The Ultimate review To Acer Swift X: Best ultraportable laptop?
The Acer Swift X is a laptop that is very small and powerful. It has an Nvidia graphics card that can do better than other computers for games like Minecraft.
The CPU also makes the computer fast to use for things like making videos or doing homework. The Swift X has a powerful computer so it is noisy. It also gets hot sometimes.
But you will have to put up with these things if you want the power. You have to sacrifice some other things for this laptop, but it is worth it if you need the graphics capability.
Acer Swift X specifications
Acer currently has one and only one laptop that is 14 inches. It has an AMD processor and RTX graphics card. It costs $1,099.99, but you can buy it on Amazon for $1,069.99. We reviewed this laptop (model SFX14-41G-R1S6) and found the following:
- Brand: Acer
- Series: SFX14-41G-R1S6
- Operating System: Windows 10 Home
- Item Weight: 3.06 pounds
- Product Dimensions: 12.71 x 8.35 x 0.7 inches
- Color: Gold
- Processor Brand: AMD
- Processor Count: 8
- Computer Memory Type: DDR4 SDRAM
- Flash Memory Size: 512
- Hard Drive Interface: Solid State
- Battery: 1 Lithium Polymer battery
- Standing screen display size: 14 Inches
- Max Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1080 Pixels
- Processor: 1.9 GHz amd_ryzen_7
- RAM: 16 GB LPDDR4
- Hard Drive: 512 GB SSD
- Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050Ti
- Graphics Card Size: 4 GB
- Wireless Type: 802.11ax
- USB 3.0 Ports: 3
- Battery Life (in hours): 12 Hours
Pros
- Stellar ultraportable performance.
- A sneaky gaming laptop with RTX 3050 Ti graphics.
- Impressive battery life considering high-end parts.
Cons
- The display feels cramped for creative work.
- Fan gets loud during heavy workloads.
- Poorly placed Pg-Up and -Down buttons.
Acer Swift X performance
In lab tests, the Swift X was really good. The Swift X beat other laptops because it has a good battery life and is fast. The closest laptop to the Swift X is the HP Envy 14. It has an 11th-gen Core i5 CPU and GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q graphics.
We compared a laptop to another laptop. Both laptops have an 11th-generation Core i7 CPU and Intel Iris graphics. They are the Swift X and Acer’s Swift 3X. The other laptops are the Lenovo ThinkBook 14s Yoga and Dell XPS 13 9310, which also have an 11th-generation Core i7 CPU with integrated Intel Iris graphics.
First, we measured how the computers did on everyday tasks. The Swift X was the best computer by far.
Next, we looked at a test for the computer’s CPU. There was a test that used all of the chips’ cores and threads to make it harder on the computer. The Swift X did well because it has more processing power than other computers with twice as many physical cores and threads.
The Swift X has a Cinebench score that is twice as high as the Swift 3x and also higher than the other two.
The Swift X laptop did well on the single-thread test. It did not do as well on the multi-threaded test, but it still did better than most other laptops.
We use the HandBrake utility to convert a 30GB movie from one format to another. That is an intensive task. The Swift X is the best because it finished the test in less time than any other computer we tried.
The Swift X and its RTX 3050 Ti graphics more than doubled the output of the laptops with integrated Intel graphics on our 3DMark benchmark. The HP Envy 14 and its GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q performed admirably but its score was still a considerable distance behind that of the Swift X. The Swift X can handle content-creation chores, like drawing pictures or videos.
The Swift X has graphics from Nvidia’s latest lineup. We ran a few games on it. On Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the Swift X averaged 48 frames per second at the highest preset. On Metro Exodus, it averaged 16 fps at its Extreme preset but improved to 52 fps at its Normal preset.
You want good quality on this laptop. If you do, you can play games on it at 1080p. It is small and has a lot of power so it’s perfect for people who take their laptops to school or work and then go back home or to the dorms to play games. They need to finish their work first though!
We tested the battery life of a laptop by playing a video with a brightness of 250 nits and the volume at 50%. The laptop lasted for more than 12 hours.
