The Acer Swift 3 SF314 Notebook Review: Swift Gets Swifter With Ryzen 4000
by Brett Howse & Andrei Frumusanu on May 5, 2020 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Although there are a few shortcomings on the new for 2020 Acer Swift 3, overall the company has done an excellent job on a lot of the key areas of this notebook. Considering the price of just $649, including 8 GB of RAM and a 512 GB NVMe SSD is very welcome, and having a processor that offers as much performance as the AMD Ryzen 7 4700U is the icing on the cake. The fact that everything is wrapped up in an attractive, sturdy aluminum shell really lets the Swift 3 punch above its weight.
AMD’s Ryzen 7 4700U is likely to be one of the more popular offerings in notebooks, and AMD has delivered. The new Zen 2 cores are much more competitive, and AMD has crammed eight cores onto this 15-Watt CPU. It is only in the last couple of generations that we saw quad-core processors in the 15-Watt range, but AMD has proven that they can make eight work in a limited power window. And while Intel appears to have a single-threaded performance advantage with their Sunny Cove CPU architecture, AMD’s Renoir simply overpowers Ice Lake with the number of full cores available.
The GPU performance is also excellent, and despite AMD cutting back on the numbers of compute units included in Renoir, they’ve made up for it not only with GPU frequency, but also with CPU performance helping feed the GPU. In all cases, the new 7 CU GPU in Renoir was able to outperform the 11 CU GPU in Picasso. Generally, a wider, slower GPU is going to offer better efficiency, but AMD has delivered the performance.
That performance does come at a cost though, and that is heat. The Acer Swift 3 could not keep up with the demands of the Renoir APU at full blast, and there was significant throttling when running at the Best Performance level in Windows 10. That is disappointing, because it prevents this notebook from being able to get the most out of the APU inside. If you were hoping to use the integrated Vega graphics for light gaming, be aware that you may run into heat issues.
It almost goes without saying that the display quality is also lacking. To hit this kind of a price point, certain areas were cut, and one of them was the display. The Acer Swift 3 does offer a 1920x1080 IPS panel, but the poor backlighting, lack of sRGB coverage, and poor color accuracy all make it a very mediocre display. It is not unexpected in this price range, but is one of the areas that reminds you why this laptop is priced where it is.
Despite the negatives, Acer has still delivered a winning combination with the Swift 3. It offers the same look, feel, and portability of a much more expensive design. The 83% screen to body ratio is not industry leading, but does offer the modern look of a thin-bezel design, and manages to make this 14-inch laptop feel much more compact than it is. It is also very light, at 2.65 lbs, making it very easy to travel with, if we ever get to travel again.
At a $649 MSRP, Acer has delivered a very solid value, thanks to the AMD Ryzen 7 4700U, 8 GB of DDR4-3200, and a 512 GB PCIe SSD. The Ryzen platform offers the same Modern Standby resume features as Intel now, so wakeup is instant. Battery life was very solid, and Acer has included features like an integrated fingerprint reader making sign-in a breeze.
Acer has been a great partner for AMD, and the new Swift 3 punches well above its weight. It is easy to be distracted by some of the top-end notebooks on the market, but if your budget is not quite there, you get a lot of the same qualities, but at a price that is very reasonable. The Acer Swift 3 SF314-42 is set to available in the early part of this month, so it should be available to purchase very soon.
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LaMpiR - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
So, a 649$ laptop costs in Europe 890$. How is this possible?neblogai - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
Something was probably wrong with the sample Anandtech got. Here is a video of FarCry5- Swift 3 4700U temps stay at nice and cool ~69C even in the long and action packed scene: https://youtu.be/8A2XFdAZLPQ . There is also another test with a 4500U model from the same channel- no temperature issues there either, nor in any of the ~20 games tested. Other channels, like Dave Lee, also say that cooling is just so capable and quiet, that Acer should have upped cTDP higher.Oxford Guy - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
Maybe it's just me, but the whole article seems very deceptive.The headline should be: "The Acer Swift 3 SF314 Notebook Review: Swift Gets Slower With Kneecapped Ryzen 4000"
The little TDP graphic should be 8+ watts, not 15.
neblogai - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link
It is just you. Acer would not be wrong to call Intel models 'Swift 3', and AMD models - 'Swifter 3'.watzupken - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link
The throttling is to be expected when you see a 1.2kg laptop. Where can they cut in order to lose few hundred grams, when the battery size is the same? Surely its got to be the cooling solution. If you are looking for performance, these ultra slim laptops are not for you. The same problem plagues Intel based laptops as well. As PC maker/ manufacturers go crazy about cutting weight and size of laptops, a lot of these thin laptops suffer from thermal throttling, poor upgradeability and missing port convenience.In this case, I think there may be something wrong with the fan curve and should be resolved through some software updates. The cooling solution looks normal to me after cracking open a few of these laptops with low power processors. Only observation is that the heatsink is getting thinner over the years, which will certainly impact cooling. Mid end models should have a longer heatsink with slightly bigger fan to cover the longer heatsink, while high end models may end up with dual heatsink and fan cooling solution to get around the slimness.
Oxford Guy - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
Yes, it's "just me" because apparently 8 watts is "Swifter" than the 15 it's supposed to run at.At least the 15W graphic appears to have been removed. That's something.
Oxford Guy - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
"The throttling is to be expected when you see a 1.2kg laptop. Where can they cut in order to lose few hundred grams, when the battery size is the same? Surely its got to be the cooling solution. If you are looking for performance, these ultra slim laptops are not for you."I don't buy this excuse.
When a company sells a product it shouldn't be a bait and switch deal.
If Acer wants to post "8+ watts" as the TDP of the CPU in a prominent place that's one thing. If it lists 15W and/or just the CPU model then that's not good enough.
Moreover, it should be made clear to the consumer that the CPU is throttled to get to that 8 watts, not that it's just so efficient it can function at 8 watts to do the equivalent of what should take 15 for the same CPU because of something special about the machine's design.
If the machine can't handle a 15 watt CPU then it should be throttled to what it can handle and that should be the spec sold to consumers, not the spec it can't handle.
ReallyBigMistake - Sunday, May 17, 2020 - link
"Key to this is a much-needed jump from GlobalFoundries' 12nm process to TSMC's class-leading 7nm process"I am calling it but GF days are numbered.
Cirecomputers12 - Sunday, June 7, 2020 - link
What you guys don't get is the internals are great at the price of a very CRAP display. Just look up the srgb and the Adobe rgb its terrible. The brightness nits are 250 which is pretty much as dark as you can go with laptops. SO if the display doesn't mean that much, this an awesome deal. If it does all the power in the world isn't going to make that Display any better. It's also made out of plastic......It's up to you ......AdriaticAdrian2 - Tuesday, April 27, 2021 - link
Does someone know if I charge it with anything lower than 65w through USB-C? I have it but I don't want to buy anything that will not work