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 ESTDisplay Analysis
Acer offers just a single display option on the 14-inch AMD based Swift 3, which is a 1920x1080 IPS display. Considering the price, this is the right option, although it is interesting that they are offering a 13.5-inch 3:2 Intel based Swift 3 in the SF313-52. The 3:2 works quite well for productivity, although less-so for gaming where 16:9 generally suffers from fewer issues.
There is no touch capability with this display, which is a bit of a shame, but also understandable with the other features offered. Acer did well to hit their target price range, and they made overall good decisions on where to invest. Touch is a nice to have, but not a necessity, although when you are used to having it, it is amazing how often you try to touch the screen.
To see how the display stacks up, the laptop was tested with Portrait Display’s CalMAN software suite. For brightness and contrast, the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter was used, and for color accuracy readings the X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer was employed.
Brightness and Contrast
The Acer Swift 3 does not get off to a great start. In a budget notebook, displays tend to be one of the first things on the chopping block. Luckily, we’ve moved past the era where these types of notebooks would offer 1366x768 TN panels, but Acer’s 1920x1080 IPS choice doesn’t offer very good black levels, and their backlight is somewhat weak. It is an inauspicious start.
Grayscale
Grayscale measures the laptops ability to display white levels, from 0% (black) to 100% (white), and the Swift 3 performs quite poorly here. The blue levels are far too strong across most of the range. Gamma is also way off of the expected 2.2 level.
Gamut
Windows 10 is still an sRGB system first and foremost, so proper sRGB gamut support is required for proper color accuracy. The Acer Swift 3 unfortunately does not cover anywhere near the sRGB gamut, which means that the LED backlighting was likely another area where some money was saved. Although grayscale can be salvaged with some ICC profiles, without full sRGB backlighting this laptop would likely suffer further if an ICC was applied because it simply cannot cover the entire sRGB spectrum.
Saturation
The saturation test covers the primary and secondary colors, but unlike the gamut where they are just measured at 100% level, we test them on 4-bit steps from 0% to 100%. Since we’ve already determined the laptop can’t hit the full sRGB gamut, it is no surprise to see the saturation sweeps suffer.
Gretag Macbeth
The Gretag Macbeth tests colors off of the primary and secondary axis, including the important skin tones, but with a display that can’t reproduce the entire sRGB range, the Acer Swift 3 naturally performs quite poorly on this test.
Colorchecker
Finally, we have the colorchecker, where you can more easily visualize the color errors with this display. This is a relative test, since any errors in your own display will influence the result, but on the bottom of the swatches is the color requested, and the top shows the color produced by the display. It is not pretty.
Display Conclusion
Overall, despite the poor showing here, the display is in-line with expectations at this price point. Over the last couple of years, there has been a push for better displays, and laptop makers have made the jump to 1920x1080 IPS panels pretty much across the board; so even though this display is poor compared to better IPS-based laptops, it still does offer the good viewing angles an IPS panel enjoys, and 1920x1080 works very well on a 14-inch screen size.
The very poor backlighting really does hamper the capabilities of this notebook. If you wanted to use it for editing photos or video, the internal components like the CPU, memory, and GPU, really would help, but the included display with its lack of sRGB coverage would certainly hinder the work. For basic office tasks, or even gaming, most people who are looking at a laptop at this price point will likely not be too concerned about the display, but just be aware that this one is deficient in several areas.
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yeeeeman - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
We're talking here about the whole platform, not the cpu only. What I am saying is that you pay with some shortcomings for that 650$ price.Irata - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Yes, you do. This is why it would be great to have $600ish Intel review units to compare to rather than $1500 plus devices. LPDDR4 vs. DDR4 may explain a part of the difference.Still, it's eight cores vs. four cores and the interesting value that imho is missing is power consumption / battery life during the actual benchmarks.
Deicidium369 - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Acer Swift SF314-57-59EY - identical to the review unit - uses Ice Lake i5-1035G1. $679.00.Intel shows 10hrs - AMD shows 11 hours.
https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/model/NX.HJF...
SolarBear28 - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Thanks for the linkDeicidium369 - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
This is not a premium device - it isn't a premium device with AMD or Intel processors. Regardless of whether you choose AMD or Intel - it's still a low cost device.The extra cores are useless and nothing more than a marketing exercise - no one using this laptop will be doing anything that even requires 4 cores. For $649, you get a very good laptop.
Korguz - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
still believe the BS intel keeps feeding you huh Deicidium369 ? intel shillDeicidium369 - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
still believe the BS amdkeeps feeding you huh Korguz? amd shill.Jimmy - have you cleaned up the basement?
Korguz - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
better then intels, you should work on keeping your personal facts straight, instead of posting BS posts on here.Korguz - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
but i will talk your comment as you still believe intel and their mainstream only needs 4 cores BS marketing crapschujj07 - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
Deicidium cannot read the benchmarks. Sure Ice Lake is better in Spec. However, in the application benchmarks the best Ice Lake laptops lose far more than they win against a budget laptop.