Acer Swift X 14 Review: Staid however Speedy OLED Ultraportable

8.6

Acer Swift X 14

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Like

• 
  Powerful but ultraportable
• 
  Gorgeous OLED show
• 
  Strong efficiency from newest Intel and Nvidia tech
• 
  Lots of ports

Don’t like

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  Boring design
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  Some flex to all-metal chassis
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  Keyboard and touchpad are meh
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  Terrible audio system

Beneath a compact and admittedly mundane exterior hides a strong, OLED ultraportable for content material creators. The Acer Swift X 14 is endowed with a beautiful 14.5-inch OLED show and powered by the newest Intel and Nvidia silicon within the type of a Thirteenth-gen Core i7 CPU and an RTX 4050 GPU. We often discover such a duo in a bigger machine; content material creation laptops sometimes characteristic 16- or 17-inch shows to offer creators extra room to work. Like the Lenovo Slim Pro 7, the Swift X 14 supplies the wanted muscle for demanding graphics work however in a extra transportable package deal. 

Our $1,500 Swift X 14 overview system prices $300 greater than the Lenovo Slim Pro 7 I not too long ago reviewed, and I believe it is cash nicely spent. Both laptops characteristic drab exteriors, however the Swift X 14 will get you an OLED show that is clearly superior to the Slim Pro 7’s plain-Jane IPS panel. Colors are extra vivid, the distinction ratio is vastly higher with true black ranges, the decision is barely greater, and it is even a bit sooner with a 120Hz refresh charge. The transfer from IPS to an OLED panel is well worth the added price alone, however the Swift X 14 sweetens the deal additional by supplying newer RTX graphics and higher efficiency together with a bigger SSD. For inventive execs and college students who not often work on the similar desk on consecutive days, the Swift X 14 deserves robust consideration.

Acer sells two fashions of the Swift X 14. The baseline mannequin prices $1,100 and incorporates a Core 5-13500H CPU, 16GB of RAM, previous-gen RTX 3050 graphics and a 512GB SSD. You do not get an OLED panel with this baseline mannequin however an ordinary LED-backlit LCD with a 2.5K (2,560×1,600 pixels) decision and 120Hz refresh charge. The step-up mannequin that we reviewed prices $1,500 and incorporates a Core i7-13700H CPU, RTX 4050 graphics and a 1TB SSD together with an OLED panel with a 2.8K (2,880×1,800 pixels) decision. At the time of this writing, this mannequin (SFX14-71G-76LC) is $100 off at Amazon and promoting for $1,400. Both fashions are out there in Australia for AU$2,699 and AU$2,999. In the UK, solely AMD-based Swift X fashions with previous-gen RTX graphics can be found. 

Generic and grey

With an inoffensive however not terribly attention-grabbing darkish grey enclosure, the Swift X 14 appears no totally different from any variety of laptops available on the market proper now. Acer goes for a minimalist design with no color-contrasting accents and solely a small Acer emblem on the highest of the lid and a tiny Swift wordmark on the best aspect of the wrist relaxation. Without these clues, it could be troublesome to know if this was a laptop computer from Acer or Lenovo or Dell or HP. It is an all-aluminum chassis, which is vastly preferable to a plastic shell, however it’s not terribly rugged. The lid feels a bit flimsy, and there is some flex within the keyboard deck. The Swift X 14 lacks the MIL-STD ruggedness of the Lenovo Slim Pro 7 and would not really feel almost as inflexible.

The Swift X 14 is a tad lighter than competing 14-inch laptops at 3.4 kilos. That’s lighter than the three.6-pound Slim Pro 7 and three.5-pound MacBook Pro 14. It’s even a hair lighter than one of many lightest 14-inch laptops we reviewed this yr, the HP Dragonfly Pro. 

