Tested product: Acer Swift 3 Oled
Taken: SEK 14,990 to Komplett
OLED screens have become increasingly popular in laptops. You can find many nowadays ultratunna laptop with med oled at a reasonable price. It is also a more common choice in powerful computers for creative creation. But usually then inside more expensive professional computers. The Acer Swift 3 Oled, unveiled over the summer and now available to order, is a compact yet high-performance oled laptop for those who don’t want to pay too much.
Rated 3.5 out of 5
Opinion
You get a lot of computing power and a great screen at a clearly affordable price. The rest of the computer is mostly approved as well. However, questionable speakers and webcams let it down and make it less versatile. But if, for example, you’re editing photos and have too limited a computer budget for a true professional laptop, it’s an interesting alternative.
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Positive
- Powerful processor
- Great high definition oled display
- Correct connections and fast connection
- Efficient cooling, but not noisy
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Negative
- No screen control tools
- No other sound
- Short battery life
- Unflattering webcam
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The computer is available in two versions, with Intel Core i5-12500H and 512 gigabyte ssd for SEK 12.990 and the more powerful model we tested with Core i7-12700H and 1 terabyte ssd for SEK 14.990. Both have 16 gigabytes of RAM and are otherwise identical, with the same screen, ports, design and functions. Since it seems the point here is maximizing performance, we think the Core i7 model is the more natural choice.
We have already tested a laptop with this processor, the Lenovo Legion 5 gaming computer with a 16-inch screen and priced around SEK 20,000. Here we get the same high performance in CPU-intensive jobs such as cad, video editing, multitasking, and streaming video streams. The fast 16 gigabyte ddr5 memory does the job. Of course it would have been more welcome, but given the price of the computer, it’s hard to complain. As I said, our model has a large 1 terabyte SSD. It doesn’t read as fast as the best, but on the other hand, it doesn’t lose speed in writing performance, which many do.
What is perhaps mainly missing is the graphics. You have to make do with integrated Intel Iris Xe. This means that you don’t get the same performance boost when, for example, working with certain effects and filters in photo and video editing programs that use your graphics card. Of course, Iris Xe helps a bit, but a quick Geforce or Radeon card is obviously even better. It also makes it a simpler gaming PC.
Open airways maintain moderate cooling
With a 14-inch 16:10 aspect ratio screen with narrow screen edges and a weight of just 1.4 kilograms, it’s a computer bordering on ultralight. It could have been even more minimal in size, but Acer prioritized an airy chassis and therefore more airflow for cooling, so it has an extra couple of inches in length.
However, this means that the cooling never gets more than moderately loud. On the other hand, it is very rare for the fans to stop completely and the computer to become completely silent, almost constantly emitting a vague hiss. When the processor is under maximum load, it can get very hot, although most of the heat is efficiently expelled from the computer, so the chassis never gets hotter than a little.
Most of the frame is made of aluminum and has sleek matte metal surfaces, yet still gives a plastic feel. There is some failure in the bottom and in the screen cover. The keyboard isn’t the most well-built we’ve seen. The buttons are silver gray in the same tone as the aluminum frame, but are obviously plastic and have a slightly creaky construction and a faint clicking feel.
Environmental thinking, but only in one component?
The mouse pad is made of what Acer calls Oceanglass, which is actually not glass at all but recycled plastic from the sea. It’s a nice detail, and it’s also of high quality with excellent comfort and control. Although quite small in size. It is strange with such a detail in a computer. But maybe that’s a sign that Acer is introducing more green thinking into its range of computers, and not just the durable Aspire Vero special purpose computer?
On the sides there are double Thunderbolt 4 ports, double USB 3 type a, hdmi output and headphone port. It’s well approved, but it still looks like there should have been room for something more. Maybe a USB port or a network port? There is room for that. An sd card reader wouldn’t go wrong on a computer like this, as its power and especially the screen make it an interesting choice for a novice vlogger with a dslr camera.
