stronger advice is Acer’s transfer from final yr’s squarer 3:2 facet ratio display screen to the marginally retro 16:9 panel of this yr’s version. For a 14-inch laptop computer that is meant to take you thru your work or faculty day, a 16:10 or ideally 3:2 show offers a roomier workspace than a 16:9 display screen that is good for watching motion pictures however much less helpful for navigating net pages, e-mail inboxes, and Microsoft Workplace docs.