This Lightweight Laptop Is Surprisingly Powerful (And It’s Not a MacBook Air)

I’m a sucker for a lightweight computer that’s easy to carry around in a backpack and packs plenty of performance to handle whatever task at hand. It’s why I’ve spent years working from the iPad Pro, tinkering with Chromebooks, and even writing a love letter to the Surface Pro 8 a few years back. I have a soft spot for portable computing.

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on paper, that’s right acer swift 14 Promises. This $1,400 laptop has all the latest components and hardware you’d want in any Windows laptop and is designed for use on the go.

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acer swift 14

An ultraportable laptop with Intel’s 13th Gen Core i7–13700H processor, 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, and 1TB PCIe 4 NVMe SSD.

All the above specs add up to a smooth experience for everyday use and some heavy tasks like photo and video editing and maybe some gaming.

You won’t be able to play AAA titles like Fortnite or Call of Duty on the Acer Swift 14, but that’s to be expected with this type of laptop. I found the fans to spin with minimal effort from me or the Acer. They’re not overly loud, but you can hear them if you’re not streaming any music or videos.

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I spent a lot of time on the Swift 14 using Microsoft’s Edge browser, streaming video, sending and receiving email, and using apps like Slack and Apple Music for other regular work tasks. Everything about Swift 14 was fine, fast. I didn’t experience any drop or slowdown in performance. And the battery was able to keep up with my usage, lasting a full day of mixed use.

However, if you’re primarily using it for more resource-intensive tasks, like other laptops in this particular tier, the battery will struggle to last a full day.

I run a battery benchmark on each of the laptops tested, where I play the same 4K video file on loop using VLC with the display brightness set to 50% and use the camera to create a timelapse video of the laptop. Bluetooth is disabled until it is turned on. Close. I can then go back and momentarily see how long the battery lasted. And the Acer Swift 14 lasted 8 hours 28 minutes. That’s not terrible, especially for a laptop of this size. That’s more than enough juice for a cross-country flight.

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The first time I opened the lid, revealing the display and keyboard, I was surprised as the laptop’s deck tilted toward me, lifting the base of my desk as soon as the lid was opened into a vertical position. There’s a lip that protrudes from the hinge of the laptop that serves to lift it; It’s an innovative idea that places the keyboard at an angle that makes typing more comfortable. And for the most part, I’ve found that to be true. Though my wrists and hands were suffering from some fatigue after extended use.

The Acer Swift 14’s touchpad is the only aspect of the design I take major issue with. It’s too small and cramped to use effectively, especially in a business setting where scrolling through long documents, spreadsheets, and email is the norm. You’ll definitely want to use a Bluetooth mouse with Swift 14.

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The 1440p QHD webcam piqued my interest because most laptop webcams are, well, awful. I spent a few days taking all my meetings on the Acer Swift 14, making sure to set my video resolution at 1080p for each video platform, and overall, the end result was better than I expected. M1 MacBook Pro,

Video has a tendency to be overexposed, but the resolution looks solid. Mic and speaker were more than adequate for video calls, but the speaker is lacking oomph While streaming music or watching videos.

The display is by far my favorite aspect of the Swift 14. It sports a 14-inch WQXGA 2560 x 1600 display with multi-touch support. The screen is bright, has plenty of color saturation and just looks sharp. It’s also very responsive to touch for those moments when I didn’t want to be messing with the tiny trackpad. That’s great.

However, did Acer have to permanently put “antimicrobial Corning Gorilla Glass” in the top-left corner of the lid, just above the display? It is disturbing and disturbing. What’s even more annoying about this is the fact that none of the promotional photos on Acer’s site for the Swift 14 show the text.

Overall, the Swift 14 delivers on its portable and powerful promise. There are a few little things I’d like to see improved, such as the size of the trackpad, but overall the Swift 14 is a worthy contender for a business user or student.