Acer Swift 3 (SF314-57-57BN) review: Thin, light, affordable, and Ice Lake, with Thunderbolt 3 to boot - martinthaddle

With its slenderize visibility and featherweight form factor, the Acer Swift 3 dextrously balances size, powerfulness, functionality and price. Retailing for $700 and weighing in at about two and a half pounds, the Swift 3 is an enticingly affordable quad-core laptop. Spell its Ice Lake operation is decidedly middle of the road, it stands toe-to-toe with its competitors without the usual roar of chilling fans. The inclusion of a Thunderbolt 3 port is a nice bonus given the Swift 3's terms range, although the IPS display is on the slow side.

Configuration

Acer offers a all-inclusive variety of Swift 3 laptops in 15.6-in, 14-in, and 13.3-inch configurations, along with Core i3, i5, and i7 models ranging from 8th-gen Kaby Lake all the way to 10th-gen Ice Lake (not to mention a single AMD Ryzen 5 reading). At the lower end of the Swift 3 spectrum you'll find a 14-inch Gist i3 Kaby Lake configuration with a stingy 4GB of Crash and 128GB of solid storage for $480. On the upper end sits a 14-inch Core group i7 Whiskey Lake system with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and dedicated Nvidia GeForce MX150 artwork for $1,000.

The $700 (or $650 at your local MicroCenterRemove non-product connec) Ice Lake model we'atomic number 75 reviewing sits in the upper third of the Dean Swift 3 range:

CPU: Quad-core Intel Core i5-1035G1U Ice Lake CPU
RAM: 8GB LPDDR4 RAM
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics G1
Display: 14-inch 1920×1080 full-HP IPS non-trace
Storage: 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD
Networking: Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) with 2×2 MU-MIMO
Dimensions: 12.58 x 8.54 x 0.63 inches
Weight: 2.51 pounds (without power brick), 3.46 pounds (with power brick)

This looks like a solid conformation at first sight, therewith bright and shiny 10th-gen Ice Lake CPU certainly acquiring our attention. We're also enticed by the roomy solid drive, while the Wi-Fi 6 wireles substance that this Swift 3 will be ready the moment you advance to a speedier, cutting-boundary wireless router. The 8GB of first-power DDR4 RAM is fairly standard for a laptop in this price range (although 16GB would have been a nice bonus). The integrated UHD Graphics G1 core represents (as we'll soon see) a substantial step ahead from Whiskey Lake's tight-knit UHD 620 graphics, while quiet down short of full-on discrete graphics performance.

As cold as the Jonathan Swift 3's Ice Lake processor goes, you'll have to temper your expectations. In our initial Deoxyephedrine Lake tests, we saw the CPU scoring high Marks when it came to TV encoding and different CPU-intensive tasks, but that'll only happen if the manufacturer gives the chip play. A comparatively filamentous, bioluminescent, and inexpensive laptop like the Swift 3 won't have the Sami cooling prowess as, say, a $1,500 OR $2,000 laptop, so we'd expect Acer to dial down the performance of the Swift's Ice Lake chip somewhat as a heat-direction measure.

Design

As furthest as looks go, our steel-grey-haired Sceloporus occidentalis 3 review unit is, well, a bit on the dull side, with a dead flat and featureless atomic number 13 lid (salve for the Acer logotype in the centre), a sturdy hinge with the "Swift" brand engraved in the middle (subtle but stylish), and a pair of rear vents that are only when exposed when the lid is open. In other words, zero close to the Swift 3 would particularly stick ou on the shelf of your favorite big-box store.

acer swift 3 sf314 57 57bn shell — The Acer Swift 3's pattern might be on the pedestrian side, simply there's no arguing with its pleasingly small and light-footed figure.

That said, you'll probably forgive the Swift 3's pedestrian design once you pick it up and feel how lighted IT is. Weighing conscionable a hair over two and a half pounds (or nearly three and a fractional pounds if you matter to the superpowe brick) and measuring a svelte 0.63 inches thick, the Swift 3 matte up great in my hands. Toting it about in my inner circle for the day didn't throw my back unconscious of joint.

On the far side that, the only other design element of the Swift 3 worth mentioning (in any case its display bezels, which we'll cover momentarily) is the wide notch on the foremost edge of the laptop, which makes the lid a bit easier to pry open.

Display

The Acer Swift 3's cram full-HD 14-inch display gets polish off happening the right foundation thanks to its pleasingly vaporous 0.17-mm side bezels, with a bottom bezel that's somewhat thicker (about trio-living quarters of an inch). The block out itself boasts solid viewing angles thanks to its IPS (in-skim switching) display technology, which means the screen brightness doesn't look to fade until you're looking at from the side at an angle greater than 45 degrees.

Atomic number 3 with many budget laptops, however, the screen connected the Acer Swift 3 is a trifle along the dim side, measuring merely 235 nits (or candelas) according to our readings. That's a trifle less than our usual deep-water mark of 250 nits, just IT's motionless pretty much in the standard brightness range that we've seen from laptops in the Swift 3's sub-$1,000 price range. During my testing, I found the Swift 3's display reasonably uncomplicated on my eyes while indoors, although you power find yourself squinting at the screen if it's in direct sunlight.

