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The Acer Swift 1 is good for anybody who wants a laptop computer primarily for writing, e mail, and light-weight net shopping, and may’t or doesn’t wish to spend a ton of cash.
Professionals
- Excellent for mild PC work
- Good value
- Greater than sufficient ports
- Fingerprint scanner is a pleasant addition
Cons
- Beneath common battery life
- Viewing angles and max brightness usually are not nice
Key Specs
- Overview Worth: £400
- 14-inch Full HD LED show
- Intel Pentium Silver N5000 quad-core processor
- 4GB DDR4 RAM
- 256GB SSD
- Fingerprint scanner
- HDMI, Sort-C USB, 2 x Sort-A USB, SD card reader
What’s the Acer Swift 1?
The newest Acer Swift 1 (SF114-32) vary of laptops for 2019 presents patrons loads for a really good value of round £300-£450. That’s near how a lot you’d pay for a Chromebook – and because the Acer Swift 1 comes working on the complete 64-bit model of Home windows 10 Residence, it options help or acquainted apps and packages, together with Microsoft Workplace, Slack and Photoshop Parts, and provides you the choice to put in net browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox (which isn’t at present accessible on Chrome OS).
Briefly, it’s a cheap Home windows 10 laptop computer that’s hitting cabinets in time for the Again to Faculty run. In addition to being aimed in school and college college students, it’s additionally pitched at anybody out there for a cheap laptop computer that’ll run Microsoft Phrase, allow you to examine emails and stream Netflix on the facet.
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Silvery, fashionable, light-weight… and prices how a lot?! The Acer Swift 1 appears to be like the enterprise, regardless of not costing a bomb
Acer Swift 1 design – Light-weight however not mild on ports
Whereas the Acer Swift 1 is an reasonably priced laptop computer, it appears to be like and feels much more premium than its £500 price ticket would possibly counsel.
Firstly, its exterior panels and the deck-side case are metallic, which signifies that the Swift 1 not solely appears to be like and feels extra enticing than a plastic laptop computer, it’s additionally extra sturdy and fewer prone to cracks, dents and superficial harm.
Secondly, the plastic bezel framing the 14-inch display measures 6.3mm on the sides, which, whereas a little bit larger than the bezels of high-end ultrabooks like final 12 months’s Asus ZenBook 14 Professional (3mm) and the brand new Dell XPS 13 (4mm), remains to be on the skinny facet and makes the Acer Swift 1 look slick, because of the truth that it attracts consideration to the massive 14-inch Full HD show.
Thirdly, Acer has included a fingerprint scanner on the Swift 1. Whereas it’s more and more widespread to see fingerprint scanners on laptops today, it’s uncommon to see them on a laptop computer at this value level, so its inclusion here’s a good plus. In addition to giving customers an additional diploma of safety and privateness, it additionally makes the Swift 1 look a bit cooler.
Slender 6mm bezels add to the general feel and appear of the Acer Swift 1
Regardless of the low value, Acer has included all however the kitchen sink right here, packing in three Sort-A USB ports (the normal, rectangular type) and one Sort-C USB port (the newer, oval-shaped type), in addition to an HDMI 2.0 port, a full-sized SD card reader, together with the same old 3.5mm jack for headphones, a Kensington lock slot, and a port for the AC adapter.
Whereas there’s no devoted Ethernet port, you possibly can choose up USB-C-to-Ethernet adapters for not very a lot today.
Lastly, the Acer Swift 1 weighs a really mild 1.3kg and measures 15 x 323 x 228mm, which means it’ll sit snugly inside a satchel or backpack and gained’t weigh you down if you’re on the transfer.
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The anti-glare filter of the Acer Swift 1 does a very good job of stopping harsh lighting from interrupting your work, however viewing angles endure
Acer Swift 1 show – How good is the Acer Swift 1’s display?
The Acer Swift 1’s show is a 14-inch Full HD LED show with IPS (in-plane switching) for improved viewing angles, and a ComfyView anti-glare filter.
It’s not the perfect show I’ve seen on a laptop computer, however it’s ok for easy PC duties – when you’re after one thing cheap to crunch by means of essays and spreadsheets on, you’ll be high-quality right here.
Utilizing an X-Ceremony i1 Show Professional colorimeter and DisplayCAL 3, I recorded most brightness of 282.5 nits and a black stage of 0.26 nits, including as much as a distinction ratio of 1070:1.
