[In-Depth Comparison] Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s) vs Acer Swift X (SFx14-41G) – versatile devices that are very close to being fantastic

With the laptop and overall tech shortage that has been going on the past year, we see more and more devices with combined functionality, that can excel at a variety of different tasks.

Most of them have been gaming devices that are slimmed down and have an improved design, along with new display options that open the door to Creativity tasks, like video and photo editing, graphic design, and more, while keeping their gaming nature, with powerful CPUs and GPUs.

This is the root of the Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s) from Acer, which has a lot going for it, including Tiger Lake H35 processors and RTX Ampere graphics.

Going against it we have a more traditional ultrabook with the Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G). The “G” in the name stands for discrete graphics as the device also offers two RTX 3000-series GPUs, along with the Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000U-series CPUs.

Today we will be comparing their designs, features, and performance, so you can determine which is the better product depending on your lifestyle, workflow, and what you want to do.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s): Full Specs / In-depth Review

Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G): Full Specs / In-depth Review

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s) configurations:

Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G) configurations:

Contents


Design and Construction

The Triton 300SE is dressed in aluminum from top to bottom while differentiating itself a lot from the old-school gaming formula of bold and very aggressive designs. If it weren’t for the Predator branding, you’d hardly recognize it as a gaming device, as it has a more subdued rectangular shell with rounded edges and corners. The lid has a Predator badge in the upper right corner of the lid, with the same logo appearing on the bottom bezel. In terms of weight and height, the device is decently portable with a weight of 1.70 kg and a profile of 17.9 mm. Its lid opens easily with one hand.

On the Swift X, we have a traditional ultrabook design that has been beefed up a bit to fit the bigger GPU. While it does weigh around 300 grams less than the Predator, it has the same thickness. The design shares the same edges and corners while sporting a two-tone finish, with the lid and base being a different color. Here we see the model with the Golden lid and the Silver base. The lid can be opened with a single hand.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard of the Predator has square keycaps, which are decently sized, along with a vertical array of media keys. The unit has shorter key travel and clicky feedback. A backlight is also present, illuminating the buttons in white. A huge grill is placed above the keyboard, while we see the touchpad below it. It has a glass surface, which is very smooth, while the tracking is very accurate and responsive. In the upper left corner of the pad, you can see a fingerprint reader, which doesn’t disrupt the effectiveness of the touchpad.

The Swift X has a smaller-sized keyboard, with the Arrow keys especially being tiny in comparison. They are also merged with the “Page Down” and “Page Up” buttons. The keys have average key travel and clicky feedback, making them comfortable to type on. The Power button is also very close to the rest of the keys, which in our case resulted in accidental shutdowns of the device, which will need some getting used to. The touchpad has a small size but offers good gliding. The tracking and responsiveness aren’t the best out there, but the whole area of the unit can be clicked.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

Ports

The I/O on the Predator consists of two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 2) ports, a Thunderbolt 4 port, an HDMI connector, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)

The Swift X has two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, one USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.

Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)


Specs sheet


Disassembly, upgrade options

The Predator 300SE is held together by 9 Torx-head screws, which once removed, reveal a single SODIMM RAM slot, along with some soldered memory. There is also one M.2 PCIe x4 slot for storage expansion.

The Swift X uses 11 Torx-head screws and has no upgradeable memory. You can buy it with either 8GB or 16GB of soldered RAM working in dual-channel mode. Storage-wise, there are two M.2 PCIe x4 drive slots.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

Display quality

Both laptops come with a 14-inch Full HD IPS display. The unit on the Predator also has a 144Hz refresh rate. The displays share the same pixel density of 157 PPI, a pitch of 0.16 x 0.16 mm, and a Retina distance of 56cm.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

Both displays have comfortable viewing angles. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

The display of the Predator has a max brightness of 284 nits in the middle of the screen and 278 nits average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 9%. It also has a contrast ratio of 1930:1.

The Swift X’s panel has a higher max brightness of 376 nits in the middle of the screen and 372 nits average across the surface with a lower maximum deviation of 6%. However, its contrast ratio is slightly lower – 1890:1.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

Color coverage

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows the color coverage of both the Acer Predator Triton 300SE (PT314-51s) and the Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G).