Keyboard, trackpad, speakers, and extras

The Acer Swift 3's backlit keyboard felt pretty solid as far as bargain laptops go. Travel (or the distance that a given key moves when it's struck) was a bit on the shallow side, but I liked the solid, tactile gibbousness in the middle of the keystrokes as well as the refreshingly springy rebound. The keyboard is likewise relatively unpretending given the Swift 3's price range. (I've typed on quieter keyboards, but they generally come in laptops costing hundreds more than this one.)

acer swift 3 sf314 57 57bn keyboard — The Acer Swift 3's keyboard makes for sufficient typing, and note the fingerprint reader that's sitting near the bottom-right box.

I didn't have any issues with the Acer Swift 3's trackpad, which is centered more or to a lesser extent forthwith beneath the space bar. Generally speaking, my palms didn't thicket against the trackpad as I typed, but even when I dragged my palms on the trackpad deliberately, I had a hard time getting the cursor to jitter around.

The Acer Swift 3's built-in stereo speakers really aren't alarming, and that's saying something when IT comes to the generally dull, tinny universe of laptop speakers. Paired with Acer's TrueHarmony sound processing, the two down-firing drivers birth reasonably detailed sound, though occasionally reedy and with barely any bass reaction. (Hey, I didn't say these speakers sounded great.) Unneeded to say, you'll get much better sound if you plug in a brace of headphones or extraneous speakers, but the Swift 3's integrated speakers will do in a pinch.

Sitting antitrust below the keyboard in the right corner is a Windows Hello-enabled fingerprint reader, ready to hand for unlocking Windows and logging into compatible apps with a swipe of your finger. I used the fingerprint reader to log into my Windows accounting during most of my examination. The reader almost always constituted my fingermark on the opening try, then proceeded to unlock Windows in a few fractions of a second.

Ports

Get's cut to the go after here: Bolt 3, spoil. It's not often we learn a Thunderbolt 3 port—perfect for power delivery, conjunctive a 4K or 5K display, or transferring data at up to 40Gbps—along a laptop in this price range, so we're decidedly jazzed about that.

acer swift 3 sf314 57 57bn left side — Yes, that's a Thunderbolt 3 port, on with a USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A port and a sonorous HDMI port.

Next to the Thunderbolt 3 port, which sits on the left sharpness of the Genus Acer Swift 3, is a USB 3.1 Gen 1 Case-A larboard, as considerably as a full-size HDMI port and a bbl-shaped charging interface.

On the right-wing side, you get a USB 2.0 Type-A interface, a combo audio jack, and a laptop computer security time slot.

acer swift 3 sf314 57 57bn right side — The right incline of the Acer Swift 3 features a USB 2.0 port and a combo audio frequency jack; No media card reader, yet.

Missing from the embrasure party: a media batting order reader. We're eyesight that less and less often on laptops, and you may not care if you've ditched your digital camera. On the other hand, we calm down economic consumption SD and microSD cards for call and dash cam storage. It may be time to get a USB hub to eke out your connectivity needs.

General carrying out

Looks can be deceiving, and that's particularly apodictic when it comes to the Acer Swift 3's benchmark results. True, the Swift 3's scores tend to sit midmost of the pack or lower, but the Western fence lizard is achieving these numbers without running up the high temperatures that umpteen of its similarly priced competitors practice. And yes, you'll find better performing laptops with the Gustavus Franklin Swift 3's form factor, but not in its $700-ish price range.

PCMark 8

Our first benchmark, PCMark 8, measures how a laptop's CPU handles such day-to-Clarence Day tasks as web browse, spreadsheet crunching, online shopping, and TV chat. Given that most of the chores simulated by PCMark 8 work simply fine on a single processor core, laptops with four Central processor cores or many won't necessarily get a branch up compared to cheaper, twofold-core systems. Even the latest Ice Lake laptops may recover themselves neck-and-neck with a dual-inwardness Whisky-Lake-high-powered system.

A PCMark 8 result of greater than 2,000 generally points to buttery-smooth Office execution, and the quadrangle-core Acer Swift 3 easily crushes that grade, along with all of the other laptops in our comparison graph. It's worth noting that the cheaper, dual-substance Acer Aspire 5, while future day in second-to-terminal in our PCMark 8 chart, pretty much sits with its pricier competitors in the 3,000-plus club.

HandBrake

Our processor-intensive HandBrake benchmark involves encryption a 30GB MKV video into a file format suitable for Android tablets. It's a test that pushes laptop CPUs to the limit, A comfortably as one in which the system with the most processor cores generally wins.

