01 Jan
Blog

Acer Swift 3 16 Review: Old School Package, But Decent Value

An Acer Swift 3 16 laptop sits on a desk, angled to the right.

Acer Swift 3 16

RRP $ 1,000.00

"The Acer Swift 3 16 is a bit old school, but it is good value for money."

benefits

  • Excellent productivity performance

  • Solid battery life

  • Above-average premium display

  • Thin and light

  • Attractive price

disadvantage

  • The display has an old school 16: 9 aspect ratio

  • Touchpad buttons are difficult to press

  • Build quality is a little below average

Acer's Swift 3 line has produced some excellent laptops, with the 14-inch AMD Swift 3 topping our list of the best budget laptops. The company has expanded the product line over the years to offer 13.3-inch, 13.5-inch, 14-inch, and 15.6-inch models that are a solid combination of thin and light design and offer attractive prices. Now Acer has added a 16-inch model, the largest display yet, and hopes to offer the same value as the rest of the line.

I have a $ 1,000 configuration with a 35-watt Core i7-11370H 11th CPU. And indeed, the final spec, aspect ratio, is what immediately disappoints about the laptop. Most manufacturers are moving to larger 16:10 or 3: 2 displays, and 16: 9 seems like an anachronism. Overall, it's a nice laptop with good performance and battery life, but the display keeps it from getting any better.

draft

The first thing you'll notice about the Swift 3 16 is how wide it appears, especially if you've used other 16-inch laptops with larger 16:10 displays. A year or two ago the design would have been fine, but now the laptop seems to take up too much horizontal space on a desktop.

It's not that deep, of course, but taller displays that are deeper also allow more keyboard deck space for things like larger touchpads. Acer made good use of the space, and more on that below, but the form factor just feels a bit strange compared to other modern large-screen devices.

It's not bad for a $ 1,000 laptop loaded with the components from the Swift 3 16, but it could be better.

Compared to another 16-inch laptop with a 16:10 display, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4, the Swift 3 16 is 14.48 "versus 14.13" wider, but 9.1 "versus 9 .99 inches less deep. It's also thinner at 0.63 inches versus 0.7 inches and lighter at 3.75 pounds versus 3.99 pounds. The Swift 3 16 has display bezels similar to the Lenovo, which means they're relatively small on the top and sides, but with a more prominent chin.

The MSI Summit E16 Flip has similar top and side bezels, but an even bigger chin on the bottom, and it's slightly lower than both laptops while being about the same width as the Lenovo. It's thinner at 0.67 inches and slightly heavier at 4.4 pounds. The Swift 3 16 is nice and thin and light for a laptop with such a large display, only the width stands out too much.

An Acer Swift 3 16 laptop sits on a desk, showing its back, tilted to the right.

In terms of build quality, the Swift 3 16 is made of aluminum, but suffers from some sagging in the lid and significant sagging in the keyboard deck and lower chassis. It's not bad for a $ 1,000 laptop loaded with the components from the Swift 3 16, but it could be better. The Samsung Galaxy Book Odyssey is another new laptop that is made of aluminum and suffers from a lack of rigidity. You have to look at something like the Dell XPS 15 or the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 to get a machine with a solid feel.

Aesthetically, the Swift 3 16 comes in a Steel Gray shade that looks like a light black, and blends in with the minimalist movement with simple lines and angles and zero bling. Even the edges are not beveled and apart from the Acer logo on the lid, there is no chrome to be found. The Samsung Galaxy Book Odyssey is similarly minimalist with a dark color scheme and chrome logo on the lid, and only a few additional moldings make it stand out. The Swift 3 16 is an attractive notebook, only very conservatively designed. My only real complaint about its appearance is that the bezels are plastic, which makes it look a little cheaper than it would otherwise.

On the left side of the Acer Swift 3 16 there is a proprietary charging port, a USB-C 3.2 port with Thunderbolt 4 support, a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, and a USB-A 3.2 port.

On the right side of the Acer Swift 3 16 there is another USB-A 3.2 port and a 3.5mm audio jack.

Connectivity is solid. There's a proprietary charging port, a USB-C 3.2 port with Thunderbolt 4 support, a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, and a USB-A 3.2 port on the left. It would have been better to add a second USB-C port and use that for charging rather than the proprietary power port, an anachronism that requires carrying an extra piece with you when so many USB-C chargers are typically available.

On the right side you will find another USB-A 3.2 port and a 3.5 mm audio jack. That's a good combination of current and legacy connections, with the only glaring omission being the lack of an SD card reader. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 provide wireless tasks.

power

The Acer Swift 3 16 points directly at the camera.

The Swift 3 16 can be configured with either an 11th generation Intel Core i5-11300H or a Core i7-11370H, both 35-watt, 4-core / 8-thread CPUs. They lie between the U-series processors, which are geared towards thin and light laptops, and the faster 45-watt 8-core / 16-thread CPUs of the H-series. My test device used the Core i7-11370H along with 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB PCIe solid state drive (SSD) and it lived up to expectations. The Core i5 configuration with 8GB of RAM is only $ 870, almost a budget price.

It should be noted that the lack of discrete graphics and the small number of cores and threads make this more of a simple work laptop than a developer's workstation despite the display size.

Acer got very good performance out of the CPU.

Despite the inferior components for a laptop of this size, Acer has managed to get a decent performance out of this system.

In Geekbench 5, the Swift 3 16 was the third fastest in our comparison group and came fourth in Cinebench R23. In many cases, the Swift 3 16 punched above its weight class over these other machines.

For a more realistic test, I ran our Handbrake test, which encodes a 420MB video as H.265. It is impressive that the Swift 3 16 could keep up with the Samsung Galaxy Book Odyssey with a 6-core / 12-thread Core i7-11600H, but lagged behind the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 and the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 .

In the PCMark 10 Complete test, the Swift 3 16 finally took fourth place behind the same devices.

These are solid results and indicate that the Swift 3 16 is a fast performer for productive users. Again, it won't be suitable for demanding creative uses, but for everyone else, but it does show that in some cases the difference between a 35-watt chip and a 45-watt chip is not as great as we often assume .

Geekbench (single / multiple) Handbrake
(Seconds)		 Cinebench R23 (single / multiple) PCMark 10 3DMark time spy
Acer Swift 3 16 (Core i7-11370H) 1.613 / 6.119 151 1,568 / 5,806 5.491 1.911
Samsung Galaxy Book Odyssey (Core i7-11600H) 1,478 / 5,366 151 1.601 / 8.571 5,989 N / A
Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7i Pro (Core i7-11370H) 1,578 / 5,957 202 1,514 / 5,544 5,149 1,888
Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (Ryzen7 5700U) 1,184 / 6,281 120 1,287 / 8,013 5.411 1,247
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 (Core i7-1165G7) 1,327 / 5,201 N / A 1,469 / 4,945 5,147 1,776
Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio (Core i7-11370H) 1,321 / 5,131 179 1,304 / 5,450 5,091 4,266
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 (Core i7-11800H) 1,520 / 7,353 106 1,519 / 10,497 6.251 6,691

However, the Swift 3 16 is tied to Intel's built-in Iris Xe graphics, and there's no getting around that. It is not intended as a gaming laptop or video editing tool. That makes it unusual for larger laptops, which usually come with separate graphics and can run light games.

The Swift 3 16 scores well in the 3DMark Time Spy test for an Intel Iris Xe machine and beats the other machines with integrated graphics. Still, it couldn't keep up with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti from Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio or the RTX 3060 from the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4. I ran Fortnite and saw 24 frames per second (fps) at 1080p and epic graphics, a few fps faster than most of the other Iris Xe laptops we tested, but nothing special.

display

The display of the Acer Swift 3 16.

As already mentioned, the Acer Swift 3 16 has a 16.1-inch Full HD IPS display with a 16: 9 aspect ratio. That makes it very wide, which is great for putting two windows side by side but not great for showing vertical information where a taller display would have been desirable. Even so, this was a pleasant display while working on this test in terms of brightness, colors, and most importantly, contrast. Subjectively, I found it to be at least as good as most of the premium displays I've tested.

According to my colorimeter, the display is a bit above average for a premium panel that is not aimed at creative people. Colors were slightly wider than average at 77% AdobeRGB and 100% sRGB, and they were very accurate with a Delta E of 1.11 (1.0 or less is considered excellent). The brightness was good at 334 nits, above our threshold of 300 nits, and the contrast was excellent at 1,530: 1 for an IPS display. In comparison, the display of the Samsung Galaxy Book Odyssey – a 15.6-inch panel on a laptop that was partially aimed at creative people – was only 48% AdobeRGB and 65% sRGB, accuracy at 2.37, brightness (which was better) at. much worse 350 nits and a contrast of only 800: 1.

I would have liked a much higher resolution and a larger aspect ratio for the display of the Swift 3 16, but the overall quality is beyond dispute.