Gold-and-silver design
The Swift X has a silver design. It is available in three colors: Steam Blue, Prodigy Pink, and Safari Gold. We received the gold model of this laptop. The only parts that are gold are the lid, a narrow strip above the keyboard, and the display hinges. The rest of the laptop is silver-colored plastic with black bezels around it on each side of the screen.
This laptop is not big. It is the same size as another high-powered 14-inch laptop, the HP Envy 14. Both are only 0.7 inches thick and the Swift X at 3.1 pounds is a few ounces lighter than the 3.3 pounds Envy 14. The power brick for this laptop is also light, so it’s easy to carry with you and not too heavy at 4 pounds total weight.
The hinges on the Swift X go down below the bottom panel. This is good because it makes it more comfortable and gives better airflow. The Swift X has a lot of high-end components, so it needs all of the help it can get to keep its thermals in check.
This laptop is quiet when you are doing basic things. But it gets loud when you are using it for games or other graphics jobs. It starts to make the keys too hot to touch, but the cooling fan makes it cooler again.
The keyboard has two things that bother me. One is that the keys are silver instead of black, and the other is that there’s no contract when you’re in a room with low light.
The two keys on the side for going up and down pages are in a hard-to-reach spot. I sometimes hit them by accident. It would be better if they were somewhere else or if there was some other way to do this. Below the arrow keys is a fingerprint reader for logging in easily and securely. The Swift X does not have an IR camera, so the fingerprint reader is the only biometric option on it.
The touchpad was easy to use. It slid smoothly and I liked how it had a firm click. I did not care about the stickers on the left side of the touchpad because they were placed awkwardly. Acer should have put them in a better place so that they don’t affect how nice-looking this computer is.
Squeezed by 16:9 panel
The 14-inch display has a 1920×1080 resolution. It also supports sRGB. The image looked bright with vibrant colors and good contrast. The biggest issue I have is that the screen is too small for serious work. It has a 16:9 aspect ratio, but this limits the amount of vertical space it has compared to other displays with 16:10 ratios.
The HP Envy 14 is a good computer for creative work. It has a bigger display that fits with what most people use. The 13-inch MacBook Pro feels small because it has a 16:10 screen.
The webcam on top is not very good. It has a noisy image and bad skin colors. The webcam does not have a physical shutter, so it might be hard to keep private things private.
The speakers did not sound good. They did not play loudly even when they were in the loudest setting. They also made a tinny sound and fired down, which made them worse.
The Swift X has two USB ports. One is for Type-A, and one is for Type-C. I would like a third USB port that is also a Type-C. The one on this computer supports DisplayPort and does power delivery too.
Creatives with media cards will be sad because the laptop doesn’t have a slot. It does have WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 though, which is new. And it has an HDMI connection too.
Do-it-all laptop for students
Acer Swift X is a laptop for people who like to create stuff. The Acer Swift X has an octa-core processor and strong multimedia performance.
The RTX 3050 Ti graphics can help you with 3D graphics and gaming. It is good for people who want to play games. The laptop is smaller than usual, but it still has a lot of power. You can also take this laptop anywhere without worrying about battery life.
The display on the Swift X is small. It can make it hard to work with pictures, videos, and other media. You should get a laptop with a bigger screen so you can see things better.
The 14-inch, 16:9 display is not a problem for gamers to pick the Swift X. It is good for students and office workers to use as a laptop: light enough to carry around each day and powerful enough to play games each night.
The Acer Swift X is a great laptop for people who want to spend as little money as possible on an ultraportable computer. It has excellent battery life and comes with Windows 10 Home pre-installed, giving you access to all of the features that come standard in Microsoft’s operating system.
This device offers solid performance without being too expensive or heavy, making it a good choice for students and other users who will primarily be using their laptops at home rather than traveling.
If you’re looking for something even lighter weight but still powerful enough to drive your games smoothly, then we recommend checking out our review of the Dell XPS 17!
Acer Swift X
The Acer Swift X is a laptop that is very small and powerful. It has an Nvidia graphics card that can do better than other computers for games...
Product Brand: Acer
Product Currency: USD
Product Price: 1004.08
Product In-Stock: InStock
4.4
