The Acer Swift 3 is a thin and light laptop that competes with more expensive notebooks on the market. It features an AMD Ryzen 4700U processor, a three-cell 48-watt hour battery, and fast charging capabilities. The battery life is actually pretty good, lasting around 14 hours in our light load test, which is comparable to the ZenBook Flip S we recently reviewed.

The Swift 3's performance is impressive, especially considering its size and price. It trails behind the ZenBook 14 in some tests, but still manages to maintain a slightly higher average clock speed due to its lower memory speeds. However, it comes out on top in certain applications like MATLAB and WinRAR. The 8 gigabytes of RAM may be a limiting factor for heavy Chrome users or those who engage in light video or photo editing, but for most users, it should provide plenty of performance.

One notable aspect of the Swift 3 is its gaming capabilities. While it can't handle demanding games, it can still play some lighter titles without issue. The ironic twist is that this $650 laptop with an AMD CPU can actually beat up the more expensive ZenBook Flip S, which features Intel's latest Tiger Lake CPU.

Acer's goal with the Swift 3 was to deliver a balanced thin and light notebook with good performance for its price range. They've achieved this by delivering a strong multi-core test result and beating out more expensive notebooks with Intel CPUs. The laptop's design is also noteworthy, featuring a nice build quality, excellent hinge, keyboard, trackpad, and I/O.

However, there is one aspect of the Swift 3 that may be a drawback for some users: its display. While it's not terrible, it doesn't quite live up to expectations. If you're in the market for a budget-friendly thin and light notebook, the Swift 3 is definitely worth considering. Its performance, design, and features make it an excellent option, especially at this price point.

Overall, the Acer Swift 3 is a great laptop that offers impressive performance and value for its price range. It's a solid choice for anyone looking for a thin and light notebook without breaking the bank. With its balanced design, good build quality, and strong multi-core test result, it's an excellent option to consider.

In conclusion, the Acer Swift 3 is a laptop that checks all the right boxes. Its performance is impressive, its design is sleek, and its features are comprehensive. The only drawback may be the display, but even that's not necessarily a deal-breaker. If you're in the market for a budget-friendly thin and light notebook, the Swift 3 is definitely worth considering. With its price point of $650, it offers an unbeatable value proposition that makes it a great option for anyone looking to upgrade their computing experience without breaking the bank.

The Swift 3's battery life is another notable aspect of its performance. While it may not last as long as some other laptops on the market, it still manages to provide plenty of power throughout the day. The laptop's temperature management also deserves praise, with temperatures staying relatively cool even during heavy usage.

In terms of noise levels, the Swift 3 is surprisingly quiet, especially when processing heavy loads. This is a notable achievement, as some laptops may sacrifice display quality or performance in order to reduce noise levels. However, the Swift 3 seems to have found a happy medium between performance and acoustics.

Overall, the Acer Swift 3 is a solid choice for anyone looking for a thin and light notebook that offers impressive performance without breaking the bank. With its balanced design, good build quality, and strong multi-core test result, it's an excellent option to consider. Whether you're a student, professional, or simply someone who needs a reliable laptop for everyday use, the Swift 3 is definitely worth checking out.

The Acer Swift 3 is a great example of how a manufacturer can balance performance and price in a thin and light notebook. By delivering a strong multi-core test result and beating out more expensive notebooks with Intel CPUs, Acer has created a laptop that offers impressive value for its price range. The Swift 3's design and features are also noteworthy, featuring a nice build quality, excellent hinge, keyboard, trackpad, and I/O.

While the display may not be perfect, it's still a minor quibble in an otherwise excellent package. If you're in the market for a budget-friendly thin and light notebook, the Swift 3 is definitely worth considering. Its performance, design, and features make it an excellent option that can't be beat at its price point.

The Acer Swift 3 is also notable for its gaming capabilities, which are surprisingly strong despite its size and price. While it may not be able to handle demanding games, it can still play some lighter titles without issue. This is a notable achievement, especially considering the laptop's compact design.

Overall, the Acer Swift 3 is a great choice for anyone looking for a thin and light notebook that offers impressive performance and value for its price range. Its balanced design, good build quality, and strong multi-core test result make it an excellent option to consider. Whether you're a student, professional, or simply someone who needs a reliable laptop for everyday use, the Swift 3 is definitely worth checking out.

