Acer Swift X 14 assessment: shocking efficiency, stunning worth

Acer Swift X 14 (2024)

MSRP $1,700.00

“The Acer Swift X 14 is an impressively fast and portable creativity machine.”

• Excellent productiveness efficiency
• Very good artistic efficiency
• Spectacular OLED show
• Very good keyboard
• Solid construct high quality
• Competitive pricing

• Boring aesthetic
• Slightly disappointing battery life

There have been a number of solid alternatives to the 16-inch MacBook Pro not too long ago, however the 14-inch mannequin is a bit more durable to compete with. Outside of gaming laptops, there are only a few choices which have the GPU efficiency to compete with the M3 Pro or M3 Max.

But right here comes the Acer Swift X 14, a transportable laptop computer for creators with as much as an RTX 4070. Throw within the 2.8K OLED show and an reasonably priced price ticket, and you’ve got the makings of fairly a compelling laptop computer — which is strictly what the Swift X 14 is.

Specs and configurations

The Swift X 14 is accessible in two configurations. The first is priced at $1,400 and contains an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, and a 14.5-inch 2.8K OLED show. For $1,700, you get 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an RTX 4070.

While these are premium costs, they’re comparatively engaging for a creative-oriented 14-inch laptop computer that may be had with a really quick GPU. By comparability, the Swift X 14’s most necessary competitor, the Dell XPS 14, value $2,500 when configured with the identical chipset, RAM, storage, and GPU as Acer’s base mannequin. The RTX 4050 is the XPS 14’s most, nevertheless, and upgrading it to 32GB of RAM prices $2,700. While the XPS 14 will be bought with 64GB of RAM and as much as 4TB of storage, it gained’t be as quick within the sorts of artistic apps that these two laptops are geared toward.

As we’ll see, the Swift X 14 is a robust competitor to the XPS 14 whereas costing greater than $1,000 much less. That’s fairly spectacular. Note that as of proper now, the RTX 4070 configuration can’t but be bought. It’s anticipated to be obtainable quickly after this assessment is revealed, nevertheless.

Design

While Acer tuned the Swift X 14’s efficiency to be extra of an influence consumer and creator’s workstation, the laptop computer’s design is a bit more like a gaming laptop computer. That is, its angles and rear vent, whereas not excessive, don’t have the identical form of trendy aesthetic that you simply’ll discover on the Dell XPS 14 and a up to date 2-in-1 just like the Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 9. It goes with out saying, nevertheless it additionally doesn’t have the clear class of the MacBook Pro 14.

Overall, although, that’s not as detrimental as it’d sound. The Steel Gray coloration scheme carries by way of pretty constantly, with solely a chrome Acer emblem on the lid breaking it up. It’s general a conservative look — it’s not simply as modern and “fashionable” as another 14-inch choices. Probably the one facet that detracts are the plastic show bezels, which aren’t overlay massive, however look a bit old style.

The construct high quality is superb, with no bending, flexing, or twisting within the all-aluminum chassis, lid, or keyboard deck. It’s not fairly as inflexible because the XPS 14, however I can’t complain. The hinge opens easily, albeit with out the identical really feel as Dell’s dual-clutch model. While the Swift X 14 is lighter than the XPS 14 at 3.4 kilos versus 3.7 kilos, it’s significantly thicker at as much as 0.80 inches versus 0.71 inches. It’s additionally barely wider and deeper. The MacBook Pro 14 is a bit of heavier than the Acer at 3.6 kilos, however thinner than each it and the Dell at 0.61 inches. That makes the Swift X 14 a fairly transportable machine, however not fairly as skinny as a few of its direct opponents.

The Swift X 14 isn’t probably the most engaging, trendy, or svelte 14-inch laptop computer round. But it’s greater than ok, significantly when contemplating its cheap worth.

Keyboard and mouse

The keyboard is a high quality entry, with barely small keycaps, however loads of key spacing. The switches are the tiniest bit agency, however nonetheless springy and exact. I discovered it snug sufficient whereas typing this assessment and simpler to get used to than the XPS 14’s zero-lattice keyboard, which has much less key journey. The MacBook’s Magic Keyboard stays my favourite with its equally shallow keys, however extremely snappy and exact switches.

