Monday, October 26, 2020

Acer Swift 3 (AMD Ryzen 7 4700U) Review

The Acer Swift 3 is one of the recent additions to the Swift lineup, flaunting a lightweight built and an elegant-looking sleek design. Aside from its premium look, the ultrabook that we have now is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 4700U processor with up to 8 “Zen 2” cores, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and an AMD Radeon graphics. Let’s see what else it can deliver through a review.

Design and Construction

The device flaunts a premium design in Pure Silver. It slays not only its good look but also takes the benefit of its matte-finish body that can repel fingerprints and smudges well. Moreover, resting at the center of the elegantly silver chassis is the laptop’s reflective branding.

Opening up the lid greets you with a 14-inch IPS screen with a 1920 x 1080 display showing off a decent resolution. It comes with narrow side bezels with a fair-sized top where the 720p webcam is located, and the chin shows off another reflective branding.

The keyboard boasts the same Pure Silver color as its body. The keys are smooth and comfortable for typing. Although, what’s unlikeable about the keyboard’s layout is the power button’s spot next to the delete button, making it prone to unintentionally touching the power button and turning the laptop off.

The keyboard also comes with a white backlit, convenient for working even at night or in dark places.

Found below the keyboard is the trackpad, which performs smooth cursor control and responsive command gestures. Moreover, seen at the keyboard’s lower-right corner is the Windows Hello fingerprint scanner for easier logging-in on the laptop, which is responsive too.

You will see ports for charging, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, and HDMI, located on the left side.

We have the 3.5mm audio jack combo, a USB 2.0 port, and a Kensington lock port on the opposite side. Sadly, this laptop version does not come with an ethernet port, so you will have to get a hub for it if needed.

What you’ll find under are vents for cooling its hardware and the rubber feet. Meanwhile, the two speaker grilles are found resting at the upper part, adjacent to the hinge.

You can also tilt the display to lay flat at up to 180-degrees, so you can adjust it to suit your viewing needs.

For its total look, the Acer Swift 3 has a classy look you can proudly flaunt anywhere. At first glance, it has somewhat similar to MacBook’s design without looking at the branding. Moreover, it is slender with its 15.95mm metal chassis and indeed lightweight at 1.2kg.

Display and Multimedia

The Acer Swift 3 has a 14-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS non-glare display. Surrounding the screen are its narrow bezels with a fair-sized top and chin. The display is clear and vibrant, with decent viewing angles. However, the display can also be dim under some lighting situations, especially on a lower brightness, so we preferably place it at 70%.

Nonetheless, there is nothing special with the device’s sound, although it still delivers clear and crisp audio quality. It is just good enough for video calls or meetings, video streaming, and the like.

OS and Features

The Acer Swift 3 runs on Windows 10 Home with some pre-installed applications such as the Acer Collection 5, Acer Care Center, PhotoDirector, PowerDirector, and others. The Microsoft Windows also features Wake On Voice (WoV) to activate Windows 10 when the screen is off and allow interaction with Cortana while the device is in Modern Standby mode.

Furthermore, it is equipped with Norton Security Ultra anti-virus software to keep the laptop protected and secured.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering the Acer Swift 3 is the AMD Ryzen 7 4700U processor with up to 8 “Zen 2” cores, AMD Radeon Graphics, 8GB DDR4 RAM, and 512GB SSD. The configuration is great for productivity tasks like heavy Chrome browsing, Office applications, video streaming, and photo editing. We have tried using it with lots of tabs opened while multi-tasking, and yet it can still perform fast and smoothly. With its processors and graphics, this, too, can be used for light, non-graphic-intensive titles.

Check out the benchmark scores below.

• PCMark 10 – 3,030
• 3DMark – 1,057 (Time Spy)
• Geekbench 5 – 674 (Single-Core) 3,910 (Multi-Core)
• Cinebench R20 – 2,348 (CPU), 433 (CPU – Single-Core)
• CrystalDiskMark 7 –1,815.32 MB/s (Seq. Read), 1,216.90 MB/s (Seq. Write)

Connectivity and Battery Life

It is equipped with the latest WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, and has ports mentioned earlier when it comes to connectivity. These are basic features but essential for most tasks.

Powering the device is a 3-cell 48W battery. Using it for work with heavy Google browsing, photo editing, and video streaming, the battery lasts up to 6 to 7 hours of usage under Better Battery mode. Also, charging the ultrabook with its included 65W AC adapter can give you 100% in just 1 hour and 25 minutes.

However, our video loop test involves playing a 1080p video on loop at 50% brightness and volume under Airplane mode and better battery mode; it has delivered 8 hours and 57 minutes worth of playback.

Conclusion

To sum up, with the Acer Swift 3’s slim and lightweight build, good performance for its class, a nice set of I/Os, and decent battery life, this can be considered a great device for school or professional use and entertainment as well. You might not be able to play games on it, but it has enough power to take on your daily tasks. Acer is yet to announce the local SRP of this model, but we’ll let you know once we have the information.

Acer Swift 3 specs:
14-inch IPS 1920 x 1080 display
AMD Ryzen 7 4700U CPU
AMD Radeon Graphics
8GB LPDDR4 SDRAM
512GB PCIe NVMe SSD
WiFi 6 (802.11ax)
Bluetooth 5.0
USB Type-A
USB Type-C
HDMI
USB 2.0
3.5mm Audio Jack combo
Built-in webcam
Backlit keyboard
Windows Hello Fingerprint reader
Windows 10 Home
48Wh battery w/ 65W charger
1.2 kg
Pure Silver