In conclusion, the Acer Swift 3 is a great laptop that offers impressive performance, value, and features at its price range. Its balanced design, good build quality, and strong multi-core test result make it an excellent option to consider. While the display may not be perfect, it's still a minor quibble in an otherwise excellent package.

The Swift 3's performance is one of its strongest assets, with impressive multi-core test results that rival more expensive notebooks on the market. This is a notable achievement, especially considering the laptop's size and price. The laptop's temperature management also deserves praise, with temperatures staying relatively cool even during heavy usage.

In terms of noise levels, the Swift 3 is surprisingly quiet, especially when processing heavy loads. This is a notable achievement, as some laptops may sacrifice display quality or performance in order to reduce noise levels. However, the Swift 3 seems to have found a happy medium between performance and acoustics.

Overall, the Acer Swift 3 is a solid choice for anyone looking for a thin and light notebook that offers impressive performance without breaking the bank. With its balanced design, good build quality, and strong multi-core test result, it's an excellent option to consider.

In terms of value, the Acer Swift 3 offers an unbeatable proposition at its price point of $650. It's hard to find a laptop that delivers this level of performance and features without breaking the bank. The Swift 3's design and build quality are also noteworthy, featuring a nice blend of style and substance.

Overall, the Acer Swift 3 is a great choice for anyone looking for a thin and light notebook that offers impressive performance and value for its price range. Its balanced design, good build quality, and strong multi-core test result make it an excellent option to consider. Whether you're a student, professional, or simply someone who needs a reliable laptop for everyday use, the Swift 3 is definitely worth checking out.

The Acer Swift 3's performance is one of its strongest assets, with impressive multi-core test results that rival more expensive notebooks on the market. This is a notable achievement, especially considering the laptop's size and price. The laptop's temperature management also deserves praise, with temperatures staying relatively cool even during heavy usage.

In terms of noise levels, the Swift 3 is surprisingly quiet, especially when processing heavy loads. This is a notable achievement, as some laptops may sacrifice display quality or performance in order to reduce noise levels. However, the Swift 3 seems to have found a happy medium between performance and acoustics.

Overall, the Acer Swift 3 is a solid choice for anyone looking for a thin and light notebook that offers impressive performance without breaking the bank. With its balanced design, good build quality, and strong multi-core test result, it's an excellent option to consider.

The Acer Swift 3 is also notable for its gaming capabilities, which are surprisingly strong despite its size and price. While it may not be able to handle demanding games, it can still play some lighter titles without issue. This is a notable achievement, especially considering the laptop's compact design.

Overall, the Acer Swift 3 offers an unbeatable value proposition at its price point of $650. Its performance, design, and features make it an excellent option that can't be beat. Whether you're a student, professional, or simply someone who needs a reliable laptop for everyday use, the Swift 3 is definitely worth considering.