The MSI Summit E16 Flip's 16-inch 16:10 IPS had wider colors than the Swift 3 16 at 89% AdobeRGB and 100% sRGB, and they were just as accurate at 1.12 and the brightness was higher at 482 nits. However, the contrast is 1,140: 1, which is good for an IPS display, but does not show as deep blacks as the Swift 3 16.

I would have liked a much higher resolution and a larger aspect ratio for the display of the Swift 3 16, but the overall quality is beyond dispute. This is a good display for productivity users, and again it is great for setting two windows side by side. The colors aren't wide enough for creative professionals, but that's not the goal of this laptop.

Two downward facing speakers provide audio, and the Swift 3 16 joins several laptops I recently tested that emit surprisingly low volume. At least these laptops had clear sound while the Swift 3 16 is kind of distorted. Mids and highs are muddy and there is little to no bass. Sound quality isn't a forte, and you'll need headphones for almost anything.

Keyboard and touchpad

Acer Swift 3 16 keyboard and trackpad.Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Because of the very wide display, there is plenty of horizontal space for a keyboard, and Acer makes use of most, but not all, of all. The key spacing is excellent, the keycaps are large, and there is a rather small number pad that could have been bigger with a bit of space on each side of the keyboard. The key switches offer plenty of wiggle room, with only a slightly abrupt punch-through movement that affects the overall precision of the keyboard. It's a few steps behind the best like those in the HP Specter line and Dell's XPS laptops.

The touchpad is large and takes up most of the available space on the palm rest. Its surface is comfortable to swipe and, as a Microsoft Precision touchpad, it copes well with the multitouch gestures of Windows 11. The only problem is the buttons take a lot of force to press until I gave up on them and just tapped the touchpad instead. If you prefer to use physical buttons, these won't make you happy. Unfortunately, the display cannot be touched, which I always miss.

A fingerprint reader in the upper right corner of the palm rest provides Windows 10 Hello support for passwordless logging. It worked quickly and reliably after a few attempts to register a finger. There's a button to turn off the microphone, but no way to turn off or block the webcam for privacy reasons.

Battery life

Close-up of the Acer Swift 3 16's webcam.

The Swift 3 16 only has 58 watt hours of battery inside, which is not much for a laptop with a 35 watt CPU and a 16.1 inch display, even in Full HD. I wasn't expecting the best battery life.

However, I was pleasantly surprised. The Swift 3 16 lasted 8.75 hours in our web browser test, which ran through a number of popular and complex websites. We like to see 10 hours on this test, but almost nine hours is good enough. The Samsung Galaxy Book Odyssey lasted 10.5 hours, while the Samsung Galaxy Book shut down after 8.3 hours.

However, it depends on the battery capacity, which is why the Dell XPS 15 lasted more than nine hours with 86 watt hours and a power-hungry OLED display. In our video test replaying a local 1080p movie trailer, the Swift 3 16 lasted for 13 hours, a much stronger score that was still behind the 14.3 hours of the Galaxy Book Odyssey but well ahead of the 11 hours of the Galaxy Book . The XPS 15 OLED lasted 11 hours in this test as well.

I also ran the PCMark Applications battery test which is the best indicator of productivity battery life and the Swift 3 16 lasted 9.5 hours. This is also a decent score and promises all-day battery life. The Galaxy Book Odyssey was stronger with 11.8 hours, while the Galaxy Book also did better with almost 11 hours. The XPS 15 OLED fell behind by just eight hours. In the PCMark Gaming battery test, which shows how hard a laptop runs on battery power, the Swift 3 16 lasted an average of 1.75 hours.

Overall, the Swift 3 16 has a decent battery life that can leave you with an hour or two for a full working day. This is a somewhat surprising result in view of the small battery, but somehow Acer managed to tease out an above-average longevity.

Our opinion

You really can't knock to get a big 16-inch laptop with great productivity performance and good battery life for $ 1,000. That is the Acer Swift 3 16 in a nutshell. My biggest complaints about the laptop are its sub-par build quality and its 16: 9 display, which makes it feel too wide.

The keyboard is sufficient and the touchpad is large, but Acer has to loosen the keys a bit. If you're looking for a large format machine for productivity with a little creative work, the Swift 3 16 is a strong candidate.

Are there alternatives?

The Surface Laptop 4 15 offers a thinner and lighter body, albeit with a slightly smaller display, and offers similar performance with its own discrete GPU. However, it is much more expensive.

You could also consider the HP Envy 15. It costs roughly the same money and offers superior performance, albeit with less battery life. The display can also be superior if you go for the OLED option (which, of course, costs more).

How long it will take?

The Acer Swift 3 16 shows some bends and bends in the lid, keyboard deck, and lower case, but it still feels like it should offer several years of productive use. Its components are modern and should keep Windows 11 running. As always, the one-year warranty is a disappointment.

Should you buy it?

Yes. Although the display is 16: 9, the Acer Swift 3 16 offers more than enough power for productive multitasking, and the large screen can comfortably accommodate two windows side by side.

Editor's recommendations



05 Oct
Blog

Acer Aspire Vero Review: The Sustainable Windows 11 Laptop?

The Acer Aspire Vero opens on a small table.

Acer Aspire Vero

RRP $ 900.00

"The Acer Aspire Vero is an admirable attempt at sustainability, but it does not offer a total package."

advantages

  • Easy to update

  • Uses sustainable materials for a budget laptop

  • Comfortable keyboard

  • Decent performance

  • Many ports

disadvantage

  • Bad battery life

  • Desaturated screen

  • Touchpad is clunky

Windows 11 is here and with it a new era for laptops. While many of these new devices seek to highlight a sleek new design or powerful performance, the new Acer Aspire Vero has a different ethos. Sustainability.

The marketing materials make some ambitious claims about the environmentally friendly way the Acer Aspire Vero was made and I would assume these choices are costly. When you look at the display, battery life, and touchpad on this budget laptop, it becomes obvious.

As much as I'd love to give Acer props, the Acer Aspire Vero ends up cutting off too many corners to be worth the price.

draft

The logo for post-consumer recycling, stamped into the case of the Aspire Vero.

The Aspire Vero is supposed to be a green laptop, and Acer doesn't want you to forget it. The overall appearance of the chassis is a constant reminder that it is not made from your standard plastic. The post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic is speckled light gray and I like its uniqueness. The palm rests and lid also have a textured feel, which in turn reminds you that this is not the smooth but lavish plastic used in your simple laptop.

I understand that there is much more to marketing than saving the world, but it makes for a one-of-a-kind total under the sea of ​​silver and black laptops in the world. If a budget laptop like the Acer Aspire Vero can't compete with high-end laptops in terms of expensive materials, it might as well offer something that feels new.

As a budget or mid-range laptop, the Aspire Vero's environmental stance is quite unique.

Acer claims that 30% of the Aspire Vero's case and 50% of its keycaps are made of PCR plastic. If you are not overwhelmed by 30%, you are not alone. Laptops like Lenovo's ThinkPad L-Series already have 30% of their cases made of PCR plastic, and those claims are not engraved on the case of the laptop. Then there is Apple, which has been claiming since 2018 that its MacBooks are made entirely from recycled aluminum. Microsoft has also taken the same step towards recycled aluminum with the new Surface Pro 8.

While this is a first for Acer, it is certainly not new to the industry. Does that mean Acer is pushing the Aspire Vero's sustainability a little more than it should? Yes, to a certain extent. On the other hand, its environmental stance as a budget or mid-range laptop is still pretty unique. Most laptops that claim to be high in recycled plastic or aluminum cost over a thousand dollars for a base model like the MacBook Air or ThinkPad L15.

The front of the Acer Aspire Vero in front of a white casing.

I'll be happy to commend Acer for applying better environmental standards to its cheaper laptops than just its high-end options. While I don't need every laptop to have it engraved on its case, I hope the practice of using PCR will continue.

Acer also advertises the Aspire Vero as more sustainable from the perspective of longevity. The lower lid is easier to remove than on an average laptop thanks to the use of standard screws. No special tools required! Once inside, you'll see that the RAM, storage, and Wi-Fi module are all interchangeable. Upgradability, perhaps more than the use of PCR, is an important sustainability aspect that many laptop manufacturers fail to consider.

Of course, there are also negative elements of the design of this laptop that have nothing to do with environmental protection, but rather with the limitations of the price-conscious brand "Aspire". The 16: 9 aspect ratio feels dated as many laptops switch to larger 16:10 or 3: 2 sizes. The shape is highlighted by some chunky plastic bezels that will go out of style by 10 years. The thinner bezels of the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 make for a modern, sleek looking device.

The processing quality also leaves a lot to be desired. It has a noticeable weak point in the middle of the hinge and the lid. This is common with plastic laptops, but this is where it's especially noteworthy. A hard press of a button pushes the chassis down, and when it is closed the center of the lid is warped so it doesn't close completely flat.

A side view of the Acer Aspire Vero showing the thickness of the laptop.

