Acer Swift 3
What’s the story?
The Acer Swift 3 has solid components and a sleek design at a good price – and when you’re looking for a laptop around the £600 mark, those are the basics to get right. Powered by a modest AMD Ryzen 3 4300U, it does at least have four cores and Radeon graphics to handle everyday computing, media duties and casual gaming.
Is it any good?
The aluminium alloy chassis uses a simple tapered design, and its 1.2kg body makes it a good option for people who never sit still for long. The keyboard has speed and consistency, the trackpad is large, and the 14in 1080p panel has enough quality for work and social use.
Acer has included Wi-fi 6, USB-C and USB-A ports, and a reasonable webcam… but then things suddenly turn pretty ordinary. The battery lasts just eight hours, the screen could be brighter, build quality is middling, the speakers are only OK and there’s no card reader.
So the Swift 3 is far from perfect – but that’s always to be expected at this kind of price. Instead of trying to get everything right, the Acer impresses on the key points, and that makes it an excellent budget option.
If you want more power, faster Intel CPUS are available, and as with the HP, machines with new AMD chips are likely to emerge later this year.
Price from £600 / stuff.tv/swift3
● 14in 1920x1080 IPS
● Up to 2GHZ 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 or 2.8GHZ 4-core Intel i7, up to 8GB RAM
● 323x219x18mm, 1.2kg