Acer Swift 3x review: An agile laptop for antsy artists | Laptop Mag
Our Verdict
The Acer Swift 3x is a zippy machine for impatient content creators who desire a fast-performing laptop that can handle calorie-free photo and video editing; information technology'due south a shame well-nigh the bombardment life, though.
For
- Contest-beating performance
- Ultra-fast SSD
- Speedy video transcoding
- Sugariness colour options
- Peachy multitasking muscle
- Decent graphics prowess
Against
- Serenity speakers
- Dim display
- Bombardment life could be ameliorate
Laptop Mag Verdict
The Acer Swift 3x is a zippy machine for impatient content creators who want a fast-performing laptop that can handle light photo and video editing; information technology's a shame about the battery life, though.
Pros
- +
Competition-beating functioning
- +
Ultra-fast SSD
- +
Speedy video transcoding
- +
Sweet colour options
- +
Nifty multitasking musculus
- +
Decent graphics prowess
Cons
- -
Quiet speakers
- -
Dim display
- -
Battery life could be amend
- -
Acer Swift 3x specs
Price: $1,199
CPU: Intel Core i7-1165G7
GPU: Intel Iris Xe MAX
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 1TB SSD
Display: 14-inch, 1080p
Battery: vii:53
Size: 12.vii ten 8.six x 0.7 inches
Weight: 3.02 pounds
The Acer Swift 3x, priced at $1,199, is no punk. In fact, information technology'due south a monstrous, mighty machine. No affair what you throw at it, this notebook will shred 'em to pieces. Even when we pitted the Swift 3x against herculean premium laptops like the Dell XPS 13, the Acer ultraportable drew blood and took no prisoners. This machine is, indeed, a beast! Skeptical? But look 'til yous run into our results for this breakneck brute.
If that isn't plenty to excite you, the Swift 3x also packs Intel'southward first detached graphics in ii decades: Iris Xe Max. Don't get as well excited, though — you won't be able to play any GPU-crushing games like Microsoft Flight Simulator, merely the Iris Xe Max GPU volition requite you an extra boost for light editing work and casual gaming y'all won't get from Intel's integrated graphics.
I do have a few grievances, though. The Swift 3x's bombardment life and dim brandish just don't cut it — maybe all that competition-beating power comes with some trade-offs.
Acer Swift 3x cost and configuration options
The Acer Swift 3x starts at $899 and comes with a 14-inch, 1080p display, a quad-cadre, two.4GHz Intel Core i5-1135G7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and Intel Iris Xe Max graphics. Our review unit of measurement, priced at $1,199, upgrades your internals to an Intel Core i7-1165G7 CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. Both configurations are available in Steam Blue and Safari Gold.
Acer Swift 3x design
The Swift 3x deviates from the typical, boring ol' black-or-gray designs that plague the laptop market. My review unit of measurement is wrapped in a rich Steam Blue coating that's reminiscent of a nighttime-denim hue. It'south conspicuous enough to stand out from the crowd as it contrasts with the lid's reflective Acer logo, simply it's also subdued — information technology's neither loud nor garish.
Some other hit feature of the Swift 3x is its electrical-bluish hinge, which adds a splash of drama to the dusky chassis. Open the chapeau and you'll be introduced to slim-ish bezels that frame the 14-inch, 1080p display. The superlative bezel houses a 720p HD camera while the chin, which is twice as large as the other three bezels, sports a silver Acer logo.
Moving on to the deck, you'll find white symbols and letters superimposed on clicky black keys. Below the island-style keyboard, you'll find a touchpad that takes up a tertiary of the deck. On the far correct — below the arrow keys — is a fingerprint scanner.
The Swift 3x isn't too heavy nor super thick, but there are lighter ultraportable laptops on the market place. The Swift 3x weighs 3.02 pounds and is 0.7 inches thick. Its rivals — HP Spectre x360 14 (3 pounds, 0.67 inches thick), Asus ZenBook xiii (2.v pounds, 0.v inches thick) and the Dell XPS 13 (2.eight pounds, 0.six inches thick) — are all lighter and thinner.
Acer Swift 3x ports
The Acer Swift 3x has a decent stock of ports — there are six in total.
On the left side are three ports: HDMI 2.0, USB Type-A 3.ii Gen 1 and Thunderbolt four. You'll find three more ports on the right side, including another USB Type-A 3.2 Gen i port, a headset/mic jack and a Kensington lock slot.
