Acer Swift X 14 Assessment: Staid however Speedy OLED Ultraportable

Beneath a compact and admittedly mundane exterior hides a robust, OLED ultraportable for content material creators. The Acer Swift X 14 is endowed with a stunning 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 normally discover such a duo in a bigger machine; content material creation laptops usually function 16- or 17-inch shows to provide creators extra room to work. Just like the Lenovo Slim Professional 7, the Swift X 14 offers the wanted muscle for demanding graphics work however in a extra transportable package deal. 

Our $1,500 Swift X 14 assessment system prices $300 greater than the Lenovo Slim Professional 7 I just lately reviewed, and I feel it is cash nicely 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 larger, and it is even a bit quicker with a 120Hz refresh charge. The transfer from IPS to an OLED panel is definitely worth the added value alone, however the Swift X 14 sweetens the deal additional by supplying newer RTX graphics and higher efficiency together with a bigger SSD. For artistic 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 contains 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 contains 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 fascinating darkish grey enclosure, the Swift X 14 appears to be like no completely 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 correct facet of the wrist relaxation. With out these clues, it could be tough to know if this was a laptop computer from Acer or Lenovo or Dell or HP. It’s an all-aluminum chassis, which is tremendously 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 Professional 7 and does not really feel practically as inflexible.

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 yr, 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, and so they hearth downward from beneath the laptop computer. They don’t seem to be muffled as a lot as they might have been on the very backside panel and as a substitute are positioned 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 to be like like a speaker grille above the keyboard. Sadly, the latter is merely venting for the cooling system. There’s extra venting on the again edge, too, and on the underside panel.

Whether or not for house 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 gives a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a pair of USB Sort-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 correct. 

The keyboard itself is likely one of 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 Professional 7 and Dragonfly Professional. The Swift X 14 keyboard gives 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 just a little too deep. The results of this deep journey is a unfastened feeling when clicking.

However that display screen although

So, to summarize: the design is uninspired, the all-metal chassis is not probably 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 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 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 photographs crisper, significantly when considered towards the Dragonfly Professional, however the distinction can be so significantly better it isn’t 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.

Content material creators will respect 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 Professional’s normal 60Hz show and quicker than the Slim Professional 7’s 90Hz show. In contrast to these two competing fashions, nevertheless, the Swift X 14 doesn’t provide contact help.

And now we get to the Swift X 14’s efficiency. It was practically a clear sweep in labs testing towards 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 remainder function 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 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 take a look at with a runtime of practically 7.5 hours. Battery life is absolutely the one difficulty 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.