The touchpad is massive sufficient to be snug, which a exact swiping floor and quiet, assured clicks. It’s pretty much as good as most mechanical touchpads, however premium laptops are transferring towards haptic touchpads , which I like lots higher. The XPS 14’s hidden haptic touchpad is superb, and as soon as once more, the MacBook’s Force Touch haptic touchpad stays the trade customary for a purpose.

Acer doesn’t provide a touchscreen with the Swift X 14. While many individuals don’t care, I do want a contact show. So, I missed one right here.

Connectivity

The Swift X 14 has higher connectivity than the XPS 14. Where the Dell is proscribed to simply USB-C with Thunderbolt 4, the Acer has a stable mixture of each trendy and legacy ports. Like the XPS 14, the Swift X 14 has a microSD card reader, although I’d somewhat see a full-size model. The MacBook Pro 14 additionally has one, together with its personal mixture of ports.

Wireless connectivity on the Swift X 14 is sweet, with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Some laptops are at Wi-Fi 7, however that customary gained’t matter for years. The webcam is a 1080p model that gives a high quality picture.

Acer has its PurifiedView software program that features a number of AI-enhanced options and works with Windows Studio impact for computerized framing, superior background blur, and gaze correction. Microsoft’s utility can reap the benefits of the Meteor Lake chipset’s Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for efficiency and effectivity, and Acer hyperlinks to Gimp, which has just a few NPU-enabled options. For probably the most half, although, the NPU isn’t at the moment of a lot use.

There’s no infrared digital camera for Windows 11 Hello facial recognition, which I want. It’s a bit of odd for it’s lacking on a premium laptop computer, however I suppose these are the areas Acer compromised on to chop prices. Fortunately, the fingerprint reader embedded within the energy button works properly sufficient.

Performance

The Swift X 14 is a uncommon breed of laptop computer. There aren’t many non-gaming 14-inch machines that may be configured with an RTX 4070, and as burdened all through this assessment, Acer’s greatest competitor is the XPS 14. While the XPS 14 makes use of the identical 28-watt Core Ultra 7 155H chipset, which has 16 cores (six Performance, eight Efficient, and two Low Power Efficient) and 22 threads, it’s solely obtainable with the a lot slower RTX 4050.

Both laptops have a system thermal design energy (TDP) of 80 watts, which impacts the Acer greater than the Dell. The RTX 4070 can take as much as 115 watts, whereas the RTX 4050 takes a most of fifty watts. That implies that the XPS 14 may give each the CPU and GPU their full energy (not counting Turbo Power), whereas the Swift X 14 has to stability issues a bit of extra rigorously by giving 30 watts to the CPU and 50 watts to the GPU. And it must be famous that the Swift X 14 continues to be a 14-inch laptop computer with much less thermal headroom than the 16-inch machines the place you sometimes discover the RTX 4070.

That implies that efficiency will naturally be extra restricted even with the Acer’s very aggressive cooling system that has followers that velocity up fairly a bit in efficiency and turbo modes. Some 16-inch machines, just like the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra and Dell XPS 16, additionally restrict energy to 80 watts (60 watts to their RTX 4070s), whereas the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 offers 130 watts to its RTX 4060 and 45-watt Core Ultra 9 185H chipset. It’s the chief amongst Windows laptops.

We reviewed the XPS 14 with the marginally quicker Core Ultra 7 165H, so it might be simply barely slower in CPU-intensive duties with the Core Ultra 7 155H that you would be able to configure right now.

As we see in our benchmarks, the Swift X 14 is aggressive with the 16-inch Windows laptops, outdoors of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, a bona fide gaming laptop computer. It’s a lot quicker throughout the board than the XPS 14 in all however Geekbench 6. Most importantly, it’s 46% quicker than the XPS 14 within the PugetBench Premiere Pro benchmark that runs in a stay model of Adobe’s Premiere Pro video-editing software. In Windows, that artistic app makes use of the GPU to hurry up varied duties, and the Swift X 14’s a lot quicker GPU makes it a speedier artistic workstation than the XPS 14.

Overall, these are spectacular outcomes for a non-gaming 14-inch laptop computer. The MacBook Pro 14 with the M3 Max chipset is far quicker (I’m utilizing the MacBook Pro 16’s scores on this comparability, however the 14-inch mannequin is roughly as quick), however the MacBook can also be much more costly.