Acer Swift 3x brandish
The Acer Swift 3x has a 14-inch, 1080p display with a screen-to-torso ratio of 84%. One aspect most the Swift 3x's panel that struck me immediately is its color richness. I watched Disney's Cruella trailer and the hitting, carmine dress that Emma Stone wore defenseless my eye like a sparkling ruby precious stone. Three growling Dalmatians bared their jagged white teeth, showing off the display's colour reproduction capabilities.
The Swift 3x'south brandish isn't the sharpest nor the crispest I've reviewed (it'south no 4K panel, of form), only it'south withal decent for a trip down the YouTube rabbit hole or binge-watching shows on your favorite streaming platforms.
Co-ordinate to our colorimeter, the Swift 3x reproduces 79% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is less than the average premium laptop, but it outperforms the Spectre x360 14 (75%), the Zenbook thirteen (76%) and the XPS 13 (70%).
Unfortunately, the Swift 3x isn't equally bright as I would accept hoped. It averaged simply 294 nits; this is dimmer than the boilerplate premium laptop (390 nits), the Spectre x360 fourteen (365 nits), the ZenBook 13 (370 nits) and the XPS 13 (488 nits).
Acer Swift 3x keyboard and touchpad
Acer'south thin-and-light laptop keyboards tin be shallow in my feel, but the keys bounce back like rambunctious toddlers on a trampoline — the Swift 3x's island-style, clicky keyboard is no different. It offers excellent tactile feedback and a satisfying typing experience.
On the 10fastfingers.com typing test, I reached 89 words per infinitesimal, which is slightly higher than my 87-wpm boilerplate. I automatically got accustomed to the Swift 3x's keyboard as if I've been typing on it for ages.
Below the arrow keys, yous'll find a rectangular fingerprint scanner that works like a amuse with Windows Hi. I was able to log into the Swift 3x in microseconds thanks to its swift biometric authentication. Under the spacebar is a spacious four.ane x 2.5-inch touchpad. Thanks to its Windows x Precision drivers, gestures, such as iii-finger tabbing and two-finger scrolling, were super responsive.
Acer Swift 3x audio
The Acer Swift 3x features dual DTS-tuned speakers located on the laptop'southward underside. I tried to blast "Good Days" to take SZA's sugariness-sounding vocals fill my minor testing room, only unfortunately, the Swift 3x'southward speakers are too damn quiet. If you find yourself sans headphones in a loud, noisy location, you lot will probable have some problem hearing your content — even at max volume.
Nonetheless, if you tend to work alone in a quiet room (and you're not finicky about having thunderous speakers), the Swift 3x's speakers may be fine for you. Aside from the shy output, "Practiced Days" and other songs sounded decent on the Swift 3x.
You lot can use the DTS app to tune the speakers to your liking. In that location are three audio profiles: Music, Movies and Games. Naturally, I preferred the Music preset during my Spotify session — Movies sounded too echo-y and Games added too much grit.
Acer Swift 3x functioning
I dared the Swift 3x's Intel Core i5-1135G7 CPU and 8GB of RAM to juggle 32 Google Chrome tabs. I besides threw in a trio of YouTube pages playing 1080p videos for good measure out. I'g pretty sure the Swift 3x scoffed at me and said, "Am I a joke to you?" The onslaught of Google Chrome tabs didn't faze the Swift 3x — the Acer laptop juggled it all like a champ.
The Swift 3x also performed well on our synthetic tests. On the Geekbench 5 overall performance exam, the Swift 3x achieved 5,803, which crushed the average premium laptop (4,128). The Swift 3x also demolished the scores of its rivals: the Spectre x360 14 (4,937), the ZenBook thirteen (5,084) and the XPS thirteen (5,517). All share the same CPU every bit the Swift 3x.
On the HandBrake test, the Swift 3x transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in 11 minutes and 54 seconds, which is a hell of a lot faster than the average premium laptop (17:07). The Swift 3x also whizzed past the Spectre x360 fourteen (17:02), the ZenBook 13 (17:51) and the XPS 13 (15:52) like a rocket zipping to space.
The Swift 3x's 1TB SSD duplicated 25GB of multimedia files in just 35 seconds for a transfer rate of 771.iv megabytes per 2d. This rate is faster than the category boilerplate (570.4MBps), the Spectre x360 xiv (764MBps, 1TB SSD), ZenBook 13 (583.6MBps, 1TB SSD) and the XPS 13 (405.5MBps, 512GB SSD).