For the performance it has, the Aspire Vero is pretty clunky too. It's 0.7 inches thick, which fits laptops like the Dell XPS 15 or the Surface Laptop Studio. The difference is that the Acer Vero does not contain a separate graphics card or high-performance CPU. More on that later, but when you see the same components in a laptop as thin as the Surface Laptop 4 or LG Gram, you really wonder why this type of laptop has to be so thick.

On the other hand, it is the same thickness as the Acer Aspire 5 and is even slightly thinner than the 0.78-inch Asus Vivobook 15. However, the Aspire Vero is 3.97 pounds versus 3.64 pounds heavier than the Acer Aspire 5.

Ports

The left side of the Acer Aspire Vero with the selection of connections.

The Acer Aspire Vero offers a good mix of ports, although it's a bit old-fashioned. On the left you will find two USB-A ports, HDMI, Ethernet jack, a USB-C port and the laptop's proprietary charging port. Unfortunately, this is the only way to charge the laptop while using the device, as the USB-C port can only discharge the battery when it is switched off. Too bad.

On the right side you will find the headphone jack and the Kensington lock. I would have preferred at least one of the USB ports on this side for convenience, especially if you plan on docking your laptop with other peripherals in a home office environment.

As for wireless connectivity, the laptop supports both Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1.

Keyboard and touchpad

A top view of the Acer Aspire Vero keyboard.

The Acer Aspire Vero has a comfortable keyboard that I have adopted as my main writing instrument without any major weaknesses. The keycaps don't wobble too much and the key travel of 1.5 mm feels appropriate.

I would have liked bigger keycaps, however, especially for this large laptop. It leads to fewer typos and more confidence when typing. The laptop has a number pad on the right and a large touchpad on the bottom. The "R" and "E" keys are stylized in such a way that they are written the other way around (to stand for Acer's environmental values), which is a bit strange.

The keyboard illumination is extremely limited on the Acer Aspire Vero. Only one level of brightness control is offered – either on or off. That's not very helpful.

The touchpad is where my nitpicks turn into annoyances.

The touchpad below is where my nitpicks turn into annoyances. Touchpads are notoriously bad on cheap laptops, and the Aspire Vero fits that trend. The tracking feels clunky and your finger won't slide across the surface without friction. It makes simple tasks like clicking and dragging, selecting text, or touch gestures frustrating.

The fingerprint reader is in the top left corner of the touchpad, which is one of my least favorite places, although the touchpad is big enough to avoid being touched all the time. Laptops like the IdeaPad 5 manage to push their fingerprint readers into the power button, which is handy.

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The Acer Aspire Vero, open on the table, shows its keyboard and display.

I knew immediately that something was wrong with the Acer Aspire Vero's display. The colors have a sickly desaturated appearance. It's not flattering. We also noticed the reduced color saturation in other Acer Aspire notebooks last year. It's not quite as bad as the Acer Aspire 5, but that's hardly a compliment.

It's easy to see where Acer cut some corners. The screen is dark at only 233 nits, has poor color saturation (65% of sRGB) and mediocre color accuracy. It's not nice. Not uncommon for a $ 500 laptop, but it's a disappointment for the $ 899 configuration I tested. You can buy either an M1 MacBook Air or a Ryzen-powered Surface Laptop 4, both of which have great screens, for just $ 100 more. Of course, you get less memory and storage space in these basic configurations, but the difference in display quality, battery life, and performance will be clearly noticeable.

When it comes to design and display, the important thing to remember is that this is a beefed up version of a $ 700 laptop. Don't let the starting prices confuse you. For example, the MacBook Air has a starting price of $ 999, but you'll have to pay $ 1,399 for a similarly configured MacBook Air, compared to the $ 900 Aspire Vero.

The speakers are also nothing to celebrate. They are at the bottom of the laptop, pointing down at the table. The result is usable sound for occasional videos, but not something you want to use for long music or movie sessions.

power

The keyboard of the Acer Aspire Vero, shown from the front.

The Acer Aspire Vero's performance is handled well as long as you consider what category of laptop it is. Many laptops of this size offer a more powerful processor class, the 45-watt H-series chips. These have up to eight cores and 16 threads, which dramatically improves content creation and multitasking performance. Due to the simpler Core i7-1195G7 chip in the Aspire Vero, its ambitions are a bit more modest.

It's a laptop designed for everyday tasks like web browsing, video calling, office applications, and content streaming. You can expand its capabilities with a little bit of light photo editing or design work, but you will reach your limits when trying to encode 4K video or play modern 3D games. This is ensured by the quad-core processor and the lack of a separate graphic.

But as a standard work computer, tested in the full PCMark 10 benchmark, the Aspire Vero drives as I would expect. It even did well in the Cinebench R23 single-core benchmark, where it achieved the fastest score we tested in this processor class. The Aspire Vero does this without ever getting too hot, either inside or on the surface.

Here you can expect better performance and thermals than from a smaller 13-inch laptop with the same processor. It should be noted that my configuration also came with 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD. The Aspire Vero makes good use of its Intel processor and delivers solid performance for your daily workload and multitasking.

Underdog Bench 5
(Single / multiple)		 Cinebench R23 (single / multiple) Handbrake (seconds) PCMark 10 3DMark time spy
Acer Aspire Vero (Core i7-1195G7) 1,583 / 5,156 1,568 / 5,358 167 5,082 1,555
Asus Vivobook Flip 14 (Ryzen 5 5500U) 1,102 / 5,432 1,180 / 7,579 131 5,191 1,099
Acer Aspire 5 (Core i3-1115G4) 1,215 / 2,544 1.274 / 3.128 300 n / A 652
Dell XPS 13 (Core i7-1185G7) 1,549 / 5,431 1.449 / 4.267 204 3,859 1,589
Frame laptop (Core i7-1165G7) 1,432 / 4,725 1,444 / 4,725 176 5,054 1,641

To manage performance and battery life, Acer has an application called VeroSense, which is pretty much exclusively intended to toggle between the power and power saving modes, which was designed for the Aspire Vero. I say “designed”, but the “ECO” mode is really just a renamed version of an energy saving mode. It increases battery life by about an hour and makes the Vero both quieter and less powerful. Finally, there is an "ECO +" mode that forces the Windows energy-saving mode to be switched on permanently. While this is a more efficient mode of operation, it is not something that no other laptop cannot easily do.

In the standard “balanced” mode, in which I have run all of my tests, the system's fans like to turn up loud under load, but it is quite quiet when idling.

Battery life

I didn't expect great battery life from the Aspire Vero, simply because of the price. When I saw that it only had a 48 watt hour battery, my worries grew.

In my tests, the Acer Aspire Vero underperformed even on a laptop of this type. It lasted for almost six and a half hours in our light web browser test. However, with my normal workload, the average time on a single charge dropped to under 5 hours. The maximum you can get out of the Acer Aspire Vero is around seven and a half hours. That is how long the system lasted during our lightest period of repeating a local 1080p video clip until the laptop dies.

The normal Acer Aspire 5 lasted 40-60 minutes longer, while the Asus Vivobook Flip 14 lasted a whopping two and a half hours longer. Spend a few hundred dollars more and you get a laptop that will last over twice as long.

Our opinion

The Acer Aspire Vero speaks a great game of its sustainability efforts, but its actual contributions aren't as significant as I'd hoped. I would never blame a company for making even small improvements toward more sustainable packaging and manufacturing, but the Aspire Vero's marketing outperforms the actual posts.

The Aspire Vero also fills the role of one of the cheaper laptops to hit the market with Windows 11 preinstalled, but even there it has some flaws that are hard to miss.

Are there alternatives?

In terms of Windows 11 laptops, which aren't very expensive, the Aspire Vero is your only choice. However, if you're willing to wait for the eventual free upgrade to Windows 11 when it launches, there are plenty of reasonably priced Windows laptops out there that offer a better overall package.

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 is a solid alternative, offering a thinner bezel design and a brighter screen for roughly the same price. The Asus Vivobook 15 offers a similar equipment balance.

After all, the Surface Laptop Go is a smaller device but reaches a similar price range for a higher quality design.

How long it will take?

The Acer Aspire Vero should last four or five years if you want it to. The pre-installed Windows 11 ensures that you will receive updates in the future. The ability to swap out components makes repairing or upgrading your laptop easy across the board.

Unfortunately, beyond the standard one-year warranty that Acer gives you, you're on your own.

Should you buy it?

No. The Aspire Vero is a little overpriced for its quality and doesn't make up for it with enough truly sustainable initiatives.

Editor's recommendations



26 Aug
Blog

Acer Swift X Review: Top-notch Performance For Cheap?

The Acer Swift X sits on a desk.

Acer Swift X review: content creation cheap?

