Are you looking for a laptop? Are you looking for something compact yet powerful? Everything in a budget too? Before ending up here, you might have already seen a couple of laptops and have been enough confused.
Well, no one can be blamed at this because the competition is so high that every now and then a new laptop is being launched by a company. Never the less, we are here to help you in choosing the best laptop, which can suit all your needs, and comes in a budget too. What you are looking right now is the best budget ultrabook, the Acer Swift 3.
We’ve had to choose the best ultrabook under a budget of $700, and after considering every single laptop in this category we have finally finalized this ultrabook. This is an ultra-slim and light-weight laptop that comes with the perfect combination of specs that too at the right price point.
The first question which might pop in your mind is that this being a budget laptop do we have to compromise on performance? The answer is no as this tiny little beast comes packed with some amazing specs, and a decent battery too.
What’s so special about this ultrabook is that it comes with the latest AMD Ryzen 7 Octa-Core processor, and hence it consumes less power and gives us higher clock speeds. Talking about the battery life it can easily last up to 7 hours on a single charge.
What else can we expect from a compact, premium laptop? There are a lot more things that make this laptop the best pick under this category.
Hardware Specifications:
- AMD Ryzen 7 4700U Octa-Core Processor (Up to 4.1GHz) with Windows 10 Home
- AMD Radeon Graphics
- 8GB LPDDR4 RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD
- 14 Inch Full HD Widescreen IPS LED-backlit Display
- Backlit keyboard | Fingerprint reader | Intel wireless Wi-Fi 6 AX200 802.11ax | HD webcam (1280 x 720) | Up To 11.5 Hours Of Battery Life
Acer Swift 3 SF314-42-R9YN Review
Design:
Talking about the design first, this laptop is an attention seeker and it can grab your attention easily with its great looks. The Acer Swift 3 is a thin and lightweight laptop that is made up of premium material which makes it looks exceptional.
This laptop comes with a magnesium-aluminum chassis and finished in Silver. In terms of the design and the premium look, this laptop can easily give a tough competition to the Macbook and the Dell XPS which falls under this ultrabook segment. The entire laptop comes with a good matte-finish look and black bezels all around the display.
This laptop weighs roughly around 2.65 pounds and is 0.63 inches thick. This is the primary reason why people prefer to buy this laptop, it’s sleek, compact, lightweight, and yet powerful. Never the less, the Acer logo is present right over there in the center, and unfortunately, it doesn’t come with a backlight.
Display:
The Acer Swift 3 sports a 14 inch Full HD IPS display and come with narrow bezels. This is helpful because it eliminates all the unwanted bezels and makes sure that you get the experience of a proper 14-inch display.
The viewing angles on this laptop are great and the colors are accurate too, additionally, this laptop also comes with the Acer color intelligence technology which makes sure that the colors are all true and not over-saturated.
Working in the sunlight could be a little tough though because Acer offers only 251 nits with this laptop. Apart from this, all the other things are pretty good with this display, the major asset of this laptop is how slim it is, and hence the display feels good too.
Performance:
Coming to the most important aspect of why one can consider this laptop, the performance. This laptop is powered by the latest AMD Ryzen 7 4700U processor which has been proven to be a whopping 67% faster than intel processor, in a benchmark test conducted by Cinebench R20.
This processor coupled with 8GB of RAM is expected to provide the best performance. To check the same, our team has intensively used a couple of software’s on this laptop and it was able to take it all.
The perfect combination of a processor with the RAM can easily handle all the mid-range tasks which you throw at it, and the integrated Radeon graphics also make sure to provide the support when required.
The super-fast 512GB SSD is indeed an asset to the laptop while testing out we were able to transfer a 5GB file with a span of 15 seconds which is good. To test the laptop even more further, we’ve tried rendering a 4k file and surprisingly 15 minutes of 4k footage was rendered within 10 minutes, and that too without any heating issues. All in all this laptop is a performance beast under this budget.
Keyboard & Touchpad:
There are a few points which have to be discussed under this segment, the Acer Swift 3 being a thin laptop this comes with a chiclet-style keyboard which has got low key travel, just like the Macbook Air.
Though these keys are shallow, the clicky feedback makes it an absolute delight to work on this laptop, yet surprisingly this keyboard is so silent that it will make sure that you do not disturb your colleagues even while typing at higher speeds.
If you are a night owl and loves to work late nights, the backlit present on the keyboard is going to be useful for you. On the other hand, the arrow keys aren’t full size so it is going to take a while for you to get used to them. Talking about the trackpad, it is spacious enough, comes with a smooth finish, and the sensitivity is good too.
Audio:
Talking about the audio on this laptop, if you are someone who is a fan of good music, you are going to love the stereo speakers.
They are loud enough and provide you crystal clear audio even at high levels, but what it lacks is the capability to give out the Dolby audio, this is something which can be understood considering the price though.
Never the less, if you are looking for better audio, we would recommend you to get an external speaker or a good pair of earphones.
Ports & Slots:
Though this is a budget laptop, Acer has not compromised on the ports. Luckily this laptop comes with a 3.5 mm headphone jack, USB Type-A port along with a Kingston lock slot towards the right side. Over the left side, we’ve got an HDMI port, USB Type C port, and a charging port.
The type C port combined with the super-fast SSD is going to make sure that you always stay on top in terms of the transfer speeds. What’s surprising is that even at this price point, Acer has provided the latest WiFi 6 card which also supports Bluetooth 5.0.
Battery Life
The battery life too is something interesting, because even while you are traveling you can be assured that you will be getting around 7 hours of battery life. But the Acer boasts that it can give up to 11.5-hours of battery backup.
Conclusion
All in all, the Acer Swift 3 is a good budget laptop, this is recommended for those who want a compact, yet a powerful laptop. As the chassis of this laptop is built out of aluminum, it gives the user the premium look of a high priced laptop.
By weighing just 2.65 pounds, this can also be the right choice for someone who travels very often and wants something light to carry on. We can call this laptop a performance beast because though this laptop is so tiny and compact, it has managed to provide higher performance where in you can edit 4k videos too, AMD has definitely done a good job in this segment.
This laptop has got all the specs that a decent user would be looking for, so no matter which field you are in, you can consider this laptop for the best performance on a budget.
Hello! I am Robbin Simmond a senior editor & writer of this blog. By profession, I am a computer hardware engineer with a passion for gaming and technology. With a deep understanding of the intricate workings of computers, I have spent years researching and testing the latest advancements in gaming laptops.