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Acer Swift 3 SF314-42 14 Inch Laptop - (AMD Ryzen 7 4700U, 8GB, 512GB SSD, Full HD Display, Windows 10, Purple)

£354.995£709.99Clearance
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The Acer Swift 3’s score on our Geekbench 4.3 overall -performance test blew our minds with a whopping 19,163. Not only did this number crush the Swift 3 Intel model (14,641), the HP Envy 13 (15,738) and the category average (14,197), but the Swift 3’s Ryzen 4700U CPU also ate the 13-inch MacBook Pro’s 10th-gen Intel Core i5 CPU with 8GB of RAM (18,221) and the Dell XPS 13’s 10th-gen Intel Core i5 CPU with 16GB of RAM (19,053). Ah, the taste of sweet victory. The aspect ratio is only one of three changes to the display that makes us like this year's Swift 3 less. For another, the resolution has dropped from 2,256 by 1,504 pixels to the familiar 1,920 by 1,080 pixels. To be honest, full HD is sufficient on a 14-inch screen, however, as text and images look sharp. Colors look accurate, as well; Acer claims the screen covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut.(More on the quantitative screen testing near the end of this review.)

The speaker system can’t quite match the display for quality, though, despite carrying DTS certification. To start with there’s not a lot of volume on offer: at 1m distance, I measured an average of 71dB from a pink noise source and 72dB with peaks of 79dB from a music source. That’s pretty average. There’s not much in the way of bass, either, although the definition is good and there’s no break-up even at maximum volume.On our battery test, which involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, the Intel version only managed to last 7 hours and 31 minutes, which is below our minimum recommended 8-hour runtime. The hottest part of the laptop is on the bottom rear of the machine by the battery, so the most likely time you'll notice any heat build-up will be if you're gaming or video-editing a project while sitting up in bed with the laptop on your legs. Even then, it won't get uncomfortably "hot" the way others might. The Swift 3 features a 14-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) display that isn't the crispest on the market, but which is more than enough for most purposes. Several hours of HD streaming movies looked excellent bright enough in all but the most direct sunlight. Moving to the left side of this ultrabook there is nothing but the essentials we can see – Two USB 3.1 ports, one ordinary and Sleep and Charge (meaning it could charge a device even when the laptop is not technically on). Other than that there is a USB type-C port, which we like (USB Type-C all the way!), and full-sized HDMI port, partnered by the tiny hole where the charger would go. We won’t take a lot of your precious time talking about ports, because there are only two more – ordinary USB 2.0 and an SD card reader for them creators. Sadly no RJ45 port is present on this device, but it is what it is.

As I navigated Windows 10, I found that the Swift 3's silver 4.2 x 2.6-inch touchpad offers extremely precise scrolling and cursor control. Visually, you might not even notice it's there, were it not for the indentation around it. Acer Swift 3 (AMD) review: Audio High notes are where the Swift 3’s speakers performed best. Using a-ha’s Take On Me as a test, I was impressed by how similar it sounded to my Sennheiser headphones or Logitech speaker & subwoofer system. I didn’t notice any dropped notes, and even the song’s highest frequencies weren’t tinny at all. This Acer Swift 3, running on the AMD Ryzen 7 4700U processor with 8GB of RAM, provided serious speed for multitasking. At one point, I had five YouTube videos going simultaneously while juggling well over 50 Google Chrome tabs, without showing signs of slow down. The system seemed to struggle a bit when trying to run several advertising-heavy tabs, but the same can be said of most systems and — really — that's more of a societal problem than one limited to a single Acer laptop. Being used by million people around the world the colors from the sRGB gamut are the most common and their accurate reproduction is of key importance for the quality of the screen.

Getting the bottom off the Swift 3 is easy enough but pretty pointless. All you can do is switch out the Intel AX201 wireless card and the Micron 2280 SSD. While I’m on the subject, the AX201 gives you full Wi-Fi 6 connectivity as well as Bluetooth 5.0, while the Gen 4 512GB SSD recorded perfectly decent (for the price) sequential read and write speeds of 2,026MB/sec and 1,085MB/sec respectively. Except for the plastic bottom cover, the Swift 3 is made entirely from aluminium and feels very solid. It looks smart, too, thanks to the all-over matte effect silver finish, which seems to be impervious to fingerprints. Our battery life test, where we loop a 1080p video, ran for 7 hours and 6 minutes, about the same as older models of the Swift 3, but on the PC Mark 10 battery test, the Swift 3 ran for 6 hours and 12 minutes on performance mode with a balanced power profile and made it a full eight hours on a modest battery saver mode and balanced power profile. The key travel is rather shallow but that’s a criticism I could make of almost every laptop of this class and it never gets in the way of the speed or feel of typing. Given the compact dimensions of the Swift 3, it’s no surprise that the function and arrow keys are half-height affairs. Other than that the layout is both standard and fault free.

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.Anecdotally, this keyboard impresses. The touchpad, meanwhile, uses Windows precision drivers, and is smooth to the touch. Audio The Acer Swift 3 speakers, which are located on the bottom sides of the laptop, provides sound that is simply mediocre. While listening to “Hate Me” by Blue October, I noticed that guitars sounded clear and bold, including the bass that came through accurately. However, the vocals sounded so low, almost like someone was covering their mouth while trying to sing to me. Even with the volume at 100%, the speakers didn’t play any music very loud, which can be chalked up to the Swift 3 being designed with bottom-firing speakers. As with many Acer laptops, the Swift 3 is not safe from the bloatware beast. This includes standard Windows pre-installs like Candy Crush, Farm Heroes, and Hearts Deluxe, but also extends to subscription-based programs like Cyberlink’s Photodirector and Powerdirector editing apps, ExpressVPN, Dropbox and Netflix, all of which only come with the same trials anyone could sign up for online. There’s also a suite of ad-supported, non-Windows Store games on the device, like Spades and Simple Solitaire.

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