If you have lower ambitions to film yourself and are content with a webcam, the one sitting on the Swift 3 Oled isn’t great. It has a 720p resolution and delivers a lag-free image, with very exaggerated contrast and color saturation, making skin tones sickly and dazzling, add to this harsh video compression that causes flaming effects.
Even for those who just want to hold video meetings, an external webcam can be a good idea. However, you do get good built-in microphones with the same noise reduction.
The screen is the strongest card
Aside from the performance of the processor, the screen is the main attraction of the computer. A brilliant 2.5k OLED, with a resolution of 2,880 x 1,800 pixels, which without any problems is enough for us not to worry about the distinguishable pixels. It has 400 cd / sqm2 in the basic brightness and the possibility of more when viewing images and hdr videos, which means that it has been certified according to the Vesa DisplayHDR True Black 500 standard.
The color gamut is excellent with a claimed match of 100 percent to the dci p3 and very low color deviation. However, what we lack in the Swift 3 Oled, which other laptops with similar screens have, is the ability to control color space and color temperature. You can enable a blue light filter, in addition to those included in Intel controls for Iris Xe graphics. It would have been great to be able to quickly switch to srgb, p3 and perhaps Adobe RGB calibrated profiles.
The screen also has a 90 Hz frame rate, which makes window handling smoother and documents and web pages more pleasant to scroll through. You can switch to 60Hz, if you don’t care and want to gain a few percent in battery life. But that’s not a huge savings. It goes from eleven to twelve hours of maximum autonomy with the brightness of the screen at the bottom, which still looks good in a dimly lit room, but with an almost non-existent processor load. This is a computer that, in short, you need to have a power supply with you when on the go.
… but the sound cuts out
With such a good screen, the Swift 3 Oled has the potential to be a perfect computer for movie streaming, but unfortunately the screen quality is not matched by equally high sound quality. There’s a lack of detail in treble and bass pressure, and with and without DTS’s sound enhancement routines, it’s not possible to achieve good balance for either movies or music.
That, plus the short battery life and mediocre webcam, means we can’t recommend the Acer Swift 3 as a good all-round computer for mixed use. But it offers two important things: powerful processor and a really good screen in a handy and almost ultralight format. For those who want a lot of crafting power in their computer bag at a really affordable price, it’s still a very attractive choice.
There are other laptops under SEK 15,000 with equivalent performance, or perhaps even better in some gaming computers with discrete graphics cards. But none of them have the same compact size, low weight and the same high class on the display.
Specifications
Product name: Acer Swift 3 Oled SF-314-71
Tested: August 2022
Producer: Acer
Processor: Intel Core i7-12700H, 6th performance up to 4.7GHz + 8th efficiency 2.3GHz
Graphic: Intel Iris Xe G7 graphics
To remember: 16 GB ddr5
Warehousing: 1 TB ssd
Screen: 14 inch glossy amoled, 2880×1800 pixel, 16:10, 90 Hz
Webcam: 1080p
Connections: 2nd Thunderbolt 4, 2nd USB 3 Gen 1 Type A, HDMI, Earphone
wireless: Wi-Fi 6, And Bluetooth 5.2
Operating system: Windows 11 Home
Various: Fingerprint reader
Audio level: 0-39 dBa
Battery life: 1 h (high load, maximum brightness, 90 Hz), 11 h 15 min (low load, low brightness, 60 Hz)
Dimension: 31.05 x 21.3 x 1.8 cm
Weight: 1.4 kg
rec. price: 14 990 kr
Current price: SEK 14,990 to Komplett
Performance
Cinebench R23, cpu: 12,457 points
Cinebench R23, single core cpu: 1,698 points
Geekbench 5, cpu: 10.932 points
Geekbench 5, single core CPU: 11,680 points
Geekbench 5, gpu: 20,340 points
Disc, reading: up to 3,625.98 MB / s
Disc, writing: up to 3,492.97 MB / s
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