The Intel Iris Xe Max within the Swift 3x is a discrete GPU, just it isn't platonic for hardcore gaming and intensive video editing work. The Iris Xe Max doesn't stand up a chance against an RTX 30-series GPU; it's chop suey compared to Nvidia's offerings. The Swift 3x produced 26 frames per second on the Sid Meier's Civilization Vi: Gathering Storm gaming criterion, which is just below the 28-fps average. Even so, the Swift 3x's GPU outperformed the integrated Intel Xe graphics packed inside the Spectre x360 fourteen (20 fps), the ZenBook 13 (21 fps) and the XPS 13 (21 fps), proving that the Iris Xe Max offers a slight heave in frame rates.
The Swift 3x is the beginning Acer notebook to characteristic Intel'south new Iris Xe Max GPU. Overall, Iris Xe Max is less-than-optimal for heavy graphics-intensive applications, but y'all can surely dive into some light gaming and content-creation piece of work without any issues.
Acer Swift 3x bombardment life
Acer claims that the Swift 3x offers 17.5 hours of battery life, just keep in heed that the Taiwan-based visitor used a video-rundown test to become that result.
On the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, the Swift 3x, unfortunately, lasted only vii hours and 53 minutes. This is seven minutes brusk of our preferred eight-hr runtime. The Swift 3x's runtime was shorter than the boilerplate premium laptop (10 hours and 8 minutes), the Spectre x360 14 (12 hours and 11 minutes), the ZenBook thirteen (13 minutes and 47 seconds) and the XPS xiii (10 hours and 52 minutes).
Acer Swift 3x webcam
The 1280 x 720-resolution Hard disk webcam, located on the superlative bezel, supports super-loftier dynamic range imaging. I've tested quite a few webcams and I've noticed that integrated laptop cameras are known for being less-than-impressive — the Swift 3x'southward camera is no exception. All the same, I have seen worse.
The Swift 3x's photographic camera reproduces colors pretty well, picking up on my lavender walls and nearby salmon pink purse. The movie quality is a tad grainy, but again, that's par for the course for laptop cameras — they typically have some visual dissonance. The Acer Swift 3x's camera will do the chore for personal Zoom calls with your loved ones, but if you desire more of a professional person, sharp, high-quality look for YouTube videos or hosting virtual conferences, I'd recommend purchasing an external webcam.
Acer Swift 3x heat
The Swift 3x remained as cool as the other side of a pillow. The touchpad climbed to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, which is way below our 95-degree comfort threshold. The keyboard and bottom of the laptop also were also chillin' similar a villain, reaching only 81 and 86 degrees, respectively. The Swift 3's hottest location — an area between the vents on the underside — peaked at 86 degrees.
It's worth noting that y'all can control the Swift 3x'due south cooling fans by pressing Fn + F. This will allow y'all to toggle between three modes: Silent, Normal and Performance.
Acer Swift 3x software and warranty
The Acer Swift 3x is equipped with Windows ten Home and it comes with a slew of bloatware, including Cribbage Deluxe, ExpressVPN, Hearts Palatial, Uncomplicated Mahjong, Simple Solitaire, Simple Spider Solitaire. Proficient grief! How many card games does the Swift 3x demand?
You'll also notice a scattering of Acer-branded software such as Acer Collection S, Acer Configuration, Acer Jumpstart, Acer Product Registration and Acer Care Center. Content creators — the principal niche that Acer hopes to capture with this laptop — maywill appreciate Cyberlink's PhotoDirector and PowerDirector apps, which help users with photo and video editing piece of work.
The Swift 3x ships with a one-twelvemonth warranty. See how Acer did on our Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Brands ranking.
Bottom line
The Acer Swift 3x is a performance powerhouse, knocking all of its rivals out of the band on our criterion tests. Compared to its three competitors, the Swift 3x has the zippiest CPU, the fastest SSD, the best graphics prowess and the widest DCI-P3 coverage.
However, the Swift 3x struggled to come up out on top in an area that matters to many: battery life. On average, the Swift 3x lasted 4 hours and ix minutes less than its competitors. If yous want longer battery life, the HP Spectre x360 14 and the Asus ZenBook 13 offer 12 hours and 13 hours of battery life, respectively. If you lot're not a fan of the Swift 3x's dim display, the Dell XPS thirteen is your all-time bet with its 488-nit panel.
Still, the Swift 3x volition requite you the fastest file-transfer rates and the most rapid video transcoding, which is essential for content creators who want things done chop-chop and efficiently. The Swift 3x won't go along you waiting. On our video-editing test, the Swift 3x completed a transcoding task nearly six minutes faster than its rivals.
The Swift 3x is an ideal choice for content creators who want to go their hands on a breakneck car, just battery life and effulgence have a hit on this Acer ultraportable.
Source: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/acer-swift-3x
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