Acer Swift 3 is a solid, no-frills machine, at a reasonable price. It won’t play graphics-intensive games very well, but the battery life is fantastic. This will get you through your workday or late night study without breaking a sweat.
Before I dive in, I need to clear up some confusion. Acer calls two slightly different laptops the same name: the Swift 3. Both versions use an 11th generation Intel Core processor. Both have the same keyboard trackpad, and fingerprint reader, but one—the one I’m reviewing here—has a 14-inch, 16:9, 1080p IPS display.
The other Acer Swift 3, which I haven’t tested yet, sports a 13.5-inch (2256 x 1504) 3:2 IPS display. The internal components are the same, but the resolution and screen shape are different. However, apart from the screen, pretty much everything I say here will apply to whatever model you choose.
The Acer Swift 3 is a thin, silver, understated and harmless-looking laptop. Its all-metal construction feels solid and durable in a backpack, making it a good choice for college. It’s also lightweight, weighing in at just 2.6 pounds, which is unheard of at a price point under $800. But as I said above, this isn’t a laptop that’s out to win design awards.
The keyboard isn’t the best or worst I’ve ever used. I’d like a thicker, more ThinkPad-style keyboard and keys, but for Chiclet-style keys, these have good travel and are incredibly fast to type on. The trackpad is a marked improvement over other Acers I’ve used. It’s more responsive and doesn’t feel mushy like the Acer trackpad has.
Thanks to its slightly thicker design, the Acer Swift 3 has plenty of ports. There are two USB-A ports, a USB-C Thunderbolt port (which can be charged if you have an adapter, or a portable battery, which provides ample power), a headphone jack, and an HDMI out.
There’s no SD card port, so you’ll need a dongle to dump photos and videos from your digital camera, but otherwise you won’t need as many adapters to use the accessories you already have, which is nice.
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The model I tested featured 16 gigabytes of RAM and a 512 gigabyte SSD paired with an 11th generation Intel i7 processor with Intel’s new EVO rating, which means it’s optimized for battery life, fast charging, and instant wake-up. Note that the list does not include performance. However, I was impressed with the Swift 3’s performance. It felt incredibly fast at handling the everyday tasks I do, including surfing the web, video conferencing, and even rendering some short 5.3K videos shot on the new GoPro Hero 10 Black.
Is it as fast as a $2,000 flagship machine? Of course not, but it’s fast enough for most use cases. That said, this is not a gaming laptop. No gaming laptop for under $1,000.
One place the Acer Swift 3 is head and shoulders above its predecessor is battery life. I can easily get a full day’s work without needing a charger (“work” in this case means using a web browser, editing photos and office documents, and so on). I often manage to over 14 hours with this workload, and if I dim the screen to 75 percent, I can go beyond Acer’s claimed 16 hours.
The biggest physical change from the previous model is the new hinge that has been adjusted to make way for the new speakers, which sound really good. Thanks to its 300-nit display, 100 percent sRGB coverage, and great sound, the Swift 3 is great for watching movies. The blacks in the shadows are nice and deep, and the colors appear richly saturated without being too overpowering.
There’s one thing I didn’t like about the Acer Swift 3, which was the same thing I didn’t like about the last model — the tiny, fragile-looking, non-USB single-pin charger. I’d say it’s fragile, but my wife’s Acer has the same pins, works fine, and is three years old, so it’s probably nothing to worry about. And the Swift 3 can charge from a USB-C thunderbolt port, which makes it even weirder. USB-C charger: This is the way of the future, Acer.
However, I think Acer Swift 3 is one of the best offerings on the market right now. For $1,000 you get a laptop that’s powerful enough for most people, has phenomenal battery life, a great screen, and great sound. For most of us, that’s more than enough.