With an RTX 4070, you is likely to be anticipating to recreation on the Swift X 14. While it runs Nvidia’s Studio drivers that optimize for artistic and different apps and never gaming, the Swift X 14 can certainly function an excellent 1080p gaming machine and is even moderately quick at 1440p.

We didn’t run the XPS 14 by way of our sequence of gaming benchmarks as a result of its RTX 4050 is just too limiting. So, I’ll evaluate the Swift X 14 to some 16-inch laptops. In the 3DMark Time Spy check, the Swift X 14 was forward of the XPS 16, however behind the Samsung Galaxy Book4. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 was fairly a bit quicker. In Red Dead Redemption 2, the Swift X 14 was once more barely slower throughout the board, however nonetheless fairly playable. And in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p and extremely graphics with FSR 2.1 set to Quality, the Swift X 14 was surprisingly quick.

You’ll get even higher efficiency for those who drop all the way down to 1080p. And you’ll benefit from the OLED show’s high quality and the 120Hz refresh charge for tear-free gaming.

Battery life

There’s a 76 watt-hour battery contained in the Swift X 14, mated with a fairly environment friendly Core Ultra 7 155H chipset and a high-resolution OLED show. In my expertise, that mixture doesn’t yield the very best battery life.

In our web-browsing check, the Swift X 14 managed simply 7.25 hours biking by way of a sequence of complicated webpages. It’s a fairly taxing check that provides an thought of how lengthy the laptop computer will final with a minimal workload. In our video check that loops by way of a neighborhood FHD video, the Swift X 14 lasted for simply 7.25 hours as properly, the place most laptops final 10 hours or extra.

Those aren’t the very best outcomes I’ve seen, however they’re not the worst, both. The XPS 14 with its OLED show was higher tat 8.25 hours and 10 hours, respectively. Overall, the Swift X 14 doesn’t venture to final practically a full day of a typical workflow, and for those who’re utilizing the RTX 4070, it gained’t final for greater than a few hours. The king of battery life on this class is the MacBook Pro 14, which lasts no less than twice as lengthy and may make it by way of a lot of a full day of demanding work.

Display and audio

The Swift X 14 has one show choice, a 14.5-inch 16:10 2.8K (2880 x 1800) OLED panel operating at 120Hz. It’s drop-dead attractive out of the field, as with all OLED shows I’ve reviewed, and makes a terrific first impression with vivid, dynamic colours and inky blacks.

According to my colorimeter, there’s nothing to complain about. Brightness was nice at 405 nits, colours had been extensive at 100% of sRGB, 95% of AdobeRGB, and 100% of DCI-P3, they usually had been correct at a Delta-E of 0.87 (lower than 1.0 is taken into account wonderful). And distinction was extraordinarily excessive at 13,920:1 with excellent blacks. This is barely higher than the XPS 14’s OLED show choice, which wasn’t as vivid at 374 nits and didn’t have the identical coloration gamut protection at 85% of AdobeRGB and 97% of DCI-P3.

For a creator that seeks a color-accurate show that matches up with excellent efficiency in a 14-inch laptop computer, the Swift X 14 matches the invoice. And for media customers who need nice HDR efficiency, it’s additionally a terrific choice. Only the MacBook Pro 14’s mini-LED show is more likely to be notably higher.

The audio isn’t fairly as a lot of a standout. Two front-firing audio system present OK sound, with enough quantity and clear mids and highs. But the bass is missing, giving the XPS 14 and, much more so, the wonderful six-speaker setup with force-canceling woofers within the MacBook Pro 14, a transparent win.

Conclusion

The Swift X 14 isn’t the best-looking 14-inch laptop computer. In reality, it’s form of clunky and never solely trendy. But that’s OK, as a result of it’s a extremely quick laptop computer with a spectacular OLED show. It’s one of many extra transportable and reasonably priced laptops for doing actual artistic work.

The proven fact that it’s additionally extra moderately priced than some options is what makes it a really engaging laptop computer. Yes, you should buy cheaper 14-inch laptops, however you gained’t get this type of efficiency. That makes the Swift X 14 a straightforward laptop computer to suggest.

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