Ideally, you desire a show to have the ability to provide you with high brightness of 300 nits so it might probably address a wide range of lighting situations. Working exterior on a sunny day is difficult on the Acer Swift 1, although the anti-glare coating does imply that any main mild sources mirrored off the show gained’t trigger discomfort.
Whereas the show is completely high-quality for writing on, it’s not in any respect fitted to picture work.
Not solely was the color temperature I recorded (7449K vs the 6500K best) on the blue facet, which means that pictures can look a little bit chilly, color house protection was additionally low.
I recorded 58% protection of the usual RGB (sRGB) color gamut, the house which digital artists and photographers work in. 58% may be very low – for critical picture enhancing, you want a show which covers at the very least 80% of the sRGB house – and protection of the broader Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 areas was even decrease at 41.6% and 42.8%.
Regardless of the LED show that includes IPS, which often permits for excellent viewing angles, on the Acer Swift 1 some discolouration is obvious when wanting on the centre of the display from 45 levels. This isn’t more likely to be an issue, except you’re watching one thing on Netflix with two different folks.
On that notice, whereas video content material streamed on the Swift 1 largely appears to be like high-quality, colors is usually a little on the cool facet. Additionally, the audio high quality is bearable, however not implausible – whereas OK for dialogue, the audio system, mounted on the underside of the laptop computer, usually are not nice for music.
There’s hardly any low finish popping out right here, to the purpose the place it failed my Grasp Of Puppets take a look at – when you can’t hear the bass guitar when it kicks in at 0:30, or the bass is so distorted it not resembles a bass guitar (I’m taking a look at you, Asus ROG Strix GL504 Hero II), a laptop computer fails the take a look at.
Briefly, if you wish to hearken to music whereas working, you’d be finest off sticking with headphones.
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The Acer Swift 1’s keyboard is properly laid out – excluding the nav keys
Acer Swift 1 keyboard – How simple is it to sort on the Acer Swift 1?
The Acer Swift 1’s keyboard is effectively spaced, making it simple to get conversant in. The ample-sized trackpad mixed with wise positioning of the keyboard signifies that your palms relaxation naturally on the south facet of the deck, permitting your fingers to get acquainted with the house keys.
The keycaps function a dry, matt end, which feels a little bit odd at first, and journey may be very shallow, to the purpose the place the keys initially really feel virtually flush to the board. It’s not as flat as, say, the MacBook Air 2018’s butterfly-switched keys, nevertheless it’s nonetheless shallower than most laptops we’ve examined lately. It definitely made me admire the standard of the keyboards of the (admittedly dearer) Dell XPS 13 and HP Envy 13.
The metallic casing means there’s hardly any flex current right here, though you do see a little bit of that in direction of the centre of the keyboard. The board is underlit, which means you’ll be capable of beaver away at reviews, essays or homework in a dismal convention centre, library, or your bed room with out having to look on the keys at nighttime.
My solely actual complain in regards to the Swift 1’s keyboard is that the nav keys – Residence, Web page Up, Web page Down, and Finish – usually are not solely tiny, they’re additionally hemmed in across the arrow keys, which makes for frequent mis-types.
Features are additionally doubled up right here, requiring you to carry down the Perform key with the intention to bounce to the start or finish of a sentence. That’s not as a lot of a problem as their dimension and place on the board, however, personally, I’d have most popular 4 devoted nav keys right here. If HP can handle it on a 13-inch pocket book, all different producers ought to comply with go well with.
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Key journey right here is extremely shallow, however you do get used to the feeling after some time
Acer Swift 1 battery life – How lengthy does the Acer Swift 1’s battery final?
Anticipate to get something between six and 7 hours out of the Acer Swift 1. Operating the PCMark 8 Work benchmark, which simulates fundamental PC workplace work, with the display’s brightness locked to 150 nits, gave me six hours and two minutes.
That’s in keeping with my real-world observations. It’s additionally a low rating for a light-weight pocket book, particularly one with such an undemanding processor. You must count on at the very least eight if not 10 hours of juice from most life-style laptops today.