RRP $ 1,100.00

"The Acer Swift X is a powerful laptop that many students and creatives appreciate."

advantages

  • Outstanding performance

  • Very good battery life

  • Excellent keyboard and touchpad

  • Solid entry-level gaming

  • Thin and light frame given the strength inside

disadvantage

  • Build quality could be better

  • Display is not sufficient for the target market

Creative professionals need more than anything in a great laptop. First, they need power, and lots of it – preferably both a fast CPU and a fast GPU. Second, they need a display with wide and accurate colors and lots of contrast and brightness. Acer's Swift X is aimed at these developers, though it does offer configurations starting at $ 1,100. Is that possible at this price?

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800U, the RTX 3050 Ti and the 14-inch display of the Acer Swift X certainly seem up to the task. After putting it through its paces, the Swift X is far from a perfect machine – but its fantastic performance and value for money set it apart from its competitors.

draft

The Acer Swift X has an all-aluminum chassis that was a bit flexible in the lid and suffered from a slight flexing of the keyboard. It's nothing monstrous. but Asus, Dell, and HP laptops tend to have stiffer builds. The MSI Prestige 14 Evo, Dell XPS 13, and HP Specter x360 14 are three laptops that feel more solid in the hand. The Swift X's hinge is capable of almost one-handed opening and holds the display firmly in place while you work. If the Swift X were more expensive, I'd have more of a build quality issue. However, we are only just on the edge of the premium class for a well configured machine, so I like to overlook a bit of flexibility.

The Acer Swift X sits on a desk.

Aesthetically, the Swift X is a conservative laptop that only encompasses a few angles, including along the back of the case to make some difference. It's available in three creatively titled colors, Safari Gold (my test device), Steam Blue, and Prodigy Pink. The XPS 13 and Specter x360 13 are more outstanding laptops in terms of looks, with the Dell leaning towards business-like elegance and the HP offering a bold, gem-cut design. But there's plenty of room for a more traditional design that doesn't attract too much attention, and that is the Swift X.

I'll be faulting it for its plastic display bezels that spoil the overall look. They're not particularly small either, with a screen-to-body ratio of 85.73% – to be considered truly modern, that number should exceed 90% and the display should be made entirely of glass. The display's 16: 9 aspect ratio is also old-fashioned, with competing laptops using higher ratios like 16:10 and 3: 2.

Compared to some other 14-inch laptops, the Swift X is a reasonable size. For example, it's a bit wider than the HP Envy 14, while it's thinner due to the HP's tall 16:10 display. The Swift X is 0.70 inches thick compared to the Envy 14's 0.71 inches and weighs 3.06 pounds, while the Envy 14 is slightly heavier at 3.3 pounds. The MSI Prestige 14 Evo is closer in width and depth, while it's thinner at 0.63 inches and lighter at 2.85 pounds. The Specter x360 14 is even narrower, but slightly deeper, with its 13.5-inch 3: 2 display, and it's just 0.67 inches thick and 2.95 pounds. It might not be the thinnest or lightest laptop, but the Swift X is still comfortable enough to carry around – especially considering how much power you're packing in.

The Swift X offers ample connectivity with a proprietary power connector, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, a full-size HDMI 1.0 port, and a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port on the left to connect to another USB A 3.2. go to Gen 1 port and 3.5mm audio adapter on the right. Unfortunately there is no SD card reader or, given the AMD chipset, Thunderbolt support. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 offer wireless connectivity.

power

As mentioned earlier, the Ryzen 7 5800U is a fast, thin, and light laptop processor that by far beats the Intel equivalent for CPU-intensive tasks. If we just compare the processors, we should expect AMD's offering to be much faster for things like encoding videos and processing large images. Throw in a separate GPU, even the entry-level Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, and you get additional support for applications that can use the GPU to speed up certain tasks, such as: B. Adobe's suite of creative applications. The Acer therefore promises to be a powerhouse in a thin and light package.

You probably won't find a faster, thin, and light laptop in this price range.

According to our benchmarks, Acer did just that – for the most part. In our Handbrake test, which encodes a 420MB video in H.265, the Swift X led our comparison group, including several other laptops with Ryzen chips. It even (barely) beat the Asus ROG Flow X13 with the faster Ryzen 9 5900HS processor. In fact, the Swift X is one of the fastest laptops we tested in Handbrake, and even outperforms some machines with Intel 45-watt CPUs. The Swift X also did exceptionally well in the Cinebench R23 benchmark and even took the lead by a clear margin with the Ryzen 9 in the mix. Both benchmark results show that the Swift X delivers when you have to perform tedious tasks like encoding video that are CPU draining.

The Swift X wasn't that dominant in Geekbench 5, but I'd like to note here that Acer includes a utility to change performance modes. The utility didn't make much of a difference when I switched to performance mode in most tests, and the results in the table reflect standard mode. However, Geekbench 5 was a test where the performance mode made a difference – the Swift X scored 1,406 single-core and 8,030 multi-core in that mode, taking first place in the multi-core test. The Swift X also took first place in the PCMark 10 Complete Score (the performance mode made hardly any difference here) and did well in the Essentials, Productivity and Content Creation scores.

Acer Swift X sits on a desk.

I also ran the PugetBench benchmark, which uses Adobe Premiere Pro to perform various viewing and encoding tasks. The benchmark shows the effect of a discrete GPU, as the Swift X scores 333 points in the benchmark. Interestingly, this is not as high as I expected and ended up behind the HP Envy 14, for example, which uses an Intel Core i5-1135G7 and an Nvidia GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q and scored 432 points. The Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 with an Intel Core i7-1165G7 and integrated Iris-Xe graphics scored 241 points, while the Asus ZenBook 13 OLED with a Ryzen 7 5800U and integrated Radeon graphics scored 180 points. These results show that Intel has built in some optimizations that give its chips a better result here in the benchmark. The benchmark is broken down into several sections including Export, Playback, and GPU, and the Intel machines did worse on Export and GPU, but much better on playback, which likely bloated their results.

Despite the confusing PugetBench results, the Swift X is a great machine for anyone who needs a lot of CPU power and a GPU that can speed up intensive tasks. It's also extremely fast as a productivity laptop and tears up everything I threw on it during the review process. You are unlikely to find another thin and light laptop that is faster in this price range.

Geekbench (single / multiple) Handbrake
(Seconds)		 Cinebench R23 (single / multiple) PCMark 10 3DMark time spy
Acer Swift X (Ryzen7 5800U) 1287/6663 99 1437/10135 6247 4073
HP Pavilion Aero 13
(Ryzen7 5800U)		 1373/6430 112 1381/8304 5756 1212
Asus ZenBook 13 OLED
(Ryzen7 5800U)		 1423/6758 124 1171/7824 6034 1342
Asus ROG Flow X13
(Ryzen9 5900HS)		 1415/7592 102 1420/9701 5756 4503
Dell XPS 13 (Core i7-1185G7) 1549/5431 204 1399/4585 n / A 1380
HP Specter x360 14 (Core i7-1165G7) 1214/4117 236 1389/3941 4728 1457
Razer Book 13 (Core i7-1165G7) 1548/5374 210 1508/4519 4878 1776
MacBook Pro 13 (M1) 1707/7337 n / A 1487/7547 n / A n / A

Gaming was good for a laptop that wasn't specifically designed for gaming, with the Swift X doing well in the 3DMark Time Spy test (but behind the game-centric Asus ROG Flow X13). It reached 116 frames per second (fps) in Civilization VI at 1080p and medium graphics and 66 fps with ultra graphics switched on. That's actually a few fps faster than the ROG Flow X13, which surprised me. In Fortnite, the Swift X achieved 64 fps at 1080p and high graphics performance compared to the ROG Flow X13 at 67 fps and 43 fps with epic graphics compared to 47 fps with the ROG. The Swift X is a good entry-level gaming device that can handle modern titles with the right resolutions and graphical details.

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Close up on the Acer Swift X screen.

From a performance perspective, the Swift X is designed for creative professionals. As we've seen, it has the speed that a very portable workstation can handle for editing videos and photos on the go. However, an important part of that equation is the display – does it offer wide and accurate colors, lots of brightness, and high contrast for creative work? In short, the answer is unfortunately no for the 14-inch IPS Full HD display (1,920 x 1,080) of the Swift X in 16: 9 format. The subjective viewing experience during my tests was a mixed picture, with colors that seemed accurate and pleasant, and with just enough brightness to accommodate the lighting in my house. Blacks on white backgrounds didn't show up, however, which made copy-writing a less pleasant experience than I'd like.

So I turned to my familiar colorimeter for a more objective perspective. The results didn't surprise me at all. Initially, the color width was 72% of AdobeRGB and 96% of sRGB, which is the average of premium laptops, but falls far short of the displays required for creative work. Color accuracy was good with a DeltaE of 1.63 (1.0 or less is considered excellent), so that's a plus.

The brightness was a bit low at 283 nits, below our 300-nit threshold, and the contrast was 730: 1, well below our preferred 1,000: 1 ratio for premium laptops. On another recently tested 14-inch laptop, the Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 Gen 9 (certainly a more expensive device), we see similar colors at 76% AdobeRGB and 96% sRGB, better color accuracy at 0.99, and higher brightness at 306 nits. The contrast of the ThinkPad was still below our threshold at 970: 1, which you could see from the black text. The Dell XPS 13 Full HD + display achieved 75% AdobeRGB and 98% sRGB with a color accuracy of 1,21,458 nits of brightness and a contrast ratio of 1,350: 1.

