Acer Swift 3 OLED review: An adequate first effort | Techy Kings

Acer has been slow to jump on the OLED laptop bandwagon. But finally, the company has brought an OLED panel to its popular mid-range 14-inch laptop, the Swift 3.

That’s more than just a better 90Hz OLED screen than the regular Acer Swift 3. This laptop is also thicker to house a 45-watt 12th-gen processor, so you should expect better performance from this 14-inch laptop. Price matters though, and even though the base configuration is under $1,000, my review unit landed at $1,230. Fortunately for Acer, it’s enough to justify a slightly higher price, making the Acer Swift 3 OLED a solid upgrade from the original.

Details

OLED, yes, but at what cost?

OLED used to be the cream of the crop, but lately, it’s been dropped in some affordable laptops. For example, the HP Pavilion Plus 14 offers a 90Hz OLED display for only $800 compared to the top Acer (except for the smaller 256GB SSD). That’s just one configuration, mind you, and the price is higher if you use HP’s custom configuration.

The Asus Vivobook S 14X is another midrange laptop with an OLED display that runs at 120Hz and costs $1,100 for the same Core i7 CPU, 12GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Asus’s $930 Swift 3 OLED is available for around $900 when configured similarly.

That’s the point – the Acer Swift 3 OLED is in the same ballpark as many of its closest rivals, but it has to offer something different to rise above.

To begin with, the Swift 3’s OLED 14-inch 16:10 display looks great and competes well with the mid-range and premium options. As you can see from the table below, apart from the excellent color accuracy, Acer’s panel is bright, colorful and delivers typical OLED inky blacks. It’s a showcase for everyone, including creatives and content creators.

Although the Acer Swift 3 OLED’s audio isn’t quite up to snuff, it’s also a good display for Netflix binges.

The speakers are good enough, big enough for a small office and clear mids and highs good for system sounds and the occasional YouTube video. But if you want to watch a movie, you’ll want more bass than the two upward-firing speakers provide, so a pair of headphones or external speakers might be appreciated.

Sometimes fast means fast.

As I mentioned earlier, manufacturers have packed Intel’s 45-watt 12th-gen CPU into 14-inch thin and light laptops; With varying success. In some cases, performance was thermally limited to the point of little benefit on cores smaller than Intel’s 28-watt CPUs. The most common CPU option is the 28-watt 12-core/16-thread Core i7-1260P.

As we can see from the chart below, the Swift 3 OLED with a 14-core/20-thread Core i7-12700H outperforms the larger and thicker Dell XPS 15 in all of our benchmarks. The HP Pavilion Plus 14 and Asus Vivobook S 14X run faster in Geekbench 5 for the Core i7-1260P and our handbrake test with Cinebench R23.

One test where the Swift 3 OLED falls behind is PCMark 10 Complete, which tests a mix of productivity, multimedia and creative tasks. I’ve listed both the Balanced and Performance mode results obtained using each manufacturer’s utility to dial in CPU frequencies and fan speeds.

All these laptops are underpowered to one extent or another, but the Swift 3 OLED manages to maintain its performance consistently. Limited by Intel’s Iris Xe graphics, it won’t break any records with apps that use the GPU to speed up some tasks, such as Adobe’s Creative suite. However, for those looking for productivity workflows and CPU-intensive creative applications, the Swift 3 OLED is a strong performer.

The Swift 3 OLED’s gaming performance was surprisingly poor, even by the standards of integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics. I’m not sure why the laptop is so slow and hitting 11 frames per second. Fortnite At 1200p and epic graphics, but definitely not a gaming machine. I only include these results to emphasize the point.

Expenditure in longevity

Performance as a strength, the next question is, how long does it last at a premium? Using the fast CPU and high-resolution OLED display should justify the 57-watt-hour battery, which isn’t huge for a 14-inch laptop.

In our suite of battery tests, the Swift 3 OLED did OK compared to the other 45-watt laptops in our comparison group, while falling behind the 28-watt machines. This is to be expected and one of the costs of using a faster chip – although battery life is another area where Acer beats the HP Pavilion Plus 14. Overall, the Swift 3 OLED won’t last a full day, meaning you’ll need to take the power brick with you.

Everything else is ho-hum.

In terms of design, the Swift 3 OLED makes the most of switching from a non-OLED old-school 16:9 panel to a taller 16:10 display. This makes the laptop more modern and provides a more productive experience. Otherwise, the same silver chassis creates a boring minimalist design with simple lines and no flash. The HP Pavilion Plus 14 is a more attractive laptop.

The build quality remains the same, with an all-aluminum chassis that was very resistant to bending and flexing during my testing. It’s a solid build for a mid-range laptop, though again, the Pavilion Plus 14 wins, in this case by a hair. The Swift 3 OLED is 0.70 inches by 0.63 inches thicker than non-OLED and weighs 3.09 pounds by 2.76 pounds. Again, this is important to accommodate the fast and hot CPU. Despite the increased thickness and weight, the Swift 3 OLED is a reasonably sized 14-inch machine.

With Thunderbolt 4 and the latest wireless standards, connectivity remains strong. A 14-inch laptop has advantages over 13-inch machines when plugged in, and the Swift 3 OLED bucks that trend.

The Swift 3’s OLED keyboard looks similar to the other model, with light and easy switches and plenty of key slots. Although the silver keys are difficult to read with the backlight turned on with any ambient lighting, the keys are adequate. On the other hand, the touchpad is the same as the previous model, which is a shame – given the longer display, there’s more room for a larger touchpad. It’s quiet and works well with accurate buttons, but it’s too small. The display is not touch enabled, I always miss it.

The webcam is a 1080p version, which is welcome, and delivers a bright image thanks to Acer’s Temporal Noise Reduction technology, which helps in low-light situations. It is a good webcam for video conferencing.

Finally, Windows 11 Hello’s passwordless login support with the fingerprint reader embedded in the power button is the right place. It worked quickly and reliably during my testing.

Well first go to the OLED machine

Ultimately, there’s a lot to like about the Swift 3 OLED. Unlike other 14-inch machines, it uses a faster CPU, and the OLED display is as good as it gets. Its build quality is solid for a mid-range machine, although it’s not the best in its class, the interface and keyboard are excellent. The touchpad is too small and the battery life is too short which are the two significant weaknesses of the laptop.

But even so, it competes well with the two most important options in the HP Pavilion Plus 14, available for $400 less per configuration, and the Asus Vivobook S 14X, which is close in price. And you’ll only pay $100 more compared to the OLED Swift 3, making the OLED version a relative bargain. The price of the Swift 3 OLED may be higher, but it’s mostly justified.

So, should you buy it? Yes, if you aim for fast performance to go along with the stunning display. They suffer in battery life, but outside of the incredibly low-priced HP Pavilion Plus 14 configuration, the Swift 3 OLED offers enough value to make it onto anyone’s shortlist.

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