A great laptop with common shortcomings

I always feel that Acer laptops are underrated. I’m always impressed every time a company sends me a new model, but when the discussion about the best laptops comes up, the company is often overshadowed by the likes of HP, Lenovo, and Dell. And that’s still true with the Acer Swift 14, which took things to a higher level than its predecessor, the Swift 5.

The Acer Swift 14 is sleek, light and powerful. Aside from a few design changes made since the last one I reviewed in 2021, there’s also a big screen upgrade. Acer has opted for QHD+ technology this time around. These laptops used to only come in FHD, which was a real shame, and while it’s not the best display on the market, it’s a huge improvement.

There are two big drawbacks. One is sound quality, something other companies have focused on over the past few years, leaving Acer far behind. The other is that Acer used a 45W processor in the Swift 14, which is more powerful than you’ll have any use for, but can sometimes tax your battery.

Overall, I totally enjoy it for the reasons I mentioned above. I love colorful laptops too, and green and gold are always a great combination.

About this review: Acer sent us the Swift 14 for review and had no input on the contents of this article.

Acer Swift 14

recommended

The Acer Swift 14 is a productivity laptop with a gorgeous two-tone design and the latest 13th Gen Intel processors. It’s a follow up to the Acer Swift 5 and brings some changes, like a better 1440p webcam.

Brand

easier

color

green mist/steam blue

storage

512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD

CPU

Intel Core i5-13500H, Intel Core i7-13700H

memory

8GB, 16GB, 32GB LPDDR5

OS

Windows 11 Home operating system

battery

Rated for 9.5 hours (unspecified capacity)

ports

2 x Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C), 2 x USB Type-A, HDMI 2.1, 3.5mm headphone jack

camera

1440p with temporary noise reduction

screen (size, resolution)

14 inches, IPS, aspect ratio 16:10, WUXGA (1920 x 1200), touch / 14 inches IPS, aspect ratio 16:10, WQXGA (2560 x 1600), touch

Weight

It starts from 2.65 pounds

The dimension

12.22 x 8.4 x 0.59 in

network

Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6E 1675i, Bluetooth 5.1

Amplifiers

Dual speakers with dual microphones DTS Audio with Acer PurifiedVoice

price

$1,400

Positives

• Beautiful green and gold design
• super light
• Lots of ports
• Value for price

cons

• Excessive processor affects battery life
• sound quality
• The fan can get loud

Acer Swift 14 (2023) price and availability

Acer announced its latest Swift 14 at CES in January, but you can get it from Amazon or Acer now. Despite the fact that the company lists a bunch of different specifications, only one configuration is available in the US. It comes with an Intel Core i7-13700H processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD hard drive for $1,399.

design

Green, golden, and made of aluminium

The Acer Swift lineup is designed to be light, but the Swift 14 isn’t quite as light as it used to be. In fact, almost the entire lineup was made of magnesium alloy, which is one of the lightest materials you can use to build a laptop. while still there some Magnesium here, made mostly of aluminum now, which increases the weight to 2.65 pounds instead of 2.31 pounds. That’s still lighter than, say, Apple’s latest MacBook Air, so as you can imagine, it’s pretty light. Moreover, it looks and feels really premium.

It’s also a nice device. Acer has continued the green and gold colors used in previous years, so the new Swift 14 looks the same as it did with the 2022 model. Compared to the 2021 Magnesium, it’s much nicer. The sides are now brushed gold, and maintain the painted gold hinge.

The Acer Swift 14 comes with plenty of ports as well, which are rare in premium laptops these days. On the left side, you get two Thunderbolt 4 ports, along with an HDMI port and a USB Type-A port; On the right side, you’ll find a headphone jack and another USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port. The HDMI version is 2.1, which is fine, and the USB Type-A ports are USB 3.2 Gen 1, which offers speeds of 5Gbps. I suppose there’s a larger debate to be had about whether USB Type A data speeds matter anymore as long as they hit the Gen 1 baseline, but that’s for another time.

Overall, the port selection leaves nothing to be desired, but the real feature of the design is how beautiful this thing is. Light weight doesn’t hurt either.

Display and keyboard

Decent QHD screen, QHD webcam, and meh keyboard

The Acer Swift 14 has a 14-inch 2560 x 1600 display, which is nice because FHD screens have been pretty standard on Acer laptops for a while, even for the premium options. Unlike other companies, Acer doesn’t really offer consumer laptops in a range of configurations, so you tend to only have one screen option.