In conclusion, the Acer Swift 3 is a great laptop that offers impressive performance, value, and features at its price range. Its balanced design, good build quality, and strong multi-core test result make it an excellent option to consider. Whether you're looking for a thin and light notebook or simply someone who needs a reliable laptop for everyday use, the Swift 3 is definitely worth checking out.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enall right so picture yourselves in the situation you're in the market for a thin and light notebook and your budget is around 700 but you're not willing to sacrifice on things like build quality performance and battery life well let me introduce you to the swift 3 by acer and most of you might be wondering what's really new with this laptop well first of all it is rocking amd's ryzen 4000 u-series cpus and it's actually an amd-based thin light no boat that you can actually buy right now and it is the least expensive than light that we've ever taken a look at coming in at 650 now in the past we reviewed a lot of expensive linen light devices and having taken a look at the swift 3 it's really amazing to see what acer has been able to accomplish at that price point especially for an amd based thinlite device and i want you guys to keep that in mind as i'm walking you through my analysis of this notebook so the question that really needs to be answered here is how much are you getting for 650 dollars now there are a lot of great things to like about the swift 3 but acer had to cut some corners to hit that price point so let's talk about that right after this the rival 3 wireless nice and get up to 400 hours of play time with two aaa batteries at 1 000 hertz that's plenty of time to own in games with a good shape user defined weight and a mouse that is also bluetooth ready the steel series rival 3 wireless check it out below okay so i'm going to jump right into the specs because you're really getting some serious horsepower for 650 so that includes the ryzen 7 4700u with eight cores and eight threads eight gigabytes of lpddr4 ram a 512 gigabyte nvme ssd vega 7 graphics and a 1080p ips display now about that display everyone's talking about how terrible it is it doesn't really get bright enough to view comfortably outdoors color accuracies atrocious here's the thing i ran my display quality analysis test and it covers 64 srgb 47 adobe rgb and 47 dc ip3 so yes the numbers they don't lie it's not necessarily the most color accurate screen but to be perfectly honest with you guys subjectively it looks better than the numbers make it out to be and i'll give you a perfect example when we open this laptop out of the box for the first time i was telling mike like that's actually not a bad display it's actually pretty good but i can't say the same thing for something like the tough a15 when we opened that laptop out of the box we knew that the display was the worst because you can clearly tell the colors are off and you know the contrast ratios are totally off um and i can't really say that about this laptop because it's 650 that's one thing that you can't forget so don't just ignore this laptop because of the display it's perfectly fine to get you through your you know casual day-to-day tasks with all of that out of the way let's talk about the design and build quality and it's really really good the top and bottom are crafted in a thin sheet of aluminum while the polymers is made out of magnesium when you pick this thing up it doesn't feel plasticky it feels similar to the ideapad slim 7 that i checked out recently a notebook that you unfortunately can't buy the design is very simple no fancy textures and it doesn't pick up fingerprints easily so that's nice the hinge is super rigid it barely wobbles which i like the only thing that you need to watch out for is that if you plan on opening this laptop with one hand that's impossible because you kind of have to use both your hands to open it it's mostly because of that strong stiff hinge as for size it's 15.95 millimeters thick and it only weighs about 2.65 pounds so it's a little bit thicker than the zenbook 14 that we looked at featuring the same ryzen cpu but still this will complement students just fine the power cable is long enough but when you start manipulating it for the first time you'll instantly notice how cheap it is it's just worse than the cables that come with your smartphone charger the keyboard layout is pretty straightforward the keys are surprisingly really good this has excellent feedback with good travel distance i really enjoyed my time using it by default the secondary function keys are set as primary so you can adjust volume brightness and other controls on the fly but unfortunately you can't switch them to secondary the keys are led backlit it's alright you only get one setting to either turn it on or off no brightness adjustments whatsoever and the trackpad is good it's a plastic surface and it gets the job done the integrated primary electronic buttons are pretty good nice and tactile no complaints acer has also included a fingerprint reader right by the arrow keys it's bad like really bad setting it up alone took almost five minutes and naturally that led to login failures so i had to rely on my password to get into the laptop so i mean if you're putting in a really cheap fingerprint sensor you might as well just not put one in the first place so acer take notes please do this is the webcam test on the swift 3 and the video quality looks pretty good in fact it looks better than some more expensive notebooks that we've taken a look at in the past the microphone also sounds really nice and honestly i'm