Acer Swift 3 SF314-43
Despite some signs of cost-cutting, there’s much to tempt anyone looking for power on a budget
PRICE £583 (£699 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk
If you’re on a tight budget and need multicore power, then nothing ticks the boxes quite like this AMD-powered Swift 3. The Ryzen 5 5500U is the key to its success, with six cores and 12 threads ensuring it whips through multicore tasks in no time. That’s despite the limiting 8GB of RAM, which is soldered onto the motherboard (there’s no SODIMM socket so no upgrade route). AMD’s Radeon Vega 7 graphics can’t match the CPU for potency, but a 77fps average in Dirt: Showdown shows that it has some gaming prowess.
Anyone who thinks you need to choose Intel for battery life should also take note of this laptop’s fine performance in our video-rundown test, where it kept going for 11hrs 24mins, even if that figure dropped to 8hrs 7mins in office duties. It’s compact and light, too, measuring 15.9mm thick and weighing a discreet 1.2kg. What a shame you can’t power it via the USB-C connector, which means you’ll need to lug the 344g DC power supply on your travels.
Acer also finds room for two USB-A ports, one on either side, plus an HDMI output on the left. You can use the USB-C connector to hook up a monitor too. This neatly bypasses one of the Swift 3’s relative weak points, namely the 14in, 1080p screen. It covers only 53% of the sRGB gamut, colour accuracy is poor and a 925:1 contrast ratio is the worst we measured on test.
This means the Swift 3 wouldn’t be our top choice for photos or films – hollow speakers don’t help here – but pleasant-looking whites mean we’d be more than happy to use it for office duties. And surprisingly it packs one of the best keyboards, too. There isn’t much travel, but the action is nicely cushioned and there’s a backlight if you need it. The trackpad is more basic and clicky.
As with the Aspire 5, where Acer lets itself down is the design. The obviously fake metal-effect plastic gives the Swift 3 a cheap look, which makes you wonder how long it will last under duress. Still, Acer beats the industry average for laptop reliability in our annual survey ( see issue 326, p26), and the lid is made from metal to protect against in-bag bashes.
You can’t expect luxuries such as facial recognition at this price – nor a great webcam, unless you’re fond of drab colours – but the tiny fingerprint reader works well. And we’ve saved the best to last: the Swift 3 we reviewed (part code NX.AB1EK.007) comes with a 1TB SSD yet still costs £699. A Ryzen 3 version with a
256GB SSD costs £529. So long as you can live with its limitations, this is a great-value offering.