Acer Swift 3 Review: It doesn't break any records, but it also won't break the bank

[William Gayde]

The Acer Swift 3 is the company's first ultraportable to be Project Athena-certified which features instant wake up, powerful internal hardware, long battery life, fast network connectivity, and a small form factor. Let's see how that translates in the real world.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2106-acer-swift-3/

 

[Jyrkz]

No benchmarks??

 

[Uncle Al]

Yep ... it's not a speed demon but a welcome addition to the world of laptops. Good performance, good spec's, and a very affordable price.

 

[Shoam]

No benchmarks??

Or any thoughts on the pointer or speakers, or information on upgradability...

 

[Julio Franco]

No benchmarks??

So the focus of this review (and a few other laptop reviews we've done this year) has been on usability, experience, build quality and value. Then of course, this is TechSpot, so performance is not an afterthought but we've already tested the exact CPU and graphics chip this laptop uses, so there's no reason to repeat ourselves here. From the review:

Today's focus won't be on performance and benchmarks since we've already tested this CPU's performance as well as the built-in graphics.

Also, we end up not recommending this expensive configuration and instead we do recommend the much more affordable Ryzen 7 4700U version which starts at $650:

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Octa-Core-Graphics-Fingerprint-SF314-42-R9YN/dp/B086KKKT15/?tag=httpwwwtechsp-20

That's a slower variant of this (but potentially faster than Intel's 1065G7 chip):

AMD Ryzen 7 4800U Review

Today's review is all about the Ryzen 7 4800U, AMD's top-of-the-line APU for lightweight laptops, also known as ultrabooks. This is the best Renoir die AMD has...

www.techspot.com

 

[theruck]

I cant wait to try it in the shop. I have the previous model. the laptop looks nice has a good keyboard but thats it. everything else is average and the touchpad is the worst in the industry. absolutely unusable for work.

 

[Aryassen]

So the focus of this review (and a few other laptop reviews we've done this year) has been on usability, experience, build quality and value. Then of course, this is TechSpot, so performance is not an afterthought but we've already tested the exact CPU and graphics chip this laptop uses, so there's no reason to repeat ourselves here. From the review:



Also, we end up not recommending this expensive configuration and instead we do recommend the much more affordable Ryzen 7 4700U version which starts at $650:

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Octa-Core-Graphics-Fingerprint-SF314-42-R9YN/dp/B086KKKT15/?tag=httpwwwtechsp-20

That's a slower variant of this (but potentially faster than Intel's 1065G7 chip):

AMD Ryzen 7 4800U Review

Today's review is all about the Ryzen 7 4800U, AMD's top-of-the-line APU for lightweight laptops, also known as ultrabooks. This is the best Renoir die AMD has...

www.techspot.com

In case of desktop components, I would wholeheartly agree with you, however, it is exactly the laptop segment where the same hardware can behave significantly differently in real lilfe. This is of course primarily up to the cooling solution, but VRM setup, BIOS, enforced/manufacturer implemented HW limits, and even fan curve programming can play a role here (learned the hard way, and it is important aspect in my opinion)

This is not to say that the rest is not important, or less important, but I just can't agree with covering the benchmarks and HW performance angle with a blanket statement, not for a laptop.

 

[sorten]

"for half the cost at $700."
"it's half the price at $655"

CPU performance is definitely not consistent across laptops. If I were buying an Ice Lake laptop at this point in 2020, I would probably go with a deeply discounted previous generation XPS.

 

[Endymio]

>> " The bezels are ok, but could be thinner when compared to other machines in this price range..."

Well, you sprung for the 13.5" display in a laptop that normally carries a 14" panel. Without providing an entirely different chassis, that missing half-inch has to wind up in the bezels.

 

[Avro Arrow]

This is a pretty decent deal, provided that adding RAM isn't the same nightmare as it is for an ASUS craptop. I was going to add my own RAM until I discovered that I literally had to take the whole craptop apart to do so.

Now, I have done a motherboard change on an Acer Aspire 5515 and I've redone the thermal paste on an Acer Aspire 5560, both of which required what would be considered to be a complete tear-down and rebuild. Both of those craptops are still alive today but man, they were time-consuming turds to work on. It's nothing that I would try on a craptop that's still under warranty and adding RAM on both of those machines only required the removal of a small panel on the bottom to expose the SODIMM slots.

Whatever Quanta is doing with their designs today, they're terrible in that way.