Research Center:
Acer Swift 3 SF314-52-557Y
Affordable laptops no longer suck. Once derided for thick design, terrible displays, and batteries that lasted only a couple hours, the modern budget laptop has transformed into a sleek, beautiful device. It’s hard to go wrong with an Apple MacBook Pro 13, Dell XPS 13, Microsoft Surface Laptop, and many others. But, as our Acer Swift 3 review will prove, it’s not just expensive flagships that have improved.
We first saw the Swift 3 almost a year ago at IFA, Europe’s biggest electronic show. It took its time getting to widespread North American release, but it’s now easy to find – and easy to afford. Entry level models start as low as $480. Our review unit, with a Core i5-7200U processor, , 8GB of RAM, and 256GB solid state drive, has an MSRP of $650. Shop around, and you can probably snag it for $600.
That looks like a good deal at a glance, but does it hold up to closer scrutiny? Let’s find out.
Generic, but suave
The Acer Swift 3 looks like a $1,500 laptop built in 2013. That may sound like an insult but, at this price, it’s more of a compliment. At .7 inches thick, and 3.3 pounds, this Acer looks and feels substantially heavier than the Dell XPS 13, but it’s not far off a MacBook Pro 13. Brushed aluminum covers the display lid, and the lower half of the laptop is also metal, which gives the system a robust, premium feel.
It’s also generic, and our review unit’s inoffensive silver color does nothing spice up the Swift 3’s appeal. Gold is also available, but it’s difficult to find anywhere besides Acer’s own website. If not for the Acer logo, the Swift 3 could be mistaken for a laptop from Lenovo or Asus. The interior, also clad in silver metal, is no more distinct.
Expecting a $650 laptop to push the limits of design would be unfair, of course, and the Swift 3’s workmanlike look is not a problem. A full metal chassis is not guaranteed at this price, and even laptops that opt for it don’t always feel sturdy. You’ll find flex in the Swift 3’s metal if you go looking for it – a strong press to the center of the laptop is all that’s required – but it isn’t noticeable in normal use.
Though the Swift 3 looks and feels great for a budget laptop, it has at least one serious aesthetic competitor in the Asus Zenbook UX330UA. That laptop weighs just 2.6 pounds and is just a half-inch thick. It’s slightly more expensive at $700, but that’s not much of a gap. While the Swift 3 looks like a premium laptop that’s a few years old, the Zenbook is on par with premium laptops being sold right now.
Dell’s Inspiron 13 5000 is another common competitor. Available only as a 2-in-1, it’s more versatile, but it’s also even thicker and heavier than the Swift 3. The same is true of HP’s Pavilion x360 13-inch. Also only available as a 2-in-1, it too is thicker and heavier than Acer’s Swift 3.
Here, have a another port
The Acer Swift 3 puts its somewhat bulky frame to good use. Its flanks boast three USB Type-A ports (two USB 3.0, and one USB 2.0). That’s joined by a USB 3.1 Type-C Gen 1 port, full-sized HDMI, a combo microphone/headphone jack, and an SD card reader. A separate, proprietary charger is also included to charge the battery, as the USB 3.1 Type-C port can’t juice the battery.
Acer Swift 3 SF314-52-557Y Compared To
Microsoft Surface Laptop
Dell XPS 13 (Kaby Lake)
Asus ZenBook UX305
Toshiba Kirabook (2014)
Asus Zenbook UX301LA
HP Envy x2
Dell XPS 13
Dell XPS 12
ASUS Zenbook Prime UX32VD
Sony Vaio S Premium 13.3-inch
Lenovo ThinkPad X230
Asus U36Jc
Sharp M4000
Toshiba Dynabook SX
Sony VAIO C1MW PictureBook
Wireless connectivity includes 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.
We can’t complain about the selection. It offers one more USB port than the Asus Zenbook UX330UA, and a full-sized HDMI rather than mini-HDMI video connection. Many competitors lack USB 3.1 entirely.
Big keyboard, big touchpad, and a half-decent fingerprint reader
Acer opted for its standard island-style keyboard on the Swift 3. The layout, marked by rounded key caps, substantial space between each key, and small function keys, is found on numerous Acer laptops across multiple price points. Though it’s often a drag on the company’s expensive laptops, it feels right at home on a mid-range device.
Touch typists will be happy to hear the keys offer excellent tactile feedback and long travel. It’s not the best keyboard by any stretch, but it’s well suited for longer typing sessions. The laptop’s large palmrest is helpful for comfort, as well. Most of the Acer Swift 3’s competitors, including the Asus Zenbook UX330UA and Dell Inspiron 13 7000 2-in-1, also offer a solid typing experience. None we’ve recently tested have proven much better or worse than the others but, surprisingly, they’re better than some more expensive laptops, like Apple’s MacBook Pro 13.
