Top 5 reasons to BUY or NOT to buy the Acer Swift 3 (SF314-59)
While manufacturers want to experiment with various form factors, display sizes, and aspect ratios, people still rely on what is already tried and tested.
That is why the 14-inch Acer Swift 3 (SF314-59) exists. It is dangerously similar to the 16-inch Swift 3 that we reviewed a few days ago, bringing a level of performance that is akin to a 14-inch laptop. The Tiger Lake G-series offers efficient and snappy processors with integrated graphics that do a fantastic job and can also handle medium to heavy workloads on the go.
Today we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Acer Swift 3 (SF314-59)
Acer Swift 3 (SF314-59): Full Specs / In-depth Review
4 reasons to BUY the Acer Swift 3 (SF314-59)
1. Design and build quality
The aluminum and magnesium unibody construction gives the laptop great rigidity while minimizing the weight and thickness. The blue color that our laptop had was pretty good and a nice change of pace from the traditional white, black, and grey. The laptop stops the scales at 1.20 kg and has a profile of 15.9 mm.
The lid doesn’t open with a single hand, but once it opens it reveals a set of great input devices. The keyboard is very comfortable with its long key travel, clicky feedback, and sturdy deck, which doesn’t flex and gives a nice resistance. It also has a backlight, which will be appreciated during the late hours of the night. The touchpad also provides decently accurate tracking and smooth gliding.
2. Performance
The laptop is powered by the Tiger Lake G-series of processors, which include the Core i3-1115G4, Core i5-1135G7, and Core i7-1165G7. In terms of graphics, you get either the Iris Xe Graphics G4, Iris Xe Graphics G7 (80EU), or Iris Xe Graphics G7 (96EU) depending on which processor you choose.
CPU benchmarks
Here we tested the Core i5-1135G7.
Results are from the Cinebench R23 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)
GPU benchmarks
Here we tested the Iris Xe Graphics G7 (80EU)
The results are from 3DMark Time Spy (Graphics). Higher is better.
Results are from 3DMark Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
3. Battery life
The laptop comes with a relatively large for its size 50Wh unit. It lasts for 10 hours of Web browsing, and 10 hours and 44 minutes of video playback. 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.
4. I/O
You might not get a lot of ports here, but they cover a lot of ground. The laptop has a total of two USB Type-A ports (one 2.0 port and one 3.2 Gen. 1 port), a single Thunderbolt 4 port, an HDMI connector, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.
1 reason NOT to buy the Acer Swift 3 (SF314-59)
1. Upgradeability
Being a small and portable device, the upgradeability gets hit. The RAM is soldered onto the motherboard, while there is one M.2 PCIe x4 slot. The slot runs at PCIe 3.0 speeds, so don’t spend more on a PCIe 4.0 drive.
Here is our teardown video, which shows how to access the single M.2 slot, along with general cooling maintenance.