That's a lot of numbers, but the conclusion is simple. The Swift X allows creatives to get their work done on the go at some speed, but they don't want to use the laptop for final production. Productivity workers will be more satisfied with the display, but even then the low contrast ratio will be disappointing and the old school 16: 9 contrast ratio cannot be compared to today's higher panels. It's a shame that Acer doesn't offer a higher quality display with wider colors and better contrast for the Swift X. That would really make the laptop a highly portable creative production machine.

In terms of audio technology, the two downward-facing speakers weren't exactly great. The maximum volume was on the low side, enough for system sounds and a YouTube video, but not nearly enough for music or Netflix bingeing. The mids and highs were clear, but there was no bass (not surprising for a laptop) and there was no distortion when turned all the way up. You need headphones or a bluetooth speaker.

Keyboard and touchpad

The Acer Swift-X keyboard.

The Swift X has a keyboard with nice-sized silver keycaps and full-size spacing. The key switches are light and clicky, with a comfortable floor motion that provides a precise feel. I still prefer the HP Specter keyboard, which offers a touch more feedback, but the Swift X keyboard comes with the best that Windows 10 has to offer. It's backlit, of course, but I found that the light shining through the gay letters was distorted and difficult to read. However, this is a minor matter. Most touch typists will love this keyboard.

The touchpad takes up most of the available palm rest space, but the top of the keyboard deck is pushed back by an extension that houses the hinge and rear ventilation. That means the touchpad is a bit smaller than it could be. However, it has a comfortable interface and Microsoft Precision touchpad drivers, so using Windows 10 multi-touch gestures is efficient and precise. There is no touch display option, which is disappointing.

A fingerprint reader in the upper right corner of the palm rest offers Windows 10 Hello password-free support. It worked quickly and responsively during my tests, which has become the norm with modern laptops.

Battery life

Acer packed 59 watt hours of battery into the Swift X, a decent – but not great – amount for a 14-inch laptop with such powerful components. The Full HD display would help, I expected, but I wasn't expecting great battery life.

I was surprised. In our web browser test, the Swift X lasted for almost 12 hours, which is a strong score. The MSI Prestige 14 Evo achieved a little more than seven hours in this test, while the HP Envy 14 was better than both with just over 12.5 hours. In our video test, which repeats a local Full HD Avengers trailer, the Swift X reached 12.75 hours, well below the 16.3 hours of the Prestige 14 Evo and 14.5 hours of the HP Envy. I've noticed that Ryzen laptops don't have the same increase from the web browsing test to the video test, which shows that Intel machines are more efficient at playing videos.

In the battery benchmark PCMark 10 Applications, the best indicator for the longevity of productivity, the Swift X does well with just over 12 hours. The Prestige 14 Evo did not quite manage 10.5 hours in this test, while the HP Envy 14 would not complete the benchmark. In the PCMark 10 gaming battery test, the Swift X shut down after just under 1.5 hours, which is the lowest result we have ever seen. The Prestige 14 Evo lasted just 10 minutes longer, while the HP Envy 14 is the other laptop to score the Swift X's. This test seems to show how much a laptop is throttled on battery power, which means that the Swift X works hard when turned off and therefore burns its battery up pretty quickly.

Overall, these results suggest that the Swift X will last you a full day of work with a few hours to spare. If you drive the CPU and GPU hard enough, you will get a lot less battery life, but that's to be expected. If you encode video on the go, take your power adapter with you.

Our opinion

The Acer Swift X does what it promises to pack a lot of power into a thin and light frame. It's one of the fastest 14-inch laptops we've tested, and it's a great choice for creative professionals who need power on the go. Battery life was also a strength, which makes this notebook a great productivity laptop for on the go.

The biggest downside to the Swift X is the display. Getting rid of it entirely by creative professionals isn't bad enough, but they should have a better external display in the office to complete their work. Acer would have been smart about offering a higher quality display for those who want it the most.

Are there alternatives?

There aren't many laptops that combine a fast Ryzen CPU with a discrete GPU. One that has recently become available is the Asus ROG Flow 13, which is a smaller machine but almost as fast. Aside from the Asus' gaming aesthetic, it's a great alternative for anyone who needs portable performance.

The HP Envy 14 is an option for someone who can live with an Intel Core CPU to work with separate graphics, and it has performed well in Adobe applications. It also suffers from a smaller display, but offers good performance and better build quality.

How long it will take?

The Swift X is so well built you can expect it to hold up on high-performance computing for years. The components are modern and should keep up with the times, demanding users should get their money's worth. As always, the industry standard one-year warranty is disappointing.

Should you buy it?

Yes, for performance and battery life. Just make sure you can live with the display before pulling out your credit card.

Editor's recommendations



18 Apr
Blog

Acer Aspire 5 2021 Review: Budget laptop takes a step back

Acer Aspire 5

"The horrific display on the Acer Aspire 5 ruins a decent, inexpensive laptop."

  • Solid connectivity

  • Superior expandability

  • Good keyboard and touchpad

  • Cruel display

  • Chassis is too flexible

  • Mediocre battery life

  • Poor performance

The Acer Aspire 5 has been one of our favorite laptops for a few years now and has earned a spot on our list of the best budget laptops. Currently, the 2020 version of the Aspire 5 is listed as the best Windows 10 laptop under $ 500, a major segment that the computer dominates. Acer has introduced a slightly redesigned Aspire 5 for 2021 that features the latest 11th generation Intel Core CPUs and makes some significant changes to the case design.

I received an entry-level model with a Core i3-1115G4 CPU with Intel UHD graphics, 8 GB of RAM, a 256 GB PCIe solid-state drive (SSD) and a 15.6-inch full HD display (1,920 x 1,080). This Aspire 5 configuration is priced at $ 480, which is in the sub-$ 500 segment that previous models owned. Can Acer keep its track record with the latest Aspire 5?

design

Acer has optimized the design of the Aspire 5 for 2021. The biggest change is a new hinge that angles the case back several degrees to allow better airflow and to support the keyboard. It's a welcome change from an otherwise mundane design.

As before, the lid is made of aluminum, while the rest of the housing is made of plastic and the rigidity is the same as before. The lid is curved quite a bit, while the keyboard deck and the bottom of the case are a bit stiffer, but still yield to light pressure. Some other budget laptops, like the Lenovo Yoga C640, Lenovo Flex 5 14, and Acer Swift 3, have solid build quality.

Acer Aspire 5Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Aesthetically, the Aspire 5 is pretty bland, with an all-black color scheme punctuated with some chrome-plated Acer logos. If you don't care about the looks of a laptop and are solely focused on the price, the Aspire 5 will satisfy your taste. But it is by no means noticeable. Other colors will be available, including a silver scheme, which is probably more attractive than my boring black review unit.

The Aspire 5 is not a small laptop as the bezels are still too big for modern machines. The side bezels aren't too thick, but the top and bottom bezels could be made smaller, resulting in a laptop that is wider and deeper than usual. The Aspire 5 weighs 3.64 pounds, down from 3.97 pounds in the previous version and is 0.70 inches thick, which is reasonable for a 15-inch laptop.

A particularly nice design feature that the Aspire 5 has in common is its expandability. Accessing the inside of the computer is relatively easy, allowing users to swap out RAM and SSD. Acer also includes a kit for adding a 2.5-inch drive to an empty bay, making it easy to expand storage with an SSD or rotating hard disk drive (HDD). This kind of expandability is rare and welcomed here.

Acer Aspire 5 side viewMark Coppock / Digital Trends

Acer Aspire 5 USB portsMark Coppock / Digital Trends

Acer Aspire 5 closed side viewMark Coppock / Digital Trends

As with many budget laptops that aren't as thin and light as some previous models, connectivity is mostly a strength. On the left, you get an Ethernet port, a full-size HDMI port, two USB-A 3.2 ports, and a USB-C 3.2 port (no Thunderbolt 4 support here). On the right side you will find a Kensington lock slot, a USB-A 2.0 port and a 3.5 mm audio jack. Wireless connectivity is cutting edge with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1.

performance

Acer Aspire 5Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

My test device was equipped with a Core i3-1115G4, an 11th generation dual-core CPU that operates at a full TDP of 12 to 28 watts, but contains Intel UHD graphics instead of the newer Intel Iris Xe. According to our series of benchmarks, this is a slow laptop. Starting with Geekbench 5, only 1,215 points were achieved in single-core mode and 2,544 points in multi-core mode. This is well below the usual Tiger Lake value, which usually exceeds 1,500 in the single-core and 5,000 in the multi-core area. In fact, it is beaten by some newer Chromebooks running the Android version of Geekbench 5, which is usually on the slow side. Even the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 with an Intel Core i3-10110U got close to 1,003 and 2,179.