As far as actual testing goes, it supported 100% sRGB, 79% NTSC, 84% Adobe RGB, and 85% P3, which is pretty strong for non-OLED screens. The refresh rate, for those wondering, is still 60Hz.

In my testing, brightness maxed out at 544 nits, which is a little crazy since Acer only offers 425 nits. However, it wouldn’t be great in direct sunlight because the screen is very glossy.

The webcam is also solid, coming in at 3.7MP, which allows it to record in QHD. You’ll sound great on your calls, but most platforms will still broadcast in Full HD at best.

The Acer Swift 14 is one of those Intel-powered laptops that comes with Windows Studio Effects, which lets you blur the background, reframe the camera so it follows you, and even correct your vision so it looks like you’re looking at a camera.

I say “one of” Intel laptops because it may sound like a good addition, but it just doesn’t work very well. Windows Studio Effects is designed for processors that have a Neural Processing Unit such as a Qualcomm-based PC. With this, you can only run one feature at a time. It doesn’t even tell you that the secondary setup won’t work.

Moving on, the keyboard and touchpad are fine. It’s the same keyboard we’ve seen in Acer laptops a long time ago, and it won’t win any awards. If you want the best keyboard, you should check out HP laptops or Lenovo laptops.

The touchpad fits just as well as the keyboard. It’s fairly small and doesn’t take up as much real estate as possible. If you look across the 14-inch laptop market today, particularly in the premium segment, you’ll find much larger touchpads.

performance

The H-series processor is quite a lot

The Swift 14 that Acer sent me has an Intel Core i7-13700H processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB solid-state drive. In fact, these are some pretty solid specs for a $1,400 laptop.

However, I want to focus on the Core i7-13700H, which is a 45W CPU. Over the past couple of years, Intel has been preparing more powerful CPUs for its thin and light laptops. The problem is that no one is asking for more power in laptops that are thin and light. What people really want is responsiveness, battery life, and overall experience improvements.

Higher wattage also means greater power drain. Normally, I’d give you the ups and downs of my battery life test, with high scores and average scores, but I’d only read total minutes of use: 150, 163, 200, 220, 229, 240, 252.

These numbers should speak for themselves. As usual, I test laptops with it and measure how long it takes for the battery to die. Usage is pretty standard. I work in a Chromium web browser and use Slack, OneNote, and probably some other productivity apps. The fact that it only crossed the four hour mark once is too bad, and twice, it didn’t even get three hours.

Just a couple of years ago, this laptop had a 15W processor. While some laptop vendors have replaced these parts with 28W CPUs, they usually make up for it with a larger battery. This one has a 45W CPU and still has a 54Wh battery.

Now, back to CPU performance. It’s about average, as would be expected with any thin, light, productivity-oriented machine. Let’s take a look at some criteria.

The HP Dragonfly Pro shown above uses one of AMD’s newer Zen 3+ processors, which are better when plugged in but take a big hit if you’re running on battery. With Intel chips, the drop is not nearly as noticeable. However, what you should note are the areas where the Yoga 9i does better since it has a similar 13th-generation Intel processor, but with a 28W power part.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen this happen. When you take the power-hungry parts and cram them into a thin chassis, performance isn’t what you’d expect.

Should you buy the Acer Swift 14 (2023)?

You should buy the Acer Swift 14 (2023) if:

• You want a laptop that looks beautiful
• You have a lot of USB Type A accessories
• You take your computer on the go often

You should not buy the Acer Swift 14 (2023) if:

• You are a writer
• You can’t access power for long periods
• You are often in places that do not have Wi-Fi

The Swift 14’s shortcomings are really the same as its downsides for all Acer laptops. The keyboard is average, so if you’re a typist and that’s an essential part of the experience for you, you’ll want to look elsewhere. Acer also isn’t doing much in the way of 5G with laptops, especially consumer laptops.

But the Swift 14 is definitely a beauty, and it’s something Acer does really well. The company could make some nice laptops, even when it used to make all magnesium hardware. Now that it’s been moved to aluminum, it’s even better.

Acer Swift 14

The Acer Swift 14 is a productivity laptop with a gorgeous two-tone design and the latest 13th Gen Intel processors. It’s a follow up to the Acer Swift 5 and brings some changes, like a better 1440p webcam.