Both laptops show near-full coverage of the sRGB color gamut, with 98% for the Predator 300SE and 97% for the Swift X.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

Color accuracy

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can check the results from the test of both laptops, with both the factory settings (left) and with our “Design and Gaming” profile applied (right).

Both laptops are positively affected by our profile, bringing down the dE value to 0.8 and 1.0 for the Predator and the Swift, respectively.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)

Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)


Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” methods from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

The Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G) has a decent lead with a Fall + Rise time of 23.4 ms.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

Health Impact / PWM (Blue light)

PWM – Screen flickering

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Both laptops use no PWM across all brightness levels, meaning that the displays are comfortable to use, without presenting any excessive eye strain in this aspect.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Buy our profiles

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s) 14.0″ Sharp LQ140M1JW49 (SHP1523) (FHD, 1920 x 1080) IPS – Buy our profiles

Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G) 14.0″ AUO B140HAN06.8 (AUO683D) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS – Buy our profiles

Sound

Both laptops offer stereo speaker setups with DTS Spatial audio support. The speakers on either device are found on the bottom panel. Both setups produce decent quality audio, however, the Predator does suffer from some deviations in the high frequencies.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

Battery

The device has pretty equal battery packs with a 60Wh unit for the Predator and 59Wh for the Swift. However, the latter presents a much longer battery life with a lead of 6 hours and 36 minutes in Web browsing and a lead of 3 hours and 10 minutes in Video playback. The way we conduct our tests is with the Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.


Performance

The Predator has two CPU options: the Core i7-11370H and the Core i7-11375H. Both SKUs have four cores and eight threads. In terms of GPU power, we have the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, along with the RTX 3050 Ti, and the RTX 3060 (90W).

The Swift X also has two CPU options, with either the Ryzen 5 5600U or the Ryzen 7 5800U, which offer good performance and amazing power efficiency. For graphics, it gets the GeForce RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti, with both GPUs having a 40W TGP.

CPU benchmarks

Here we tested the Core i7-11370H and the Ryzen 7 5800U. Despite having a lower TDP, The Ryzen 7 mops the flower with its opponent, having a 66% higher score in Cinebench 20. Moving to Photoshop, the Ryzen still leads, this time with a smaller lead of less than a second.

Results are from the Cinebench R23 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)

Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)


GPU benchmarks

Here we tested the GeForce RTX 3060 (90W) and the RTX 3050 (40W). Obviously, the GPU that sits higher on the totem pole and comes with a higher TGP presents better test results, with the RTX 3060, scoring 100%, 87%, and 113% in 3DMark Fire Strike, Unigine Heaven 4.0, and Unigine Superposition, respectively.


Gaming tests

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, MAX (Check settings)
Acer Predator Triton 300 SE – GeForce RTX 3060 (90W)116 fps (+49%)79 fps (+103%)54 fps
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G) – GeForce RTX 3050 (40W)78 fps39 fps –

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
Acer Predator Triton 300 SE – GeForce RTX 3060 (90W)83 fps (+57%)73 fps (+59%)50 fps
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G) – GeForce RTX 3050 (40W)53 fps46 fps –

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Highest (Check settings)
Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)- GeForce RTX 3060 (90W)90 fps (+61%)88 fps (+73%)63 fps
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G) – GeForce RTX 3050 (40W)56 fps51 fps –

Temperatures and comfort

The Predator wins when it comes to its cooling setup, presenting 3 heat pipes, which are on the thicker side, along with two fans and several heat-spreaders. We have one shared heat pipe between the CPU and GPU, with each of them getting one separate heat pipe as well.

On the Swift X, we have two heat pipes that both cool down the CPU and GPU. There’s also a single fan on the left side.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i7-11370H (35W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)3.97 GHz (B+20%) @ 95°C @ 64W4.03 GHz (B+22%) @ 97°C @ 63W3.87 GHz (B+17%) @ 93°C @ 50W
ASUS TUF Dash F15 (FX516)4.01 GHz (B+22%) @ 78°C @ 64W4.00 GHz (B+21%) @ 82°C @ 64W3.96 GHz (B+20%) @ 90°C @ 60W

Compared to the only other laptop with the same CPU, the Triton 300 SE gets considerably hotter, which at the kind leads to slightly lower frequencies. We have to keep in mind the smaller form factor as well, which contributed to the results. The TUF Dash F15 is a bigger device with better airflow.

