When we last saw the Acer Swift 3 in July 2020, it was an ultraportable laptop with a 13.5-inch screen and a boxy 3:2 aspect ratio that made us say it was cool to be square. The Swift 3 changes direction with the 2021 model, which has a 14-inch screen with the more popular and rectangular 16:9 ratio. This makes us miss last year’s taller view and less scrolling. If you don’t mind the wider screen or want it because you watch a lot of movies on your laptop, there’s a lot to like about the new Swift 3, from its all-metal body and Thunderbolt 4 support to its long battery life and fair price.
The Swift 3 has an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB solid-state drive. It has a 14-inch screen. Changes the processor to a Core i7 and adds twice as much memory. Even though having a 512GB SSD in the base model is nice (256GB is starting to feel small), it makes upgrading less appealing because you don’t get any more storage space. All of the types have a non-touch screen with full HD resolution (1,920 by 1,080 pixels) and a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Specifications
- Laptop Class Ultraportable
- Processor Intel Core i7-1165G7
- Processor Speed 2.8 GHz
- RAM (as Tested) 16 GB
- Boot Drive Type SSD
- Boot Drive Capacity (as Tested) 512 GB
- Screen Size 14 inches
Where to get Acer Swift 3 Thin & Light Laptop?
Two USB-C ports that work with Thunderbolt 4, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, and a 3.5mm audio jack make it easy to connect. The lack of an SD card reader is frustrating, but it’s great that Thunderbolt 4 is included at this price. In the computers we’ve tested, the Core i7-1260P has done well and is a big step up from Intel’s 11th-generation CPUs. But a few computers have stood out by doing better than the average for the chip. The table below shows two of them, and one of them is the Swift 3.
In Geekbench 5, our Handbrake test that encodes a 420MB movie as H.265 and Cinebench R23, the Swift 3 and the Prestige 14 were pretty much tied. Both were at the top of the list, with the 45-watt chips competing most strongly in Cinebench. The Swift 3 came in third, after the MSI and the Asus ZenBook S 13 OLED with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U.