The first machines to come with the latest eighth generation of Intel processors were by Acer. They are known to offer affordable laptops with great specifications and durability though. One such laptop is the “Acer Swift 3”.
At the time of the launch, the Acer Swift 3 was considerably faster and more power efficient compared to other laptops on the shelf. Now that time has passed, this might not be true, but it still is quite powerful and inexpensive at the same time. The aluminum body offers protection against accidental drops and adds to the portability though you might feel disappointed by the screen display. If you are looking for a budget laptop then this should be your buy, else you can easily get one now with better displays.
Design
The laptop isn’t really any different from other notebooks out there, as its design is pretty much similar to what a Google Search on a notebook PC would bring up. Yes, the laptop chassis is built from aluminum but that doesn’t mean that the laptop stands out in any way. It looks just another laptop.
The aluminum deck is brushed and supports an island style keyboard and a fingerprint reader. The lid houses a 15.6-inch display with a screen resolution of 1080p. On the hinges, you would find the word “Swift” embedded in block colored in silver.
The area where the design could beat others out there would be laptop’s portability. It weighs just 4.4 pounds so it wouldn’t be difficult to carry it around all day. Apart from this, its thickness (or rather the thinness) measures just 0.7 inches. Compared to other laptops in the same industry segment, this is rather a much portable. For instance, the Dell Inspiron out there measures 0.9 inches in thickness and has a mass of 5.2 pounds. In contrast, Acer’s own Inspire E 15 E5-575-57D4 weighs 5 pounds and is1.2 inches thick. Only the Lenovo Flex 5 is somewhat similar to this with 0.8 inches thickness and 4.7 pounds in weight.
Ports
The ports are also the Swift 3’s strong point. It has the latest USB Type – C port, but that can’t be used for charging purposes. Further, there are a usual couple of USB 3.0 ports. Along with this are a full-sized HDMI output and a headphone jack too. On the right side of the laptop, you would find an SD card slot a USB 2.0 port and also a Kensington Lock slot too.
Display
The laptop’s device is where it lacks. You might have to use the laptop on maximum brightness since it isn’t a lot. Color accuracy isn’t that good either. The sRGB color gamut stands at just 78 percent. Although compared to the Inspiron’s 72 percent it might seem a bit more, but then again there are laptops out there like the Flex with 133 percent and Aspire with a whopping 158 percent. It falls even less than the industry’s average of 103 percent. This leads to less vivid hues.
As far as the brightness is concerned, the Swift 3 recorded a brightness level of 177 nits, which is considerably less than the industry average of 258 nits.
Keyboard and TrackPad
The keyboard has 1.2 millimeters of travel and requires just 68 grams of actuation force. Not only this, but the keyboard does feel soft to type on, so expect your typing speed to increase. Though, since the deck is made of aluminum, there isn’t much flex. Still, you won’t find it hard to type on.
Furthermore, with the TrackPad measuring 4.2 x 3.0 inches, it just spacious enough to easily scroll and perform gestures. Though, it must be stated that the trackpad is quite quick to respond and is accurate.
Audio
You might not find the speakers to be balanced equally although, you would find the audio to be smooth and nice. The speakers are loud, which isn’t found on most laptops. If you wanted to adjust the mix, there isn’t any built-in software to do so, sadly.
Battery Life
The Battery life might disappoint you considering the fact that this is isn’t a gaming laptop, nor has a screen with very high brightness levels. Nevertheless, the laptop lasts out 7 hours and 15 minutes at least, which should last out a work day assuming that you aren’t using it continuously. Though, it is still better than the industry average of 6 hours and 13 minutes. The laptops competitors like the Flex and Inspiron last out even less at 5 hours and 50 minutes and 4 hours and 25 minutes respectively. Though it should be noted that there are laptops like Aspire which lasted 10 hours and exactly 59 minutes, which last out through a work day completely.
Webcam
The Webcam records at 720p and the pictures are dark but sharp at the same time.
Heat
Users usually look for laptops which don’t generate much heat. The Acer Swift 3 is good at this since it doesn’t get hot even when used continuously.
Software (more of a bloatware) and Warranty
Disappointingly once again Acer lived up to its traditions and has Windows 10 with lots of bloatware. Things like eBay, Evernote, Priceline, Dashlane, Amazon, Netflix and WildTangent Games sitting right on your desktop might be a real turn-off for the tech-savvy. Not only this, but there is Acer’s very own software too. These things are unwanted, therefore, if it were up to more, I would perform a clean install of Windows right away.
Acer does provide an included one year warranty with the Swift 3. Therefore, in case your laptop malfunctions within the first year, you can always claim warranty.
Price
The laptop is available for a starting price tag of $500 with a core i3-7100 CPU, which we would strictly advise you against. Instead, the Swift 3 with 1.6-GHz Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB M.2 PCIe SSD for a price tag of $699.99 is the one you should rather go for since with the latest eighth generation, the i5 processor now comes as quad-core rather than dual core. There are a variety of configurations, but it would be better if you go for the latest generation of processors, even if it costs $50 or $100 more.