In our handbrake test, which encodes a 420MB video as H.265, the Aspire 5 took exactly five minutes, which is at best 50% slower than the slowest Tiger Lake laptops we tested. This is the first 11th generation Core i3 that we tested. Therefore, faster CPUs run on all of our comparison laptops. For example, the Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable, a Windows 10 tablet with a Core i5-1130G7 (a slower Core i5), took just over three minutes to complete the test. The same applies to Cinebench R23, another video rendering test in which the Aspire 5 only manages 1,247 in single-core mode and 3,128 in multi-core mode. The difference between the Aspire 5 and the detachable ThinkPad X12 (1,125 and 3,663) wasn't that big, but most other Tiger Lake laptops were again significantly faster.

The Aspire 5 only achieved 3752 points in the PCMark 10 Complete test, our lowest score ever. In the Essentials part of the test, only 8,220 were achieved, in productivity 5,975 and in content creation only 2,921. The detachable ThinkPad X12 scored 4,443, 9,999, 5,936 and 4,157, respectively. As in our other tests, the Aspire 5 is well behind the field.

I found the Aspire 5 to be fast enough for basic tasks like surfing the Internet and working with office documents in real-life use. For $ 480, these aren't terrible results. We didn't test the previous versions of the Aspire 5 using the same set of benchmarks, so we can't directly compare their performance.

display

Acer Aspire 5 screenMark Coppock / Digital Trends

I'm not going to crush words here: this is the worst ad I've ever reviewed. This fact was evident when I first started the Acer Aspire 5 and logged into Windows 10. The display has a noticeable bluish cast which I believe is the result of a cruel contrast and elements on the screen may be difficult to see.

My colorimeter agreed. The brightness was very low at 211, which means you'll struggle to see the screen in a bright office setting. The contrast was confirmed to be extraordinarily poor at just 60: 1 (our threshold for a great display is 1000: 1 and an average budget display is 600: 1). The colors were also poor at just 53% of sRGB and 40% of AdobeRGB – both of which are the lowest in our database, and the typical midrange and premium displays score 95% and 70% or more, respectively. To add insult to injury, the accuracy was also among the worst I've seen with a DeltaE of 10.7 (less than 1.0 is considered excellent and most laptops are below 3.0 in the worst case) ). Only the gamma of the display was where it should be at 2.2.

Nobody will like this display.

In actual use, the colors were washed out, the black text was rather gray, and the display was completely uncomfortable. It's my new standard for "terrible display" and it left a terrible taste in my mouth as a result. Nobody is going to like this display unless they've never used a laptop before and I would pity them for getting such a poor impression of the state of the art. Acer has to get another panel because this is just terrible. The 2019 and 2020 versions of the Aspire 5 were much better.

The audio wasn't much better than the display. The volume was inadequate for all but the occasional YouTube videos, although there was no distortion when turned all the way up. The mids and highs were clear enough, and as always, there was little to no bass. The two speakers aren't bad, mind you, they just don't offer much better than budget quality.

Keyboard and touchpad

The Aspire 5 has a fairly typical island-style keyboard with backlighting, black keycaps and white letters. The keys are a bit small, but also offer a comfortable spacing with the dedicated (but tiny) numeric keypad. The switches are very light weight, with a nice push button and a comfortable bottom effect. This is one area where the Aspire 5 shines and offers a typing experience that is better than many budget laptops.

Acer Aspire 5 keyboardMark Coppock / Digital Trends

Acer Aspire 5 close up of keyboard and screenMark Coppock / Digital Trends

Acer Aspire 5 trackpadMark Coppock / Digital Trends

The touchpad is surprisingly good too, as it's pretty big and responsive. It is a Microsoft Precision touchpad and therefore offers reliable support for the multitouch gestures of Windows 10. It also exceeds the household norm.

Unsurprisingly there is no touch display, and as always, I miss it. There is also no Windows 10 Hello support, neither face recognition nor a fingerprint scanner. This is something we've been seeing on budget laptops lately, and so its omission is noticeable here.

Battery life

Acer has equipped the Aspire 5 with a 48-watt-hour battery, which is not much for a 15-inch laptop. Even with the slower CPU, I was disappointed with the battery life on this version.

In our web browsing test, which ran through a number of popular websites, the Aspire 5 managed just under seven hours, two hours less than the 2019 version with a Core i3, but three hours longer than the 2020 version with a Core i5. In general, that's not a terrible score, but the Aspire 5 is still in the lower bracket of our database. In our video loop test, in which a Full HD Avengers trailer is played until the battery is empty, the Aspire 5 achieved 9.5 hours. That's about 3.5 hours less than the 2020 version and less than 10 hours that we would like to see in this test. Again not a terrible result, but not great either.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Finally, I ran some PCMark 10 battery tests. The first, the gaming test, evaluates how long a laptop will last when the CPU and GPU are under stress. The Aspire 5 came in after 2.25 hours, an average score. In the application test, which is the best measure of the longevity of productivity, the Aspire 5 shut down after almost eight hours at the lower end of our database. The detachable ThinkPad X12, for example, managed over 10 hours.

Overall, the battery life of the Aspire 5 was mediocre. If you're doing typical productivity work, you can get through a work day for a fee. The laptop uses a proprietary charger, but you can charge USB-C in a pinch if you happen to have an adapter handy.

Our opinion

I would love to say that the 2021 Acer Aspire 5 retains its spot as our best budget under $ 500 laptop. Unfortunately not, thanks to slow performance and a poor display. The 2020 model is still on sale, and you'd better stick with it.

Is there a better alternative?

As I just mentioned, the 2020 Aspire 5 is a better choice than the 2021 version. You get a much better display and similar build quality for roughly the same money, and you won't be giving up much on performance and battery life.

If I were looking for a cheaper machine in this price range, I would consider a powerful Chromebook option, and there are plenty of that.

The Lenovo Flex 5 14 with its AMD Ryzen CPU is another alternative. The display is smaller at 14 inches but has better battery life, is much faster, and the display won't embarrass you in public.

How long it will take?

It's not the most rugged laptop, but I suspect it can be solidly used for a few years – and that's about what you would expect for the money. They have up-to-date components, including Wi-Fi 6, though Thunderbolt 4 isn't a bummer. The one-year guarantee is also no cause for celebration.

Should you buy it?

No. The display is really terrible which ruins the experience with this laptop.

Editor's recommendations




25 Mar
Blog

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 Review: A Supremely Fast Chromebook

Acer Chromebook Spin 713

"The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is one of the fastest, longest-lasting Chromebooks ever made."

  • Very good performance

  • Fairly long battery life

  • Conservative looks good

  • Good touchpad

  • Excellent 3: 2 display

  • No active pen option

  • The chassis could feel a bit more stable

  • The keyboard wasn't as sharp as some

The inventory of high-end Chromebooks continues to grow, and new products seem to be coming online all the time. But not every good machine is brand new. Take the convertible 2-in-1 Acer Chromebook Spin 713, which was launched in the summer of 2020 and is still a relevant laptop today thanks to fast components and willing buyers. In other words, it's current enough to consider today, and a lot of people are buying it. That's a good sign.

Acer sent me a mid-range version of the Chromebook Spin 713 priced at $ 630 for a 10th generation Intel Core i5-10210U CPU, 8 GB DDR4 RAM, a 128 GB solid state drive (SSD) and a 13.5-inch display on the Internet with a higher aspect ratio of 3: 2 and a resolution of 2K (2256 x 1504). That's not cheap for a Chromebook, but the price matches the components. Note that you can spend up to $ 1,000 if you go for a Core i7 and 16GB of RAM.

Does the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 still have what it takes to compete with the latest and greatest Chromebooks?

design

Acer Chromebook Spin 713Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 has a light gray (or dark silver depending on the lighting) case that is conservative but attractive. The beveled edges and angled lower chassis add some sheen, but don't stand out too much. For example, it's not a bright red like its near-rival Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2, nor does it have the rounded edges of the Google Pixelbook Go (if that's the look you're into). Think of the Acer as a modern sedan and the Samsung as a sports car and you get the picture. The Asus Chromebook Flip C436 is much closer to the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 in terms of aesthetics and nobody would find fault with either machine.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 would look more modern if the bezels were slimmer. The side bezels are thin enough, but the top bezel is relatively thick and the lower chin is huge. Coupled with the 3: 2 aspect ratio, these bezels not only detract from the look, but also result in a laptop that is much deeper than it could be. The Asus Chromebook Flip C436 has smaller bezels with a 14-inch display with a 16: 9 aspect ratio – we prefer 3: 2, but there's no doubt that the Asus looks a bit slimmer.