surprised at how good it sounds for a 650 laptop um i think acer really did a good job of not cheaping out on at least that department so it's good for business meetings and all that stuff you don't have to worry about it the speakers are bottom facing and they're okay i mean don't expect it to blow your minds because you can get away with a little bit of vocal listening but if you're into like deep house and you know if you're into like music that's emphasized a lot on the lower ends uh yeah it's not gonna cut it because there's absolutely no bass so you might want to rely on either external speakers or headphones so for casual stuff it's fine i mean what more can you expect for a laptop that costs 650 i think i've said 650 like 10 times taking a look at the i o on the left hand side you have your power in usb c 3.2 gen 2 port highly appreciate that acer it also functions as a display port and it supports power delivery so that's nice you also have hdmi usb 3.2 gen 1 with support for power off charging and on the right hand side you have your kensington lock and a usb 2.0 port and a combo audio jack as for upgradability there's not a lot going on over here the memory is soldered onto the pcb the only component that's user upgradable is the nvme ssd and the drive speeds are pretty good again for this price point i was expecting a sata based m.2 drive but that's not the case here it actually competes with the more expensive notebooks out there it also comes with a three cell 48 watt hour battery and it supports fast charge a battery life is actually pretty good during our light load test the swift 3 lasted just a tad below 14 hours which is right up against the zenbook flip s i checked out recently featuring intel's tiger lake cpu also keep in mind that that zenbook notebook has a bigger battery so amd's power efficiency really comes in clutch here switching gears to our heavy load test and we expected it to not last that long because it is the smallest battery we've seen on a thin light notebook so keep your expectations low in this area so now let's move on to how this thing performs and looking at temperatures and clock speeds over time basically these are right in line with what we expect from a 4700u operating at around 16 watts average clock speeds hover around the 2.7 gigahertz mark which is well above the base clock and temperatures never really made their way above 77 degrees celsius though they were still climbing by the end of the test the interesting thing about this is the swift 3 was whisper quiet even when processing a heavy all-core load and it really feels like acer's goal here was to minimize noise in some cases we've seen surface temperatures get sacrificed for acoustics but that didn't really happen either both the top and the bottom of this one stays pretty cool to the touch and i've got to say at least from these tests it's pretty impressive moving on to actual performance you'll see that the swift 3 trailing the zenbook 14 in quite a few tests even though it maintains a slightly higher average clock speed that could be due to the lower 3 200 megahertz memory speeds acer's using here versus the 37 33 megahertz on the zenbook then again there are a few situations like matlab and winrar where the swift comes out on top i should also mention that the 8 gigabytes of ram could be a factor in some more intensive programs like premiere 2. now i do want to talk about that 8 gigabytes of memory because i personally don't see that as a huge you know bottleneck or limiting factor that would kill the overall user experience using the swift 3. uh i mean sure if you're a heavy chrome user that use like 50 or 100 tabs at the same time you will obviously start to notice that slow down because as you all know chrome loves memory and you'll definitely you know if you're into like a little bit of light video or photo editing having more memory is definitely beneficial but um if you're someone who's just shopping around for a laptop within this price range you should be perfectly fine and even if you think about it with eight gigabytes of ram it still manages to beat the pants off intel's laptops in our multi-core tests so that's kind of interesting and now on to gaming performance well it is what it is guys the swift 3 can get away with some really light games but nothing more than that the ironic thing here is that i have to say this again this 650 laptop with its amd cpu can still beat up the zenbook flip s which packed intel's newest tiger league cpu and that costs a whole lot more okay so here's my verdict on the swift three acer's goal with this laptop was to deliver a balanced thin and light notebook with really good performance for the value and i think they've done that they've accomplished that because the 4700u does a great job in our multi-core test and it actually beats the most expensive notebooks that we've tested with intel cpus it's it's just a fact and the fact that they're getting that kind of performance for 650 is amazing when you look at the rest of the laptop it's also really nice the design is very nice the build quality is excellent the hinge the keyboard the track pad the i o is also really good the webcam quality it's all good except for the display that some of you might be thinking that oh yeah the display is pretty trash i should i should completely just ignore it but don't because if you're shopping for a notebook within the spice range take a look at it see what you think and then pull the trigger because it's not that bad it's i would wholeheartedly recommend this laptop again because of that price because it's really good so that note thank you so much for watching let me know what