The best for 2018: Acer Swift 3 (SF314-52) is a small laptop that can face all challenges

Category: A laptop for universal needs

Late spring is that time of the year in which Intel has already released its latest CPU generation (both ULV and H lineups), and laptop manufacturers have presented what they’ve been working on for the last couple of months. We, on the other hand, have decided to go through the best deals for this year from various product categories.

Acer Swift 3 (detailed review), however, is one of the series that attracted our attention before any other. The main reason is that, as the title suggests, despite its small size, the machine managed to pass successfully every challenge we put it through. Yes, there is no chance for a computer to be mobile, elegant, super powerful, and really affordable at the same time but the Swift 3 manages to achieve this combo to a very reasonable degree that would satisfy almost any user’s desires.

And because at LaptopMedia we like to be precise, we picked a particular model to review in several different tests – the machine is the “NX.GQUEX.007” modification of Swift 3 (SF314-52):
You can check all available Acer Swift 3 laptops here: Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

Portability and Sturdiness

Despite the price range of the 14-inch Swift 3 does not suggest top notch build quality and expensive materials, the series surprises with aluminum construction, protecting the exterior, and sturdy plastic in the interior. What’s more, the display is scratch-protected by the widely popular in smartphones Corning Gorilla Glass cover. Of course, we doubt that you would place your laptop screen down on a surface like you do with your smartphone but again – Acer has thought really well about durability in this respect.

As for the machine’s weight, it is merely 1.5 – 1.7 kg, while the thickness is only 18 mm with which this Swift bad boy surpasses most of its competitors.

Screen

And while the Gorilla Glass protection came as a surprise, we can’t say the same about the IPS panel of the 14-inch display but it is still worth mentioning. The tested unit features a high-quality AUO B140HAN02.1 panel which, albeit not suitable for graphic designers as it covers only 50% of the sRGB gamut (designers would use an external monitor either ways), provides wide viewing angles and does not use the harmful PWM for brightness control (read more about it here).

Swiftness

Swift 3 is a champ in this aspect. Despite its size, it carries an Intel Core i7-8550U – a CPU which is famous not only for its low power consumption but also for its undisputable supremacy over its predecessor i7-7500U, surpassing it with almost two times better results in our performance tests (check our CPU rankings). Additionally, the configuration we are reviewing features 8GB of RAM, and a PCIe NVMe SSD responsible for the quick loading of applications.

Gaming

Is this small piece of hardware capable of gaming? The answer is YES. Swift 3 uses the GeForce MX150 graphics card which is powerful enough to run games such as GTA V at mid to high graphics settings (~34 FPS), Rise of the Tomb Raider at low settings (40 FPS), and Doom at high settings (60+ FPS). All this in Full HD resolution. Below you can find several gameplay videos with this GPU:

Battery

Acer Swift 3′ battery is another strong point of this model. When it comes to Web browsing at slightly lowered brightness (120 cd/m2), the machine can survive almost through a whole work day on a single charge.

Temperatures

The only more serious remark we have to mention is as regards the cooling solution used in Swift 3. Yes, it is more than understandable that the two small fans will have a hard time coping with the i7-8550U and GeForce MX150 during a continuous workload, but the fans are almost always running which results in low noise coming out of the laptop even at times when it’s not performing particularly heavy tasks. Nonetheless, the exterior temperatures do not reach high values even at max load.

You can check all available Acer Swift 3 laptops here: Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

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