First of all, the integrated GPU doesn't hog 2GB of RAM. It only uses that much if you're running GPU-intensive tasks. Where the Swift 3 comes up short is its speakers, unfortunately. The audio from the laptop is tinny with almost no low-end, so it all comes off sounding somewhat flat. It's fine for listening to Spotify or YouTube while working on a project or typing up a report, but on max volume it's barely audible a room or two away.

The Acer Swift 3 comes with an AMD Radeon graphics card, which averaged at 79 frames per second on the Dirt 3 racing game benchmark. This surpasses the mainstream laptop average of 47 frames per second, and the Intel Swift 3, which produced 44 frames per second (yikes). However, the HP Envy got a win here, averaging at 92 frames per second. Acer Swift 3 (AMD) review: Battery life 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 screen brightness of Acer Swift 3 (SF315-41) is not PW-modulated only at maximum brightness mode. However, the high frequency of the pulsations dramatically reduces the negative effect, when they are present. As far as thermal performance, the Swift 3 runs comfortably and never gets noticeably warm, even under duress, and the laptop's fans are effective and whisper-quiet while actively cooling everything. Lenovo’s Yoga Slim 7 did better thanks to its AMD Ryzen 7 chipset but we will have to wait for Intel 12th-geneneration Alder Lake processors to filter down to the more affordable end of the market before we see those sorts of numbers from a Core i5 chip. Benchmark numbers to one side, however, for everyday computing needs and office productivity tasks, the Swift 3 has more than enough power.While watching a trailer for The Broken Heart Gallery, I noted that the picture was very crisp and clear, and it would have been enjoyable to watch, but the dullness of the color really took away from the whole experience. In a scene showing off an urban landscape, the faded appearance of the light and color distracted me from what I was seeing. Considering that the whole movie is supposed to be about art, it’s hard to enjoy when the color is so bland.

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. Acer Swift 3 (SF315-41) comes with a FullHD IPS panel, with a serial number BOE NV156FHM-N48. The size of the screen is 15.6 inches with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution. With an aspect ratio of 16.9 and a pixel density of 142 pixels per inch, the screen becomes “Retina” from a distance of at least 60 cm. The total screen real estate feels appropriate for the overall size of the laptop so it never gets to feeling like things are more cramped than they should be for a 14-inch display. In fact, having two application windows open side-by-side on screen was absolutely doable with minimal horizontal-scroll on Chrome or Microsoft Word. Being an APU, Ryzen 7 2700U also features an embedded RX Vega 10 graphics accelerator. It consists of 10 Cores, working on up to 1300 MHz, and supports DirectX 12 Technology. The GPU is built on a 14 nm process and offers support of 12_1 feature level of DirectX 12. A little light gaming isn’t out of the question either. The Metro: Last Light Redux benchmark scored nearly 49fps at 1080p, which is really rather good for a Core i5 laptop using Intel’s integrated Xe graphics processor. Even the 2016 Doom reboot ran pretty smoothly at around 50fps although I did have to reduce the resolution to 1,280 x 720 and video detail settings to medium.

Affordable, compact, well made and with an excellent display, the latest Acer Swift 3 has no real weaknesses

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. The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10's Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a laptop's storage. (See more about how we test laptops.) The dE2000 values should not go over 4.0, especially if your work depends on color accuracy when they shouldn’t even exceed 2.0. The contrast we measured is good at 1310:1 (1180:1 after calibration)

Acer continued its minimalist design aesthetic with this year's Acer Swift 3. Definitely taking a cue from the Apple MacBook Air, the thin, lightweight aluminum chassis should feel familiar to anyone acquainted with earlier Acer Swift 3 models. 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. The touchpad was the coolest location on the laptop, coming in at 76.5 degrees Fahrenheit (24.7 degrees Celsius). The center of the keyboard, between the G & H keys, came in next at 84.5 degrees Fahrenheit (29.2 degrees Celsius), while the bottom of the laptop was the hottest location. Registering hottest just to the left of the underside vents that span most of its bottom-center, the laptop here hit 87.5 degrees Fahrenheit (30.9 degrees Celsius). 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. I liked the snappy response. 8 seconds from boot-up to Windows 10 start screen. Excellent CPU performance and fairly decent GPU performance. No overheating issues. Fast SSD drive. Fast DDR4 memory. It's a very nimble performer, IMO.

The Swift 3 took 11 minutes to transcode a 4K video to 1080p on our HandBrake test. Though that sounds like a long while, it outperformed the mainstream laptop average of 20 minutes and 33 seconds. The Intel Swift 3 took 21 minutes and 26 seconds, while the HP Envy 13 took 23 minutes and 38 seconds. Anecdotally, this keyboard impresses. The touchpad, meanwhile, uses Windows precision drivers, and is smooth to the touch. Audio 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. The Swift 3 and the other quad-core Intel laptops were left looking up at the eight-core, AMD-powered Pavilion Aero in most of our CPU-focused tests. The Swift 3 did well among the Intel systems, except for trailing in PCMark 10's storage test; in fact, it eked out wins in the Geekbench and Photoshop benchmarks. Graphics Tests