you guys think about the swift 3 and you know if you are in the market for a budget dinner light notebook would you consider it or if you have other alternatives let us know in the comments down below i'm amiibo with hardware canucks thank you so much for watching and i'll talk to you guys in the next oneall right so picture yourselves in the situation you're in the market for a thin and light notebook and your budget is around 700 but you're not willing to sacrifice on things like build quality performance and battery life well let me introduce you to the swift 3 by acer and most of you might be wondering what's really new with this laptop well first of all it is rocking amd's ryzen 4000 u-series cpus and it's actually an amd-based thin light no boat that you can actually buy right now and it is the least expensive than light that we've ever taken a look at coming in at 650 now in the past we reviewed a lot of expensive linen light devices and having taken a look at the swift 3 it's really amazing to see what acer has been able to accomplish at that price point especially for an amd based thinlite device and i want you guys to keep that in mind as i'm walking you through my analysis of this notebook so the question that really needs to be answered here is how much are you getting for 650 dollars now there are a lot of great things to like about the swift 3 but acer had to cut some corners to hit that price point so let's talk about that right after this the rival 3 wireless nice and get up to 400 hours of play time with two aaa batteries at 1 000 hertz that's plenty of time to own in games with a good shape user defined weight and a mouse that is also bluetooth ready the steel series rival 3 wireless check it out below okay so i'm going to jump right into the specs because you're really getting some serious horsepower for 650 so that includes the ryzen 7 4700u with eight cores and eight threads eight gigabytes of lpddr4 ram a 512 gigabyte nvme ssd vega 7 graphics and a 1080p ips display now about that display everyone's talking about how terrible it is it doesn't really get bright enough to view comfortably outdoors color accuracies atrocious here's the thing i ran my display quality analysis test and it covers 64 srgb 47 adobe rgb and 47 dc ip3 so yes the numbers they don't lie it's not necessarily the most color accurate screen but to be perfectly honest with you guys subjectively it looks better than the numbers make it out to be and i'll give you a perfect example when we open this laptop out of the box for the first time i was telling mike like that's actually not a bad display it's actually pretty good but i can't say the same thing for something like the tough a15 when we opened that laptop out of the box we knew that the display was the worst because you can clearly tell the colors are off and you know the contrast ratios are totally off um and i can't really say that about this laptop because it's 650 that's one thing that you can't forget so don't just ignore this laptop because of the display it's perfectly fine to get you through your you know casual day-to-day tasks with all of that out of the way let's talk about the design and build quality and it's really really good the top and bottom are crafted in a thin sheet of aluminum while the polymers is made out of magnesium when you pick this thing up it doesn't feel plasticky it feels similar to the ideapad slim 7 that i checked out recently a notebook that you unfortunately can't buy the design is very simple no fancy textures and it doesn't pick up fingerprints easily so that's nice the hinge is super rigid it barely wobbles which i like the only thing that you need to watch out for is that if you plan on opening this laptop with one hand that's impossible because you kind of have to use both your hands to open it it's mostly because of that strong stiff hinge as for size it's 15.95 millimeters thick and it only weighs about 2.65 pounds so it's a little bit thicker than the zenbook 14 that we looked at featuring the same ryzen cpu but still this will complement students just fine the power cable is long enough but when you start manipulating it for the first time you'll instantly notice how cheap it is it's just worse than the cables that come with your smartphone charger the keyboard layout is pretty straightforward the keys are surprisingly really good this has excellent feedback with good travel distance i really enjoyed my time using it by default the secondary function keys are set as primary so you can adjust volume brightness and other controls on the fly but unfortunately you can't switch them to secondary the keys are led backlit it's alright you only get one setting to either turn it on or off no brightness adjustments whatsoever and the trackpad is good it's a plastic surface and it gets the job done the integrated primary electronic buttons are pretty good nice and tactile no complaints acer has also included a fingerprint reader right by the arrow keys it's bad like really bad setting it up alone took almost five minutes and naturally that led to login failures so i had to rely on my password to get into the laptop so i mean if you're putting in a really cheap fingerprint sensor you might as well just not put one in the first place so acer take notes please do this is the webcam test on the swift 3 and the video quality looks pretty good in fact it looks better than some more expensive notebooks that we've taken a look at in the past the microphone also sounds really nice and honestly i'm surprised at how good it sounds for a 650 laptop um i think acer really did a good job of not cheaping out on at least that department so it's good for