Pushing it, you’d be capable of get a bit extra energy out of the Acer Swift 1. In case you have been to dip the brightness ranges even additional, and, the place potential, use a USB-to-Ethernet adapter to connect with the web as an alternative of counting on Wi-Fi, it’s best to be capable of squeeze one other half-hour out of the Swift 1 – although realistically, you’re not all the time going to have the ability to try this. Whereas a median battery lifetime of six hours isn’t nice, it’s nonetheless serviceable. Simply bear in mind to take the mains adapter with you in every single place.
On the plus facet, you may get an empty Acer Swift 1 charged again up in underneath two hours – round one hour 45 minutes. After half an hour on the mains, count on to have simply over a 3rd stuffed up, and count on round 55-60% after 60 minutes.
The Acer Swift 1’s ports on the left-hand facet, from left to proper: mains energy, HDMI, USB-C 3.0, USB-A 3.0 with Energy Supply, USB-A 3.0
Acer Swift 1 efficiency – Can I watch Netflix on it?
If you wish to stream something on Netflix or BBC iPlayer, I’d shut down all different functions on the Acer Swift 1 first.
I can’t stress sufficient that, whereas for fundamental PC functions the Acer Swift 1 is okay and dandy, it’s not a high-performance machine. To get essentially the most out of it, that you must take it simple.
When shopping the online, as an illustration, I’d discover that Chrome would usually groan underneath the burden of a number of (20+) tabs. In case you’re the sort of one that works with loads of tabs open, and at the very least a type of tabs incorporates YouTube with Autoplay on, chances are you’ll to want to shut and relaunch Chrome (or your browser of selection) a bit extra incessantly than you’re used to.
I’m primarily chalking the sunshine efficiency as much as the processor, a Pentium Silver N5000, which has a gradual base clock pace of 1.1GHz. Whereas it might probably increase as much as 2.7GHz, overloading the Swift 1 with processes causes it to not dwell as much as its moniker.
To place that into context, I ran Geekbench 4’s CPU benchmark to emphasize take a look at the processor. The Geekbench stress take a look at relies on the efficiency of a high-end Seventh-gen Intel laptop computer CPU from 2015 – an Intel Core i7-6600U with a 2.60 GHz base clock pace – and makes use of single and multi-core scores of 4000 and 8000 respectively as a baseline for efficiency.
The Acer Swift 1 gave me scores of 1995 and 5418 – so sure, that is fairly low powered by comparability. Then once more, it’s not so low powered that you could’t do the fundamentals.
The SSD on the mannequin I reviewed was a 256GB Kingston RBUSNS8154P3256GJ1, about 240GB of which is out there to the consumer. Operating CrystalDiskMark benchmark, I bought learn and write scores of 828.7 MB/s and 632.1 MB/s.
Once more, for essentially the most half, that is no massive deal, as such speeds are OK for saving, loading, and transferring Phrase paperwork, however for something extra intensive than that, count on issues to maneuver slowly.
Don’t count on to play any video games right here, apart from the likes of Sweet Crush Saga. Operating 3DMark Ice Strike (a benchmark for laptops with built-in graphics), I bought 14,492, one of many lowest Ice Strike scores recorded to date. The Microsoft Floor Go pill, for instance, gave us 39,953 with Ice Strike, and that’s not precisely a gaming powerhouse.
This, mixed with the dearth of devoted graphics and the show’s low color house protection, signifies that the Acer Swift 1 isn’t suited to essentially the most fundamental picture enhancing duties. In order for you one thing for that, chances are you’ll have to open your pockets a little bit extra – when you’re not wedded to Home windows 10 and have an additional £200 to spare, try the Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14 7000 2-in-1, one other metal-clad ultrabook with an Intel Core i3 processor and a higher-quality show, which means it’s higher outfitted for mild picture work.
The Acer Swift 1’s ports on the right-hand facet, from left to proper: SD card reader, 3.5mm headphone jack, USB-A Port, Kensington lock slot
Ought to I purchase the Acer Swift 1?
In case you are purchasing for a brand new laptop computer for work or examine functions and also you’re on a good funds, I can advocate the Acer Swift 1 as a very good possibility. It’s not fairly the cut price of the century – you will have to keep watch over that battery and it’s not appropriate for even the lightest of picture enhancing duties – however for phrase processing, net shopping, emails and a spot of occasional Netflix, it’s high-quality, to not point out low cost. Simply go simple on it.
Verdict
A really reasonably priced Home windows 10 laptop computer that may confidently do the fundamentals, however wrestle to do a lot else.
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