Acer Swift 1 (SF114-34) review – affordable ultrabooks are getting more and more popular

There are a couple of selling points of the Swift 1 (SF114-34). In the first place, there is the price. Then, you get the battery life, followed by silent operation, and not in the last place – 1080p IPS display. These are quite some reasons to get you hooked up on buying this device.

However, there is a big caveat here, and it is the processing power. You can get the Swift 1 (SF114-34) with one of a bunch of Celeron or Pentium Silver processors. If you are looking for something that will run some heavier tasks, you should at least aim for the Pentium Silver N6000 model. On the other hand, our unit is equipped with the Celeron N5100, and we are not really optimistic about it.

Now, let’s see how did Acer allocate its budget, and what you as a customer get.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-swift-1-sf114-33/

Contents

Specs Sheet

What’s in the box?

Inside the package, there is the mandatory paperwork, as well as a 45W charger.

Design and construction

Let’s begin with the dimensions. This notebook is pretty easy to handle thanks to its 14.9mm profile and 1.30 kg of weight. Unsurprisingly, its body is made out of plastic, but by no means does it feel cheap. Interestingly, the lid cover is cool to the touch and actually feels like metal. However, we couldn’t verify that.

Ultimately, the aforementioned lid cannot be opened with a single hand. However, it has a pair of rubber feet at its bottom side, which lifts the backside of the base from the ground by a couple of millimeters. This would be great if the laptop had an active cooling system, but in this case, it seems pretty useless. On the other hand, the bezels around the matte display are thin, and the top one houses a tiny HD Web camera.

What is probably the most surprising aspect of this device is its keyboard. Although it can be viewed as a rather affordable unit, it has a backlight, decent key travel, and clicky and consistent feedback. Also, it doesn’t really have much of a keyboard flex. Additionally, this notebook is equipped with a fingerprint reader.

Next, there is the touchpad. It has a decent size, and more importantly – accurate and responsive tracking. Yes, the clicking mechanism isn’t the best out there, and the cover feels a little flimsy, especially in the bottom corners, but you have to keep in mind the price of the device.

Naturally, the bottom panel is home to the cool air grills. Well, not in this case. Here, you only get two speaker cutouts, and that’s it.

Ports

On the left side, you will find the power plug, an HDMI connector, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 1) port. Then, on the right, you have a Kensington security slot, another USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and an audio jack.

Disassembly, upgrade options, and maintenance

This laptop’s bottom panel is held in place by 11 Phillips-head screws. After you undo them, pry the panel with a plastic tool, and lift it away from the chassis.

The battery capacity here is 48Wh.

Unfortunately, the memory is soldered to the motherboard. On the bright side, you get one M.2 NVMe slot for storage upgrades.

The main event here, however, is the passive cooling solution. There is a metal heat spreader with a relatively large footprint.

Display quality

Acer Swift 1 (SF114-34) has a touchscreen Full HD IPS display, model number Chi Mei N140HCA-EAC (CNM14D4). Its diagonal is 14″ (35.56 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 157 ppi, their pitch – 0.161 x 0.161 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 56 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Its viewing angles are excellent. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.

Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.

The maximum measured brightness is 277 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 260 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 12%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6700K (average) – slightly colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 49% Brightness (White level = 142 cd/m2, Black level = 0.105 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is good – 1350:1.

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. Colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is an 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 Acer Swift 1 (SF114-34)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers just 52% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

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 compare the scores of Acer Swift 1 (SF114-34) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display can reproduce dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

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

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 20 ms

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.

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.

Acer Swift 1 (SF114-34)’s display is using PWM to adjust the brightness up to 70 nits. After that it’s flicker-free. Moreover, the PWM it uses has a very high frequency, making the display comfortable for long hours of work and safe for your eyes in this aspect.

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

Since our profiles are tailored for each display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Acer Swift 1 (SF114-34) configurations with 14.0″ Chi Mei N140HCA-EAC (CMN14D4) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS panel.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

Sound

Acer Swift 1 (SF114-34)’s speakers are decent. Although the low, mid, and high tones all have some deviations in clarity, they sound okay.

Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be downloaded from here: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/8834?b=1

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with 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. This device lasts for 12 hours and 51 minutes of Web browsing, and 11 hours and 15 minutes of video playback.

CPU options

This notebook comes with a bunch of energy-efficient processors. This includes the Celeron N4020, Celeron N4120, Celeron N4500, Celeron N5100, as well as the Pentium Silver N5030, and Pentium Silver N6000.

GPU options

Expectedly, there are no dedicated graphics options, so you are “stuck” with the integrated solutions.

Gaming tests

CS:GO	HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)	HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)	HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS	79 fps	51 fps	34 fps

DOTA 2	HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)	HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)	HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS	89 fps	48 fps	28 fps

Temperatures and comfort

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 Celeron N5100 (6W TDP)	0:02 – 0:10 sec	0:15 – 0:30 sec	10:00 – 15:00 min	10:00 – 15:00 min (Cooling pad)
Acer Swift 1 (SF114-34)	2.79 GHz (B+154%) @ 83°C	1.57 GHz (B+43%) @ 55°C	1.31 GHz (B+19%) @ 62°C	1.78 GHz (B+62%) @ 62°C

So without any active cooling, the device doesn’t do a really great job at maintaining a high clock speed. However, adding a cooling pad to the mix increases the clock speed by 470 MHz without any increase in temperature.

Comfort during full load

During extreme workloads, both the keyboard and the bottom panel get pretty warm. Obviously, no fan means no noise, making the laptop completely silent.

Verdict

At the end of the day, this notebook achieved pretty much all of its objectives. It’s affordable. It has a battery that lasts for 12 hours and 51 minutes of Web browsing, and 11 hours and 15 minutes of video playback. And not on the last place – it has an IPS display.

Acer Swift 1 (SF114-34)’s IPS panel (Chi Mei N140HCA-EAC (CNM14D4)) has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, and a good contrast ratio. Its backlight doesn’t use aggressive PWM for brightness adjustment, but unfortunately, it covers only 52% of the sRGB color gamut. This is not unexpected, though, given the budget nature of the device. Ultimately, we are glad that the only screen option Acer provides is a 1080p IPS panel.

Additional little surprises we found are the fingerprint reader and the fact that the keyboard has a backlight. Not only that, but it is fairly comfortable to use too.

Its I/O is decent, but it lacks an SD card reader of any sort. Moreover, its memory is soldered to the motherboard. This is something that is usually reserved for more premium notebooks.

However, the biggest drawback of this notebook is its performance. Unless you get the Pentium Silver N6000, you are going to suffer. Well, not when you’re only browsing the Web, or watching videos. But once you try to work on some photos, or play a game, things become laggy.

In general, we really liked the laptop. Its form factor, its versatility, and especially the battery life. And we really do see the target group of customers. A group, which became substantially larger because of the latest events – work from home students.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-swift-1-sf114-33/