business meetings and all that stuff you don't have to worry about it the speakers are bottom facing and they're okay i mean don't expect it to blow your minds because you can get away with a little bit of vocal listening but if you're into like deep house and you know if you're into like music that's emphasized a lot on the lower ends uh yeah it's not gonna cut it because there's absolutely no bass so you might want to rely on either external speakers or headphones so for casual stuff it's fine i mean what more can you expect for a laptop that costs 650 i think i've said 650 like 10 times taking a look at the i o on the left hand side you have your power in usb c 3.2 gen 2 port highly appreciate that acer it also functions as a display port and it supports power delivery so that's nice you also have hdmi usb 3.2 gen 1 with support for power off charging and on the right hand side you have your kensington lock and a usb 2.0 port and a combo audio jack as for upgradability there's not a lot going on over here the memory is soldered onto the pcb the only component that's user upgradable is the nvme ssd and the drive speeds are pretty good again for this price point i was expecting a sata based m.2 drive but that's not the case here it actually competes with the more expensive notebooks out there it also comes with a three cell 48 watt hour battery and it supports fast charge a battery life is actually pretty good during our light load test the swift 3 lasted just a tad below 14 hours which is right up against the zenbook flip s i checked out recently featuring intel's tiger lake cpu also keep in mind that that zenbook notebook has a bigger battery so amd's power efficiency really comes in clutch here switching gears to our heavy load test and we expected it to not last that long because it is the smallest battery we've seen on a thin light notebook so keep your expectations low in this area so now let's move on to how this thing performs and looking at temperatures and clock speeds over time basically these are right in line with what we expect from a 4700u operating at around 16 watts average clock speeds hover around the 2.7 gigahertz mark which is well above the base clock and temperatures never really made their way above 77 degrees celsius though they were still climbing by the end of the test the interesting thing about this is the swift 3 was whisper quiet even when processing a heavy all-core load and it really feels like acer's goal here was to minimize noise in some cases we've seen surface temperatures get sacrificed for acoustics but that didn't really happen either both the top and the bottom of this one stays pretty cool to the touch and i've got to say at least from these tests it's pretty impressive moving on to actual performance you'll see that the swift 3 trailing the zenbook 14 in quite a few tests even though it maintains a slightly higher average clock speed that could be due to the lower 3 200 megahertz memory speeds acer's using here versus the 37 33 megahertz on the zenbook then again there are a few situations like matlab and winrar where the swift comes out on top i should also mention that the 8 gigabytes of ram could be a factor in some more intensive programs like premiere 2. now i do want to talk about that 8 gigabytes of memory because i personally don't see that as a huge you know bottleneck or limiting factor that would kill the overall user experience using the swift 3. uh i mean sure if you're a heavy chrome user that use like 50 or 100 tabs at the same time you will obviously start to notice that slow down because as you all know chrome loves memory and you'll definitely you know if you're into like a little bit of light video or photo editing having more memory is definitely beneficial but um if you're someone who's just shopping around for a laptop within this price range you should be perfectly fine and even if you think about it with eight gigabytes of ram it still manages to beat the pants off intel's laptops in our multi-core tests so that's kind of interesting and now on to gaming performance well it is what it is guys the swift 3 can get away with some really light games but nothing more than that the ironic thing here is that i have to say this again this 650 laptop with its amd cpu can still beat up the zenbook flip s which packed intel's newest tiger league cpu and that costs a whole lot more okay so here's my verdict on the swift three acer's goal with this laptop was to deliver a balanced thin and light notebook with really good performance for the value and i think they've done that they've accomplished that because the 4700u does a great job in our multi-core test and it actually beats the most expensive notebooks that we've tested with intel cpus it's it's just a fact and the fact that they're getting that kind of performance for 650 is amazing when you look at the rest of the laptop it's also really nice the design is very nice the build quality is excellent the hinge the keyboard the track pad the i o is also really good the webcam quality it's all good except for the display that some of you might be thinking that oh yeah the display is pretty trash i should i should completely just ignore it but don't because if you're shopping for a notebook within the spice range take a look at it see what you think and then pull the trigger because it's not that bad it's i would wholeheartedly recommend this laptop again because of that price because it's really good so that note thank you so much for watching let me know what you guys think about the swift 3 and you know if you are in the market for a budget dinner light notebook would you consider it or if you have other alternatives let us know in the comments down below i'm amiibo with hardware canucks thank you so much for watching and i'll talk to you guys in the next oneall right so picture yourselves in the situation you're in the market for a thin and light notebook and your budget is around 700 but you're not willing to sacrifice on things like build quality performance and battery life well let me introduce you to the swift 3 by acer and most of you might be wondering what's really new with this laptop well first of all it is rocking amd's ryzen 4000 u-series cpus and it's actually an amd-based thin light no boat that you can actually buy right now and it is the least expensive than light that we've ever taken a look at coming in at 650 now in the past we reviewed a lot of expensive linen light devices and having taken a look at the swift 3 it's really amazing to see what acer has been able to accomplish at that price point especially for an amd based thinlite device and i want you guys to keep that in mind as i'm walking you through my analysis of this notebook so the question that really needs to be answered here is how much are you getting for 650 dollars now there are a lot of great things to like about the swift 3 but acer had to cut some corners to hit that price point so let's talk about that right after this the rival 3 wireless nice and get up to 400 hours of play time with two aaa batteries at 1 000 hertz that's plenty of time to own in games with a good shape user defined weight and a mouse that is also bluetooth ready the steel series rival 3 wireless check it out below okay so i'm going to jump right into the specs because you're really getting some serious horsepower for 650 so that includes the ryzen 7 4700u with eight cores and eight threads eight gigabytes of lpddr4 ram a 512 gigabyte nvme ssd vega 7 graphics and a 1080p ips display now about that display everyone's talking about how terrible it is it doesn't really get bright enough to view comfortably outdoors color accuracies atrocious here's the thing i ran my display quality analysis test and it covers 64 srgb 47 adobe rgb and 47 dc ip3 so yes the numbers they don't lie it's not necessarily the most color accurate screen but to be perfectly honest with you guys subjectively it looks better than the numbers make it out to be and i'll give you a perfect example when we open this laptop out of the box for the first time i was telling mike like that's actually not a bad display it's actually pretty good but i can't say the same thing for something like the tough a15 when we opened that laptop out of the box we knew that the display was the worst because you can clearly tell the colors are off and you know the contrast ratios are totally off um and i can't really say that about this laptop because it's 650 that's one thing that you can't forget so don't just ignore this laptop because of the display it's perfectly fine to get you through your you know casual day-to-day tasks with all of that out of the way let's talk about the design and build quality and it's really really good the top and bottom are crafted in a thin sheet of aluminum while the polymers is made out of magnesium when you pick this thing up it doesn't feel plasticky it feels similar to the ideapad slim 7 that i checked out recently a notebook that you unfortunately can't buy the design is very simple no fancy textures and it doesn't pick up fingerprints easily so that's nice the hinge is super rigid it barely wobbles which i like the only thing that you need to watch out for is that if you plan on opening this laptop with one hand that's impossible because you kind of have to use both your hands to open it it's mostly because of that strong stiff hinge as for size it's 15.95 millimeters thick and it only weighs about 2.65 pounds so it's a little bit thicker than the zenbook 14 that we looked at featuring the same ryzen cpu but still this will complement students just fine the power cable is long enough but when you start manipulating it for the first time you'll instantly notice how cheap it is it's just worse than the cables that come with your smartphone charger the keyboard layout is pretty straightforward the keys are surprisingly really good this has excellent feedback with good travel distance i really enjoyed my time using it by default the secondary function keys are set as primary so you can adjust volume brightness and other controls on the fly but unfortunately you can't switch them to secondary the keys are led backlit it's alright you only get one setting to either turn it on or off no brightness adjustments whatsoever and the trackpad is good it's a plastic surface and it gets the job done the integrated primary electronic buttons are pretty good nice and tactile no complaints acer has also included a fingerprint reader right by the arrow keys it's bad like really bad setting it up alone took almost five minutes and naturally that led to login failures so i had to rely on my password to get into the laptop so i mean if you're putting in a really cheap fingerprint sensor you might as well just not put one in the first place so acer take notes please do this is the webcam test on the swift 3 and the video quality looks pretty good in fact it looks better than some more expensive notebooks that we've taken a look at in the past the microphone also sounds really nice and honestly i'm surprised at how good it sounds for a 650 laptop um i think acer really did a good job of not cheaping out on at least that department so it's good for business meetings and all that stuff you don't have to worry about it the speakers are bottom facing and they're okay i mean don't expect it to blow your