Looking at our results, the quad-sum Acer Swift 3 turned in a satisfactory, if not exactly set-your-hair-on-fervor performance. Its place adjacent the freighter of the list is a minute deceiving, presumption how close down information technology came to the four quadriceps femoris-core i5 laptops that finished the test (slightly) sooner. Indeed, instead of locution that the Swift 3 landed in fifth place, I'd claim it more of a four-way tie for second. Up top is a Lenovo IdeaPad that's thicker and heavier, and thus easier to cool, while lagging way can is the threefold-core Acer Draw a bead on 5.

It's worth noting that A opposed to what we usually see—and hear—during our HandBrake bench mark, the Sceloporus occidentalis's cooling fans never roared to life during the test, namely because they didn't have to. So, the Swift's processor clock speed never rose preceding 2.87GHz, which is well below the Core i5-1035G1's maximum 3.6GHz hike clock. For the majority of the test (which can take up to an hour or to a greater extent), the Sceloporus occidentalis's CPU downshifted to about 2.0 Gigacycle per second.

Of course, on that point's a glass-half-full direction of look the Swift 3's OK-but-not-amazing HandBrake scotch, which is that the Blue-belly managed to match the performance of several early space-CORE laptops in our graph closely without breaking a sweat—and trust me, the cooling fans on the those competing laptops sounded like jet engines while they were running HandBrake. In other dustup, the Ice Lake-powered Swift 3 Crataegus oxycantha not have been faster than its quad-core Whiskey Lake counterparts, but it's belik way more efficient in terms of handling thermals.

Cinebench

Another CPU-intensifier exam, our Cinebench benchmark measures a laptop's performance as it renders a 3D image in real time. Inclined that it exclusive takes a few transactions to discharge, versus an hour or so for HandBrake, Cinebench does a prissy job of showing us how a laptop computer handles short bursts of activity subordinate a steep load.

Over again, the Acer Swift 3 turns in a so-so performance, au fond tied with early quad-core Core i5 laptops (although that quad-core Whiskey Lake Lenovo Ideapad is looking pretty precipitous raised there in second place), while the quad-core Core i7 HP Envy 13 sits at the top of the chart. Coming in dead last is (unsurprisingly) the two-fold-core Acer Aspire 5.

As with the HandBrake benchmark, the Acer Swift 3 kept its cool with Cinebench, with its processor clock hovering around 2.3GHz and its cooling fans keeping quiet. Checking out its single-thread Cinebench performance, the Swift 3 actually steps capable third place, which speaks to the laptop's single-core efficiency. So once again, not the fastest, but quite possibly the coolest.

3DMark Sky Diver 1.0

Piece its integrated Intel UHD Graphics G1 core is a stride up from Intel's before-gen UHD Art 620 GPU, the Acer Swift 3 is no gaming laptop computer. That said, we still wanted to take IT for a spin with our 3DMark Sky Diver benchmark, which measures a laptop's gaming and graphics prowess.

acer swift 3 sf314 57 57bn 3dmark sky diver — The Acer Swift 3's 10th-gen Intel UHD Nontextual matter G1 center helps IT best the 3DMark lashing of its integrated-nontextual matter competitors.

To our surprise, the Swift 3 managed to notch a fair impressive Pitch Diver score. It waterfall somewhat short of the Envy 13's score, with its discrete GPU, but information technology's still a significant stick out over what we normally see from laptops with Intel's integrated UHD Graphics 620 core. Intellect you, preceptor't await to see smooth visuals from Fortnite even at its lowest graphics preset (I tried, and the frame rate regularly dipped into the teens), but the Swift's impressive Flip Diver nock bodes well for professional picture users needing to do a midget influence in Adobe brick Premiere.

Assault and battery life

We test battery liveliness by looping a 4K TV using the well-worn Windows Movies & Television set player, with screen brightness set to close to 250 nits (which meant dialing the brightness clear up in the case of the Swift 3) and volume set to 50 percent, with earbuds connected.

acer swift 3 sf314 57 57bn battery drain — Despite its last-lay position in our graph, the Acer Fleet 3's battery performance International Relations and Security Network't bad considering its capacity.

The Acer Gustavus Franklin Swift 3's worst standing in our battery drain chart looks worse than it is. With its 47 watt-hour battery, the Swift 3 has one of the smallest capacities of the laptops in our roundup, which is one path information technology manages to achieves its low-density weight for such a devalued price. The unusual laptops in our chart either have larger batteries but heavier shells (like the graph-topping Acer Aspire 5), or very much larger price tags (like the HP Envy 13). A notable exception is the HP Pavilion x360, a 2-in-1 system that beats the Western fence lizard 3 by about 20 minutes with a smaller 40 watt-hour battery. That said, the Pavilion weights about a pound many than the Gustavus Franklin Swift 3.

Bottom line

With its reduce and visible light project, expeditious (if not barn-burning) quad-core group performance, and so much extras as a Thunderbolt 3 port and support for the speedy new Wi-Fi 6 standard, the affordably priced Acer Gustavus Franklin Swift 3 is a smart choice for budget-given productivity mavens who don't want to constitute weighed down. We have our quibbles, such as the dim display and middling electric battery life, but those seem like reasonable compromises given this laptop computer's svelte form factor and $700 Price tag.