Acer Swift 3 Review Smaller in Size but Better with Discreet Graphics
Powerful graphics are usually not paired with affordable price tags. For creative professionals or students, it can be a budget problem. Acer 2019 upgrades the 14-inch Swift 3 laptop, which includes an Nvidia GeForce MX150 which is good enough for lighting gaming and speeding innovative games, as a prime example. It is best laptop for the premium price of $1,000.
Acer sent us the high-end Acer Swift 3 costing $1,000. The i7-855U CPU Whiskey Lake Core, 8 GB of ram, a 256 GB Hard drive and 14 “(1,920x 1,080) Full HD IPS are well fitted. Following are the features and results of our tests that we applied on this brand new Acer Swift 3 laptop for our readers.
Silver Chassis
The Acer Swift 3 has an all-aluminum chrome chambered edge with silver frame with a clear Acer chrome emblem and the black trim on the display. In other words, it looks like an Acer Swift 5 but smaller than it.
In terms of chassis height, there is another region where the Swift 3 loses to the ZenBook 14. Asus has taken full advantage of the low bezels and the 92% screen-to-body ratio. This means that the Swift 3 is smaller than the last one. On the other hand, the bezels allow the ZenBook 14 to be only 12.56 inches in width with a depth of 7.83 inch, compared to the 12.72 inch Swift 3 with 8.98 inch.
Features
The Swift 3 is much smaller than the Zenbook 14, 0.59 inch compared to 0.63 inch. But, at 2.98 pounds, it’s heavier than 2.62 pounds. With a less frequent 3:2 aspect ratio (14-inch) display of 0.57 and 2.98 pounds, the size of Swifts 3 is very similar to the Huawei MateBook X Pro. It makes the Acer 3 very compact and small for a laptop of 14 inches.
Connectivity is sufficient for a thin laptop, fitted with a USB-C 3.1 GM2 port, two USB-A 3.0 port and a full HDMI port to support display and power. There is no bummer SD card reader, but there’s a safety-conscious Kensington lock slot. With an Intel hybrid chip that offers gigabit Wi-Fi 802.11ac and the newest Bluetooth 5.0, Wireless networking has been improved.
Display
The screen conforms right to other traditional laptop standard boards. It means that most people will enjoy a good show but it likely will not fulfill the requirements of artistic kinds.
Therefore, the color scope is an average of 73% AdobeRGB. All except the budget is included in this package, and you will be interested in more luxury options in order to meet the 90% mark offering the best picture and video editing colors. The X1 Carbon ThinkPad is a little better, while it is a bit worse for ZenBook 14 and Yoga C920. The color accuracy was very good at 1.34 (less than 1.0 is excellent) in our comparison group ahead of all laptops.
Gamma is actually a little off with 2.1 (2.2 is perfect), which means videos from Netflix are a bit higher. Nonetheless, the screen was quite good to use overall.
Audio
One way or another the sound didn’t impress us. The double bottom of the chassis had a lot of capacity without any noticeable distortion, but the performance was no better than the average laptop experience.
Keyboard
It must be a struggle to get the right keyboard look. Long type-outs may be boring or too loose or mushy and strong. The keyboard of the Swift 3 with black chiclet keys is rather common. It has a decent click, which makes the process precise, but is just the slightest bit overdraft. The ZenBook 14 and the Dell XPS 13 feature snappy and slightly more comfortable keyboards.
This takes up the space on the deck of the keypad, ensures easy swiping and offers the right combination of smooth response with the plastic texture.
Read More: Kuo Says New MacBook With Scissor Keyboard to Launch in Mid 2020, Unclear if 16-Inch Model Delayed
Battery
The Swift 3 is fitted with 50 watt batteries, which is a little heavy for a not the smallest 14-inch laptop. The CPU of the 8th-generation Whiskey Lake is powerful and the full HD resolution does not use much of the battery by distributing too many pixels.
The Acer has performed well in our benchmarking trials, but no records were broken. The Swift 3, for example, managed just over three hours in our most challenging Basemark website, slightly longer than four hours in contrast to the ZenBook 14 and six hours in the ThinkPad X1 Carbon.
The Swift 3 is supposed to last a full day by the end of the day. Given the relatively low battery capacity, this is particularly strong, and so has made some real magic in longevity. Remember that using the discrete GPU would suck up much more energy when playing games and running innovative applications.
Better Alternative?
The Asus ZenBook 14 is the most direct comparison as we look solely at 14-inch laptops. If you want to purchase this version in the United States, you will need to buy MX150 from Costco (now) at $1,30 GB of RAM and SSD at 512GB. The ZenBook 14 also costs 1,000 $ for a Core i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB of SSD if you can go with integrated graphics.
If you would like a little drop down in the screen size, you can also find Asus ZenBook 13. You’ll lose discreet GPU and you’re going to downgrade the processor performance but are paying just $850 for a Core i5-8265U, RAM 8 GB and SSD 256 GB. And the screen of ZenBook 13 is far better and overall has a very good panel.
The Huawei MateBook X Pro is a good option if you’re willing to jump in price. It provides a beautiful 3:2 display that, with its thin bezels, and delivers solid performance. Nevertheless, the price of similarly equipped devices is significantly higher at over $2,000.
Final Verdict
The Acer Swift 3 is intimidating at first sight. It doesn’t look great, however, its standard of production isn’t bad, but its cost doesn’t seem dreadful. Yet considering the discreet GPU, its strong performance and its good battery life–the Swift 3 is a persuasive option.
Read Next: Hands-on Review: AcerMate X5 Thin and Light Laptop