Surprisingly, typing is better than some more expensive laptops, like Apple’s MacBook Pro 13.
A backlit keyboard arrived standard on our review unit. That’s not uncommon for a laptop in the Swift 3’s arena, but also not guaranteed. The backlight itself is mundane, with just two levels of brightness and uneven lighting through many keys. Still, it gets the job done.
The touchpad is mundane, but large, with a pleasantly smooth texture. It supports all Windows Precision Touchpad features and, thanks to its large surface, offers plenty of space to swipe and touch. Here it has a small advantage over the Asus Zenbook UX330UA, Dell Inspiron 13 5000, and most other competitors. The Swift 3’s peers usually have a smaller touchpad surface, or one that’s less enjoyable to touch.
A fingerprint reader with Windows Hello support is included. Unlike the Asus Zenbook UX330UA, which unfortunately put the fingerprint reader on the touchpad itself, the Swift 3 places it on the far right of the interior, where it’s out of the way until needed. It works well though, like most Windows fingerprint readers, it sometimes needs a few swipes to work. The Dell Inspiron 13 5000 and HP Pavilion x360 13-inch don’t offer a fingerprint reader.
An accurate, but dull, 1080p display
A 13-inch 1080p, non-touch display came standard on our review unit. That resolution has, thankfully, become normal even for mid-range laptops. That’s good, because 1,366 x 768 resolution – which was more common just a couple years ago – is a big step down.
While the resolution is acceptable, the display came up short in other areas. We measured a maximum brightness of 242 nits, with a maximum contrast ratio of 540:1. That’s not bad, but the Asus Zenbook UX330UA hits 315 nits with a maximum ratio of 940:1. That’s a big improvement over the Acer Swift 3, and certainly gives the Asus an edge.
Color gamut was a weak point, too, as the Swift 3’s display can show only 67 percent of sRGB, and 50 percent of AdobeRGB. Almost every recently tested laptop can render more than 70 percent of the AdobeRGB laptop, including the Zenbook, which scored 74 percent.
You’d be hard pressed to tell the difference these scores represent in real life, but the Swift 3 is the least expensive of these laptops.
There’s some good news, however. Despite its poor color gamut, the Acer Swift 3 turned in a respectable average color error of 2.34. A lower score is better in this test. The Zenbook UX330UA had an error of 2.56, and the last Dell XPS 13 we tested with a 1080p display hit 2.65. You’d be hard pressed to tell the difference these scores represent in real life, but the Swift 3 is the least expensive of these laptops.
We also recorded a gamma value of 2.2, which is exactly where we’d like to see it. A gamma value that is off can result in a screen that looks too bright, or too dim, depending on which way the score goes. Most games and movies are mastered for a gamma value of 2.2, so this score is spot-on.
Sitting down in front of the Acer Swift 3 shows a display that adds up as the numbers suggest. It looks fine, but it’s not the best. Scenes look true to life, without dull or unrealistic color, but the low contrast ratio and poor brightness make it difficult for images to pop. Glare can be a real problem, too, because the screen has a glossy coat, and the display’s maximum brightness isn’t high enough to combat the glare.
Speaking softly
A pair of downward-facing speakers give the Acer Swift 3 its voice. They were good within their limited range of volume, and only distorted when pushed, such as music that combines vocals with heavy bass. In this respect, they’re on par with the Asus Zenbook UX330UA, Dell XPS 13, and most other 13-inch laptops. The maximum volume was rather low, however, so the laptop has trouble in noisy environments.
A good vintage of Core i5
While the Acer Swift 3 is available with several different processors, our review came with the Core i5-7200U, an incredibly common dual-core chip that can be found in laptops priced from $500 to $2,000. Of course, its value is always superior in less expensive laptops, and the Acer Swift 3 maximizes its performance potential.
Acer’s laptop did well in Geekbench 4, where it beat the Asus Zenbook UX330UA and Dell XPS 13 in both single-core and multi-core test. Only the Lenovo Yoga 720 13 proved slightly quicker.
The Swift 3 also held up well in Handbrake, a video encoding test, where it came in second place. The Handbrake result is important because it shows how the laptop handles heavy load over time. Some laptops, like the Asus Zenbook UX330UA, throttle performance as they heat up, but the Acer showed no sign of that.
