Acer Swift X 14 Review: Staid but Speedy OLED Ultraportable

8.6

Acer Swift X 14

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Highly effective but ultraportable
Beautiful OLED show
Sturdy efficiency from newest Intel and Nvidia tech
A lot of ports

Don’t love

Boring design
Some flex to all-metal chassis
Keyboard and touchpad are meh
Horrible 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 most recent 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 usually function 16- or 17-inch shows to offer creators extra room to work. Just like the Lenovo Slim Professional 7, the Swift X 14 supplies the wanted muscle for demanding graphics work however in a extra transportable bundle.

Our $1,500 Swift X 14 evaluate system prices $300 greater than the Lenovo Slim Professional 7 I lately reviewed, and I believe it is cash properly spent. Each laptops function drab exteriors, however the Swift X 14 will get you an OLED show that is clearly superior to the Slim Professional 7’s plain-Jane IPS panel. Colours are extra vivid, the distinction ratio is vastly higher with true black ranges, the decision is barely increased, and it is even a bit sooner with a 120Hz refresh fee. The transfer from IPS to an OLED panel is definitely 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 Swift X 14

Geekbox	Acer Swift X 14
Value as reviewed	$1,500
Show measurement/decision	14.5-inch 2,880×1,800 OLED show
CPU	2.4GHz Intel Core i7-13700H
Reminiscence	16GB LP-DDR5 6,400MHz
Graphics	6GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 Graphics
Storage	1TB NVMe SSD
Networking	802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6E); Bluetooth 5.1
Working system	Home windows 11 House 22H2

Acer sells two fashions of the Swift X 14. The baseline mannequin prices $1,100 and encompasses 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 fee. The step-up mannequin that we reviewed prices $1,500 and encompasses 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. On the time of this writing, this mannequin (SFX14-71G-76LC) is $100 off at Amazon and promoting for $1,400. Each fashions can be found in Australia for AU$2,699 and AU$2,999. Within 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. With out these clues, it could be troublesome to know if this was a laptop computer from Acer or Lenovo or Dell or HP. It’s an all-aluminum chassis, which is enormously preferable to a plastic shell, nevertheless 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 Professional 7 and would not really feel almost as inflexible.

Acer Swift X 14 gray lid — Matt Elliott/CNET

The Swift X 14 is a tad lighter than competing 14-inch laptops at 3.4 kilos. That is lighter than the three.6-pound Slim Professional 7 and three.5-pound MacBook Professional 14. It is even a hair lighter than one of many lightest 14-inch laptops we reviewed this 12 months, the HP Dragonfly Professional.

Each the Slim Professional 7 and Dragonfly Professional function 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, they usually fireplace downward from beneath the laptop computer. They don’t seem to be muffled as a lot as they’d have been on the very backside panel and as a substitute are situated on the sides of the underside panel that slope up diagonally. Nonetheless, 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’s further venting on the again edge, too, and on the underside panel.

Acer Swift X 14 ports on the left side — With each USB-C ports on the left aspect, charging is much less versatile than if Acer had put one on either side.

Matt Elliott/CNET

Whether or not for area constraints or adherence to a minimalist aesthetic, many ultraportables forgo ports and provide solely a naked minimal. That’s not the case with the Swift X 14. It presents a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a pair of USB Kind-A ports, an HDMI out, a headphone jack and a microSD card slot. Most are situated 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 latest 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 Professional 7 and Dragonfly Professional. The Swift X 14 keyboard presents two-level backlighting, which is all the time appreciated. And the facility button doubles as a fingerprint reader for straightforward, safe log-ins.

Acer Swift X 14 keyboard and touchpad — Matt Elliott/CNET

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.

However that display screen although

So, to summarize: the design is uninspired, the all-metal chassis is not essentially the most inflexible, the keyboard and touchpad go away one thing to be desired and the audio system are subpar. Given all that, I nonetheless would advocate 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 facet ratio and a 120Hz refresh fee. The two.8K decision is finer than the two.5K decision (2,560×1,600 pixels) of the Slim Professional 7 and much superior to the HP Dragonfly Professional’s full-HD (1,920×1,200 pixels) panel. Not solely are textual content and edges of photos crisper, notably when considered in opposition to the Dragonfly Professional, 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 shiny 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.

Acer Swift X 14 14.5-inch OLED display — Matt Elliott/CNET

Content material creators will recognize the show’s stellar distinction and colour accuracy, and video editors will benefit from the 120Hz refresh fee that ends in smoother motion. The Swift X 14’s 120Hz panel is twice as quick because the Dragonfly Professional’s normal 60Hz show and sooner than the Slim Professional 7’s 90Hz show. Not like these two competing fashions, nevertheless, the Swift X 14 doesn’t supply contact assist.

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

The Swift X 14’s robust efficiency and its unimaginable 14.5-inch OLED show outweigh the negatives we discovered with the laptop computer’s design. Not one of the negatives are deal breakers, and we’ve not seen a greater show on an ultraportable outdoors of the 14-inch MacBook Professional. For content material creators who do not wish to be weighed by an enormous Home 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.

The evaluate course of for laptops, desktops, tablets and different computer-like units consists of two elements: efficiency testing underneath managed circumstances within the CNET Labs and intensive hands-on use by our professional reviewers. This contains evaluating a tool’s aesthetics, ergonomics and options. A ultimate evaluate verdict is a mix of each goal and subjective judgments.

The checklist of benchmarking software program we use modifications over time because the units we check evolve. Crucial core assessments we’re presently operating on each appropriate laptop embody: Primate Labs Geekbench 5, Cinebench R23, PCMark 10 and 3DMark Hearth Strike Extremely.

A extra detailed description of every benchmark and the way we use it may be present in our How We Check Computer systems web page.

Geekbench 5 (multicore)

Acer Swift X 14 13,225Asus ROG Movement Z13 11,629Dell XPS 15 9520 11,138HP Dragonfly Professional 9,146Lenovo Slim Professional 7 9,053