Both the Slim Pro 7 and Dragonfly Pro characteristic a keyboard flanked by speaker grilles and discover room for 4 audio system. Sadly, the Swift X 14 options solely a pair of audio system, and so they fireplace downward from beneath the laptop computer. They aren’t muffled as a lot as they’d have been on the very backside panel and as a substitute are positioned on the sides of the underside panel that slope up diagonally. Still, they produced muddy audio with a definite lack of bass response. I had hoped the 2 speaker grilles on the underside edges would have two woofers behind them with two tweeters behind what appears like a speaker grille above the keyboard. Sadly, the latter is merely venting for the cooling system. There is extra venting on the again edge, too, and on the underside panel.

Whether for area constraints or adherence to a minimalist aesthetic, many ultraportables forgo ports and provide solely a naked minimal. That isn’t the case with the Swift X 14. It provides a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a pair of USB Type-A ports, an HDMI out, a headphone jack and a microSD card slot. Most are positioned on the left edge, with solely one of many USB-A ports and the microSD card slot on the best. 

The keyboard itself is among the quietest keyboards on which I’ve typed in current reminiscence. Typing is sort of silent, however does come on the expense of a barely mushy really feel to the keys. I most popular the firmer chassis and snappier suggestions of the keyboards on each the Slim Pro 7 and Dragonfly Pro. The Swift X 14 keyboard provides two-level backlighting, which is at all times appreciated. And the ability button doubles as a fingerprint reader for straightforward, safe log-ins.

The touchpad felt clean and correct when swiping and pinching, however the journey of the press response felt a little bit too deep. The results of this deep journey is a free feeling when clicking.

But that display although

So, to summarize: the design is uninspired, the all-metal chassis is not essentially the most inflexible, the keyboard and touchpad depart one thing to be desired and the audio system are subpar. Given all that, I nonetheless would suggest the Swift X 14 to sure customers. And the reason being its 14.5-inch OLED show and the efficiency behind it. 

The Swift X 14’s 14.5-inch OLED panel boasts a 2.8K (2,880×1,800 pixels) decision with a 16:10 side ratio and a 120Hz refresh charge. The 2.8K decision is finer than the two.5K decision (2,560×1,600 pixels) of the Slim Pro 7 and much superior to the HP Dragonfly Pro’s full-HD (1,920×1,200 pixels) panel. Not solely are textual content and edges of pictures crisper, notably when considered towards the Dragonfly Pro, however the distinction can be so a lot better it is not even a contest. The Swift X 14’s OLED panel produces absolute black ranges and vibrant whites, and the colours look vivid and correct. The Swift X 14’s show is rated for 400 nits of brightness and helps 100% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut.

Content creators will admire the show’s stellar distinction and colour accuracy, and video editors will benefit from the 120Hz refresh charge that leads to smoother motion. The Swift X 14’s 120Hz panel is twice as quick because the Dragonfly Pro’s normal 60Hz show and sooner than the Slim Pro 7’s 90Hz show. Unlike these two competing fashions, nonetheless, the Swift X 14 doesn’t supply contact help.

And now we get to the Swift X 14’s efficiency. It was almost a clear sweep in labs testing towards the 2 AMD-based fashions, the HP Dragonfly Pro and Lenovo Slim Pro 7, and two Intel-based laptops, the Asus ROG Flow Z13 and Dell XPS 15 9520. The HP depends on built-in AMD Radeon Graphics, however the remainder characteristic both RTX 3050 or 3050 Ti graphics, that are a technology behind the Swift X 14’s RTX 4050 GPU. The Swift X 14 was clearly tops on our Geekbench and Cinebench exams, in addition to in our trio of 3D graphics and gaming exams. It completed second to the Core i9-based Asus ROG Flow Z13 on PCMark 10 and was merely common on our battery drain take a look at with a runtime of almost 7.5 hours. Battery life is actually the one challenge with choosing OLED over LCD. 

The Swift X 14’s robust efficiency and its unbelievable 14.5-inch OLED show outweigh the negatives we discovered with the laptop computer’s design. None of the negatives are deal breakers, and we’ve not seen a greater show on an ultraportable outdoors of the 14-inch MacBook Pro. For content material creators who do not wish to be weighed by an enormous Windows laptop computer, the Swift X 14 provides unmatched ultraportable efficiency together with an OLED panel that delivers the show constancy wanted for detailed graphics work.