AMD Ryzen 7 5800U (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)3.09 GHz (B+63%) @ 73°C2.99 GHz (B+57%) @ 75°C2.73 GHz (B+44%) @ 75°C
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (14″)2.31 GHz (B+22%) @ 55°C2.32 GHz (B+22%) @ 59°C2.41 GHz (B+27%) @ 66°C

The Swift X on the other hand reaches higher clock speeds and higher temperatures when compared to the only laptop with the Ryzen 7 5800U.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan)
Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)1593 MHz @ 75°C @ 84W1580 MHz @ 79°C @ 85W1656 MHz @ 72°C @ 83W
Lenovo Legion 5 (15″ AMD, 2021)1831 MHz @ 75°C @ 129W1815 MHz @ 80°C @ 129W
Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (16″)1803 MHz @ 76°C @ 129W1787 MHz @ 81°C @ 129W
MSI GP66 Leopard1863 MHz @ 72°C @ 124W1852 MHz @ 75°C @ 125W1849 MHz @ 69°C @ 127W
MSI GP76 Leopard1860 MHz @ 71°C @ 129W1857 MHz @ 73°C @ 128W1869 MHz @ 67°C @ 128W

Due to the lower TDP of 90W, the GPU doesn’t boost as high as other RTX 3060 variants, while reaching the same temperatures.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)1182 MHz @ 63°C @ 37W1167 MHz @ 69°C @ 38W
MSI Katana GF661675 MHz @ 73°C @ 60W1660 MHz @ 78°C @ 60W1699 MHz @ 67°C @ 60W

With such a low TGP of 40W, you can’t expect anything more when it comes to clock speeds, and the performance that the laptop offered is adequate.

Gaming comfort

With the Predator Triton 300 SE, you get a laptop that gets very hot both on the inside and on the outside. It has a way higher outside temperature of 52.9°C. It’s also quite noisy. On the side of the Swift X, we see a reduction in the outside temperature of nearly 8°C, while the laptop wasn’t very loud.

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)

Verdict

These are two devices that excel at different types of work. Sure, they can both handle Creator tasks like a champ, but the Swift X is definitely prioritizing heavy computing workloads with its more powerful, yet more efficient CPU. If you fancy a bit more gaming, then the Predator is the better option, because of its more powerful GPU.

On the outside, the laptops share similar design patterns, but we fancy the Predator more due to its more industrial and tougher appearance. The minimal Predator branding is a big bonus as well. On the other hand, the Swift X is significantly lighter. It also offers better input devices, with larger keycaps and a glass-surfaced touchpad. Thunderbolt support is present on the device as well, whereas on the Swift X it does not, but that’s purely due to the choice of hardware.

The Predator Triton 300 SE doesn’t offer that much storage expansion, but still has a SODIMM slot and an M.2 slot. On the other hand, the Swift X has two SSD slots, but zero RAM ones. Both laptops have great displays with high color coverage and standard matching color accuracy.

Audio quality is pretty much the same with both laptops, while the Swift X gets a much longer battery life thanks to its Ryzen 5000U-series processors. These CPUs are also insanely powerful, with the Ryzen 7 5800U heavily outclassing the Core i7-11370H. The Triton 300 SE does however offer quite a more powerful GPU, both in the synthetic GPU benchmarks and in the gaming tests.

In terms of cooling, both laptops manage to keep their hardware’s temperatures under check, and we saw no overheating or thermal throttling. However, the Predator was much hotter on the outside, which will not be liked by most people.


Why choose the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s)?

  • + More powerful GPU
  • + Better keyboard and touchpad
  • + More appealing design


Why choose the Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)?

  • + Lighter body
  • + Longer battery life
  • + More powerful CPU
  • + Cooler externals during load

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s): Full Specs / In-depth Review

Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G): Full Specs / In-depth Review

All Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (PT314-51s) configurations:

All Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G) configurations:

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments