Acer Swift X 14 Review: A Hot and Loud Gaming Laptop

Acer tries its champion to mitigate this occupation by giving you its AcerSense app (complete with customized “a” cardinal connected the apical enactment of the keyboard), wherever you tin power from discrete to integrated graphics, acceptable definite surface settings similar adaptive brightness and colour illustration selection, tally strategy diagnostics, and astir importantly throttle show arsenic needed. Four show levels are available, terminating astatine “Silent” connected the debased end. You’d deliberation that would throttle the CPU to the constituent wherever the instrumentality wouldn’t tally astatine all, but that’s not the case. Even successful Silent mode, the instrumentality runs regularly—albeit astatine a somewhat slower pace. The Silent instrumentality besides took astir a 40 percent deed connected graphics show and 25 percent erstwhile moving wide apps.

The Swift X is simply a power-hungry beast, and portion it charges done 1 of its USB-C ports, you’ll request to usage the 100-watt charger included with the device. It’ll trickle-charge with a generic, lower-wattage adapter, but it’ll ne'er scope afloat capacity, adjacent if it’s powered down.

Don’t get maine wrong, the laptop has plentifulness of affirmative qualities. Ports are ample for a instrumentality of this size, including 2 USB-A and 2 USB-C ports (again, 1 is utilized for charging), a full-size HDMI port, and a microSD paper slot. The keyboard is good if unremarkable, mildly inset into the chassis, and the touchpad is spacious without being obnoxiously oversized. And the understated acheronian metallic grey plan is some nonrecreational and modern.

It’s not the smallest of machines—weighing 3.4 pounds and measuring 25 millimeters heavy astatine its widest point—but those numbers aren’t outrageous for a laptop that wedges discrete graphics into a 14.5-inch package.

But to what end? Overall stableness isn’t ideal, arsenic I encountered weird ocular hiccups similar flickering images during my week with the system. Battery beingness astatine conscionable implicit 7 and a fractional hours isn’t egregious but is worse than galore competing laptops. And portion show is bully crossed the board, determination are plentifulness of devices connected the marketplace that handily outpace this system, including Acer’s ain Nitro 17. Sure, that’s a considerably bigger laptop, but it’s got 50 percent amended graphics show portion besides being $450 cheaper.

While the Swift X 14 has immoderate affirmative aspects, it’s a small hard to find who precisely it’s for—presumably the casual gamer oregon graphic decorator who’s ever connected the spell and frankincense has to battalion light. That could beryllium a possibility, but the Swift conscionable doesn’t execute good capable to warrant its luxe $1,700 terms tag, and the bruisingly large instrumentality and vigor problems bash thing to further that case.