These results show Acer’s affordable laptop can easily keep up with laptops that are more expensive, and perform well for a system in its price range. In truth, most people don’t need anything more than what the Swift 3 offers.
The fastest hard drive we’ve seen in a budget laptop
Our review unit’s 256GB solid state drive is great to see in a $650 laptop, but Acer didn’t stop there. The drive in our unit is an Intel 600p connected over PCI Express. Most laptops that offer solid state drives in this price bracket user the slower, older SATA connection, which limits performance.
The benefit of Acer’s decision can be seen in how it competes with the Asus Zenbook UX330UA. While both have the same size of drive, and sell within $50 of each other, the Swift 3 more than doubles the Zenbook’s write speed performance. It also beats the Zenbook by about 100 megabytes per second in read speed performance.
There are faster drives, of course – much faster. The Lenovo Yoga 720 13 is an example. The MSRP of that review unit was $980, however, putting it in a different league. Acer’s Swift 3 keeps up admirably for an affordable laptop.
It’s not built for gamers (of course)
Want to game? Then you shouldn’t buy a laptop like the Acer Swift 3, which uses Intel HD 620 integrated graphics. This graphics solution, bundled with most Intel Core processors, can play many modern games, but can’t play them at a reasonable framerate.
Acer’s laptop is not alone here. Every laptop with Intel HD 620 graphics suffers from the same shortfall in gaming performance. Compared to its peers, the Swift 3 is at no disadvantage.
We fired up Civilization VI at 1080p and minimum detail to see how the laptop performed in the real world. The game spat out an average of 16 frames per second in its graphics benchmark. That’s barely playable.
A mediocre battery leads to mediocre battery life
The Acer Swift 3 is a 13-inch laptop, which means it’s easy to carry around all day. However, at seventh-tenths of an inch thick and over three pounds, it’s heavier than the lightest laptops in its class. The Zenbook UX330UA, as mentioned, is 2.6 pounds and a half-inch thick.
A 49 watt-hour battery is crammed inside the chassis, which we find a little disappointing. It’s not small, but it’s also not that large. The size of the Swift 3 makes us feel that a larger battery could’ve been crammed inside.
Our battery life results show the consequence of the mid-sized battery. While the Acer’s endurance is respectable, lasting almost seven hours in our web browsing loop, it’s far off the leaders of the class. Asus Zenbook UX330UA, which had a 57 watt-hour battery, tacks on a couple hours of life in the same test. Dell’s XPS 13 also lasts longer thanks to its 60 watt-hour battery though, to be fair, it’s much more expensive.
The Acer Swift 3 also came up short in our video loop test, which repeats a 1080p video until the laptop turns off. Though its score of 10 hours and 22 minutes isn’t bad, it does fall one to two hours short of most competitors. The Asus Zenbook UX330UA endured more than 13 hours, giving it a clear lead.
Warranty information
The Acer Swift 3 ships with the usual one-year warranty against defects. That is typical for a laptop, no matter the price. A longer warranty can be purchased through Acer Care Plus, or through a third-party warranty company.
Our Take
Acer’s Swift 3 doesn’t look great, but it nails the fundamentals at a surprisingly low price. We’re most surprised by its performance, which matches far more expensive laptops. This laptop deserves your attention if you need an affordable yet capable machine.
Is there a better alternative?
Yes – the Asus Zenbook UX330UA. That laptop, which won a Digital Trends Editor’s Choice Award, is thinner, lighter, more attractive, and lasts longer on a charge. It remains our go-to pick among affordable 13-inch laptops. However, the Acer Swift 3 does beat it in performance, and has better connectivity.
The Dell Inspiron 15 5000, and potentially 7000, are also strong competitors. Those systems offer many of the same features, and the 7000 series offers 2-in-1 versatility. Past Inspiron laptops have suffered below-average battery life and, in some cases, poor display quality. Dell options in this price range usually lack a solid state drive, which is a major problem.
HP’s highs and lows are similar. The company offers several competing models, including a 2-in-1, the Pavilion x360. Yet you’ll be hard pressed to find one with a 256GB solid state drive for $650.
How long will it last?
Surprisingly, this affordable laptop is extremely well equipped for the future. It has a fast processor, plenty of RAM, and a quick, reasonably large solid state drive. Absent accidents or defects, this laptop should last five years or more.
Should you buy it?
Yes, if you don’t want the Zenbook. Acer’s laptop is not as portable as the Asus, and doesn’t feel as modern, yet it’s hard to argue with the Swift 3’s performance, connectivity, and bargain pricing. While not our first pick among 13-inch systems, the Swift is a good alternative to Dell’s Inspiron and HP’s Pavilion.