minds because you can get away with a little bit of vocal listening but if you're into like deep house and you know if you're into like music that's emphasized a lot on the lower ends uh yeah it's not gonna cut it because there's absolutely no bass so you might want to rely on either external speakers or headphones so for casual stuff it's fine i mean what more can you expect for a laptop that costs 650 i think i've said 650 like 10 times taking a look at the i o on the left hand side you have your power in usb c 3.2 gen 2 port highly appreciate that acer it also functions as a display port and it supports power delivery so that's nice you also have hdmi usb 3.2 gen 1 with support for power off charging and on the right hand side you have your kensington lock and a usb 2.0 port and a combo audio jack as for upgradability there's not a lot going on over here the memory is soldered onto the pcb the only component that's user upgradable is the nvme ssd and the drive speeds are pretty good again for this price point i was expecting a sata based m.2 drive but that's not the case here it actually competes with the more expensive notebooks out there it also comes with a three cell 48 watt hour battery and it supports fast charge a battery life is actually pretty good during our light load test the swift 3 lasted just a tad below 14 hours which is right up against the zenbook flip s i checked out recently featuring intel's tiger lake cpu also keep in mind that that zenbook notebook has a bigger battery so amd's power efficiency really comes in clutch here switching gears to our heavy load test and we expected it to not last that long because it is the smallest battery we've seen on a thin light notebook so keep your expectations low in this area so now let's move on to how this thing performs and looking at temperatures and clock speeds over time basically these are right in line with what we expect from a 4700u operating at around 16 watts average clock speeds hover around the 2.7 gigahertz mark which is well above the base clock and temperatures never really made their way above 77 degrees celsius though they were still climbing by the end of the test the interesting thing about this is the swift 3 was whisper quiet even when processing a heavy all-core load and it really feels like acer's goal here was to minimize noise in some cases we've seen surface temperatures get sacrificed for acoustics but that didn't really happen either both the top and the bottom of this one stays pretty cool to the touch and i've got to say at least from these tests it's pretty impressive moving on to actual performance you'll see that the swift 3 trailing the zenbook 14 in quite a few tests even though it maintains a slightly higher average clock speed that could be due to the lower 3 200 megahertz memory speeds acer's using here versus the 37 33 megahertz on the zenbook then again there are a few situations like matlab and winrar where the swift comes out on top i should also mention that the 8 gigabytes of ram could be a factor in some more intensive programs like premiere 2. now i do want to talk about that 8 gigabytes of memory because i personally don't see that as a huge you know bottleneck or limiting factor that would kill the overall user experience using the swift 3. uh i mean sure if you're a heavy chrome user that use like 50 or 100 tabs at the same time you will obviously start to notice that slow down because as you all know chrome loves memory and you'll definitely you know if you're into like a little bit of light video or photo editing having more memory is definitely beneficial but um if you're someone who's just shopping around for a laptop within this price range you should be perfectly fine and even if you think about it with eight gigabytes of ram it still manages to beat the pants off intel's laptops in our multi-core tests so that's kind of interesting and now on to gaming performance well it is what it is guys the swift 3 can get away with some really light games but nothing more than that the ironic thing here is that i have to say this again this 650 laptop with its amd cpu can still beat up the zenbook flip s which packed intel's newest tiger league cpu and that costs a whole lot more okay so here's my verdict on the swift three acer's goal with this laptop was to deliver a balanced thin and light notebook with really good performance for the value and i think they've done that they've accomplished that because the 4700u does a great job in our multi-core test and it actually beats the most expensive notebooks that we've tested with intel cpus it's it's just a fact and the fact that they're getting that kind of performance for 650 is amazing when you look at the rest of the laptop it's also really nice the design is very nice the build quality is excellent the hinge the keyboard the track pad the i o is also really good the webcam quality it's all good except for the display that some of you might be thinking that oh yeah the display is pretty trash i should i should completely just ignore it but don't because if you're shopping for a notebook within the spice range take a look at it see what you think and then pull the trigger because it's not that bad it's i would wholeheartedly recommend this laptop again because of that price because it's really good so that note thank you so much for watching let me know what you guys think about the swift 3 and you know if you are in the market for a budget dinner light notebook would you consider it or if you have other alternatives let us know in the comments down below i'm amiibo with hardware canucks thank you so much for watching and i'll talk to you guys in the next one\n"