Apply extra pressure and the lid will bend.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is 3.02 pounds and 0.66 inches thick, which is quite a bit heavier and thicker than the Asus Chromebook Flip C436 (2.5 pounds and 0.54 inches) and the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 (2, 71 pounds and 0.55 inches thick)). Each of these machines is a 2-in-1 convertible, so Acer couldn't use a more complex hinge to excuse the laptop's weight.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 has an aluminum case that is almost on par with a premium laptop in terms of build quality. Put a little more pressure and the lid will flex a little more than I like and the keyboard deck has a little flex. That's fine for $ 630 but gets a little less acceptable at $ 1,000 for the most expensive configuration. The Asus Chromebook Flip C436 feels like a more rugged laptop and costs about the same price as the Acer.

Note that Acer put the MIL-STD-810g series laptop through durability and reliability tests. Hence, there is a reason to trust that is beyond my subjective experience. The display of the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is made of Corning Gorilla Glass with an antimicrobial coating to reduce the growth of certain microorganisms. The touchpad uses the same glass and offers the same protection.

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 closed "class =" m-carousel - image dt-lazy-no "src =" https://img.dtcn.com/image/digitaltrends/olympus-digital-camera-1056-640x640.jpg "srcset = "https://www.digitaltrends.com/data:image/gif;base64,https://www.digitaltrends.com/R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 closed "class =" m-carousel - image dt-lazy-no "src =" https://img.dtcn.com/image/digitaltrends/olympus-digital-camera-1057-640x640.jpg "srcset = "https://www.digitaltrends.com/data:image/gif;base64,https://www.digitaltrends.com/R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 closed "class =" m-carousel - image dt-lazy-no "src =" https://img.dtcn.com/image/digitaltrends/olympus-digital-camera-1055-640x640.jpg "srcset = "https://www.digitaltrends.com/data:image/gif;base64,https://www.digitaltrends.com/R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Acer has equipped the Chromebook Spin 713 with a solid selection of ports. On the left side you will find a USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port, a USB-A 3.0 port and a microSD card reader. On the right side there is another USB-C 3.2 port and a full-size HDMI 2.0 port. That outperforms both the Samsung and Asus laptops, which are limited to USB-C and microSD. The Chromebook Spin 713's wireless connectivity is completely up-to-date with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0.

performance

We don't have a lot of benchmarks to objectively measure a Chromebook's performance. I can refer to Geekbench 5, where the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 with its quad-core core i5 scored 966 in the single-core test and 3,040 points in the multi-core test. That surpasses the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 (at least in multi-core) with 1,003 and 2,179 with its dual-core core i3 and the Asus Chromebook Flip C436, also with the same processor, with 938 and 1,653. Interestingly, the Acer also beat the Lenovo ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook with AMD's Chrome OS-specific CPU, the AMD Ryzen 5 3500C. This laptop scored 907 and 2,739.

Acer Chromebook Spin 713Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Despite the lack of objective measures, I can say that the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is a fast Chrome OS laptop that keeps up with everyone else I've reviewed. I used the laptop with a handful of Android apps running and a ton of Google tabs open, and the laptop didn't skip a beat. This is likely due in part to the 8GB of RAM, which is sufficient for Chrome OS, as well as the fast SSD.

I also launched a few games, including Asphalt 9: Legends, and the Chromebook Spin 713 ran smoothly with its built-in Intel UHD graphics. It was a bit bulky in tablet mode, but I was still able to do a few races with no lag or choppiness. This is a huge improvement over the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook's AMD Radeon graphics, which turned this game into something of a slide show.

As mentioned earlier, you can upgrade the Chromebook Spin 713 to a Core i7 and 16GB of RAM, but I don't see any reason to. In my configuration, it's a fast laptop and one of the faster options you'll find for just $ 630.

display

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 screenMark Coppock / Digital Trends

One of the more exciting trends in laptops is the move to taller displays. The 16:10 and 3: 2 aspect ratios show more vertical information, which is important for surfing the Internet and for creating and viewing documents. The Chromebook Spin 713 followed this trend early and was one of the first on a Chromebook with its 3: 2 display. The 2,256 x 1,504 resolution is also welcome and offers sharp text and images.

I was unable to subject the display to my colorimeter, so unfortunately, as with performance, I don't have a lot of objective metrics. In fact, I don't have any. Subjectively, however, I found the display bright enough to work comfortably in a lot of ambient light – although working outside under bright sun wouldn't be a great experience. I've used brighter displays – the Dell XPS 13 and HP Specter x360 14 OLED are both brighter – but I'm not complaining.

The combination of quality and the aspect ratio of 3: 2 made this display an attractive display.

The contrast was sufficient to make black text appear on a white background. Eventually the colors looked natural and not oversaturated, although I cannot confirm the accuracy. Gamma must have been spot on too, since Netflix videos didn't look too light or too dark.

The combination of quality and 3: 2 aspect ratio made this display a delightful display that is more than good enough for most Chromebook users. If you need a wide color gamut and precise accuracy, I can't confirm how well the display will work for you. I haven't seen the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 in person, so I can't tell if the QLED display is better – but I can imagine that it has QLED's ability to show off beautiful colors.

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 foldsMark Coppock / Digital Trends

The audio quality was a different story. The volume wasn't particularly loud and I noticed an indication of 100% distortion. The highs were cut off a bit and the midrange was muddy – and of course, as is common with most laptops, the bass was missing. The sound quality was fine for the occasional YouTube video, but I recommend headphones or bluetooth speakers for Netflix binging and music.

Keyboard and touchpad

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713's keyboard is pretty typical island style, with good, but not large, key spacing. I found the mechanism only slightly muddy, with a lot of spring travel and a soft floor movement, but not as crisp as I would like it to be. The Asus Chromebook Flip C436 responded more precisely than I found it to be more comfortable in the long run, and the Acer keyboard didn't really come close to my favorites, HP's Specter keyboards and Apple's Magic keyboard on the latest MacBooks.

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 keyboard "class =" m-carousel - image dt-lazy-no "src =" https://img.dtcn.com/image/digitaltrends/olympus-digital-camera-1041-640x640.jpg "srcset = "https://www.digitaltrends.com/data:image/gif;base64,https://www.digitaltrends.com/R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 Trackpad "class =" m-Karussell - Bild dt-lazy-no "src =" https://img.dtcn.com/image/digitaltrends/olympus-digital-camera-1042-640x640.jpg "srcset = "https://www.digitaltrends.com/data:image/gif;base64,https://www.digitaltrends.com/R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 "class =" m-Karussell - Bild dt-lazy-no "src =" https://img.dtcn.com/image/digitaltrends/olympus-digital-camera-1043-640x640.jpg "srcset = "https://www.digitaltrends.com/data:image/gif;base64,https://www.digitaltrends.com/R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP//yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The touchpad was larger than usual as the larger display offers additional space on the keyboard deck. As mentioned earlier, it consists of a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass with an antimicrobial coating. I found it very convenient to swipe Google's multitouch gestures and use them precisely. The touch display also responded, but unfortunately the laptop does not support an active pen.

Acer also didn't add biometric login to the Chromebook Spin 713, which is disappointing. A fingerprint reader would have been welcome.

Battery life

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 foldedMark Coppock / Digital Trends

Acer packed 48 watt hours of battery life into the case of the Chromebook Spin 713, and that's a decent amount for the light and efficient Chrome OS. For example, the Chromebook Spin 713 lasted 11.25 hours in our web browser test, which is almost two hours longer than the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2. At the same time, the Samsung spent almost 13 hours going through our Full HD Avengers trailer for almost three hours longer than the Acer Chromebook Spin 713. Samsung's QLED display likely contributed to this as it tends to be less power hungry than IPS displays.

The Asus Chromebook Flip C436 lasted about 10.5 hours in our web browser test and the same time as the Samsung in our video loop test.

Given that the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 uses a faster CPU than any of these competitors and has a tall, high-resolution display, these are good battery results that promise a full day of work. I would describe the battery life as the strength of the Chromebook Spin 713.

Our opinion

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 fits nicely into the premium Chromebook space, offering good performance and battery life, as well as decent build for a reasonable $ 630. It's not the sharpest laptop, but its conservative looks obviously appeal to a number of buyers.

I would have liked an active pen option for the laptop, but that's only a deal breaker for those who rely on digital ink. Otherwise, this is a great option for anyone looking for a quickly convertible 2-in-1 Chromebook.

Are there alternatives?

A natural competitor to the Acer Chromebook Spin 713, the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 offers the same 2-in-1 flexibility and sharper look. But it's not that fast, it doesn't have the same ability to boost performance when you need it, and it's stuck in the past with its 16: 9 aspect ratio. However, it's a little cheaper.

The Asus Chromebook Flip C436 is another strong competitor to the Acer and offers a convertible 2-in-1 device with a 14-inch 16: 9 display. It's also slower than the Acer Chromebook Spin 713, but also a little cheaper.

If you don't want to turn the display over, Google's Pixelbook Go is your best option. You get better battery life, improved audio quality, and a smaller body – all for about the same price. There's a reason we picked the Pixebook Go as the best all-round Chromebook.

How long it will take?

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 isn't quite as sturdy in the hand as some of the other Chromebooks we tested, but Acer trusted it enough to put it through some grueling tests. It will take as long as you need it, and Chrome OS will continue to hum for years to come. The laptop comes with the usual one-year warranty.

Should you buy it?

Yes. The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is a solid premium Chromebook offering that has a few advantages over the competition, including fast performance.

Editor's recommendations




20 Mar
Blog

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE Review: Gaming, Display, Battery

Acer Predator Triton 300 se review 01

Acer Predator Triton 300 SE Review: Small stature meets powerful gaming

"The Acer Predator Triton 300 SE is small, but powerful."

  • Small, portable design

  • Stay cool and quiet when you're not playing

  • Smooth gaming at 1080p and 144 Hz

  • Good battery life

  • Limited configurations available

  • Not as fast as the Zephyrus G14

The ROG Zephyrus G14 was a revolutionary gaming laptop. With a screen size of just 14 inches, an RTX-grade graphics card, and decent battery life, it was a breath of fresh air. and for almost a full year there was no challenger to what this laptop could do. The Acer Predator Triton 300 SE is finally a worthy rival. So on the surface.

It's also a 14-inch gaming laptop, has the same RTX 3060 GPU and a 144Hz refresh rate screen. All of that costs $ 1,400, along with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

Because of its size and design, you may not even be able to identify the Triton 300 SE as a gaming laptop. But can a laptop this size really be powerful enough for modern gaming? You might be surprised.

design

Being the thinnest or lightest device rarely results in being the "best" device. The sacrifices made are often not worth the compromise. However, the Predator Triton 300 SE is less space-saving than ultra-thin or light.

Do not get me wrong. At 3.7 pounds and 0.70 inches thick, it's amply portable. But many gaming laptops have hit the 0.70-inch mark in the past few years, including the ROG Zephyrus G14. The 14-inch screen size is what makes the Predator Triton 300 SE so small. At just 12.7 x 8.9 inches, it doesn't feel much bigger than a 14-inch non-gaming laptop like the HP Specter x360 14.

Due to its smaller size, the Triton 300 SE can not only be used as a gaming laptop. It's easy to carry, easily fits in a backpack, and doesn't take up excessive table space. The Razer Blade Stealth 13 is the only gaming notebook that surpasses it, but the Razer's nowhere near as powerful.

The Triton 300 SE looks like this too. It's not overly game oriented or aggressive. The only freebies are a small Predator logo in the top right corner of the lid and some vents along the hinge. It's not as flashy as the ROG Zephyrus G14, but there are little bits of style if that's what you're looking for. It's a good balance, and I prefer the subdued aesthetic over the larger Predator Helios 300.

But that doesn't mean the design is totally modern. The fake brushed metal texture on the lid feels a bit dated, as does the bright silver color. Once opened, there are some features that are not keeping up with modern trends. First off, the lower bezel is quite large. A 16:10 screen would reduce this without having to shrink the overall size of the case. A black bezel on the sides may also have helped lessen the effect, even if it's still made of plastic.

I also don't like the location of the fingerprint scanner, which is in the top right corner of the touchpad. Most modern laptops incorporate this into the power button, although it is still rare in gaming laptops these days.

The location of the ports is a little awkward to make room for the side slots, but the variety will no doubt make you happy. On the left you will find a USB-A port, a Thunderbolt 4 port, and a barrel-shaped power plug. The Thunderbolt port can be connected to a display, used for ultra-fast data transfer or even charged the laptop. However, when gaming, you should use the proprietary charger.

On the right side, the Triton 300 SE has an additional USB-A port, HDMI 2.0 and a headphone jack. If you plan to use this laptop for photo or video editing, you will be missing an SD card slot, but the port selection is otherwise perfect.

display

I've talked about how important the size of the Triton 300 SE's screen is, but image quality is also important. It uses an IPS screen of 1,920 x 1,080 with a refresh rate of 144 Hz – ideal for smooth, responsive PC games. The matte layer on the screen means fewer reflections, but also less bright. I measured it at a maximum of 290 nits, which is just below the 300 nits I would like to see minimum on laptops.

Fortunately, the screen makes up for this with good color saturation and contrast. Achieving 99% of the sRGB and 77% of the AdobeRGB color spaces is quite good for a gaming laptop, as is the contrast ratio of 1,500: 1. The color accuracy is not that spectacular, although the Triton 300 SE does not rely on precise color corrections is designed. The ROG Zephyrus is better in this regard and also hits a maximum of 332 nits.

Of course, the refresh rate is the most important aspect of the display, which makes the performance under the hood of the RTX 3060 really flexible.

performance

Aside from its size, the Triton 300 SE's performance is the most intriguing proposition. It uses a unique 35-watt processor that sits right between a standard ultrabook (like the Dell XPS 13) and a traditional gaming laptop (like the Predator Helios 300). The ROG Zephyrus G14 also uses a 35-watt chip, although it's made by AMD instead of Intel.

The Triton 300 SE represents the attempt by Intel to develop such a processor type. The important thing is to use the latest 10nm SuperFin architecture, which is not yet available on the larger 45-watt gaming laptops. This is our first taste of what these chips will look like in a sense.

The special chip in my test device is the Intel Core i7-11375H, a quad-core processor with a base clock rate of 3.3 GHz. From now on the Triton 300 SE will only be offered in this single configuration, which also contains 16 GB DDR4 RAM and a 512 GB SSD. In addition, it is only sold through Best Buy, which means that availability is scarce. While it's a balanced configuration (especially at $ 1,400), I hope there will be more options available at some point.

In my runs in Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R23, this 35-watt processor consistently delivered stronger multi-core scores than ultrabooks (which also have four cores) and stronger single-core scores than 10th generation gaming laptops. Of course, 15-inch gaming laptops like the MSI GS66 Stealth or the Razer Blade 15 can support six- or eight-core chips, which achieve far better multi-core results. It is also far behind AMD's Ryzen CPUs with eight cores – even the 15-watt variants.

Cant say I am overly impressed by the raw performance of the Intel H35 chip.

Perhaps the most interesting comparison is between the Triton 300 SE and a 14-inch U-series laptop like the HP Specter x360 14 or Lenovo Yoga 9i 14. The multi-core values ​​of the Triton 300 SE are even 33% higher than those . That's what gives you 7-10 extra watts of power.

This improved multi-core performance should result in better results for content creation applications. I started with a CPU tied handbrake test encoding a 4K movie trailer for H.265. The results were good and took just under three minutes. That's about 17% faster than the Lenovo Yoga 7i 14. However, the eight-core Ryzen 9 4900HS in the ROG Zephyrus G14 stomped on the Triton 300 SE and did the job in just a minute and 40 seconds. Cant say I am overly impressed by the raw performance of the Intel H35 chip.

Fortunately, things get a lot better when you factor in the Triton 300 SE's discrete graphics card. In the PCMark 10 Creative test, for example, the Triton 300 SE is 12% ahead of the Lenovo Yoga 9i 14. Of course, you can make more money for video editing with a larger 15-inch laptop. If this type of performance is more important to you, the Triton 300 SE is not for you. The additional multi-core performance in the Zephyrus G14 is a better choice.

Gaming performance

The RTX 3060 in the Triton 300 SE naturally makes it a proven gaming laptop. Smaller gaming laptops like the Razer Blade Stealth with its GTX 1650 Ti are good for light gaming, but the Triton 300 SE is almost twice as powerful for gaming.

I haven't tested the updated version of the Zephyrus G14 yet, but as you'll see, this hasn't stopped even the older model from improving the Triton 300 SE's frame rates.

Laptop 3DMark Time Spy 3DMark Fire Strike Assassin's Creed Valhalla (1080p Ultra High) Battlefield V (1080p Ultra) Fortnite (1080p Epic) Civilization VI (1080p Ultra)
Predator Triton 300 SE (RTX 3060) 6038 13794 50 frames per second (fps) 68 fps 78 fps 84 fps
ROG Zephyrus G14 (RTX 2060) 5861 13876 n / A 70 fps 91 fps 91 fps
Razer Blade Stealth (GTX 1650 Ti) 3035 7186 n / A n / A n / A 49 fps
MSI GS66 Stealth (RTX 3080) 9097 19175 70 fps 117 fps 140 fps 149 fps

The Predator Triton 300 SE can almost keep up with the Zephyrus G14 in Battlefield V, but remains behind in other games. The frame rate is 14% lower in Fortnite and 8% lower in Civilization VI. You don't want to see that against the predecessor model of a direct competitor. I would expect the recently introduced RTX 3060 version of the G14 to move forward even further.

I didn't have a comparison rating for Assassin's Creed Valhalla for the Zephyrus G14, but I tested Assassin's Creed Odyssey on both systems. None of the laptops could play this game at 60 fps at extremely high settings, with the Triton 300 SE averaging 51 frames per second (fps). This was the only game in which the Triton 300 SE beat the G14, which only hit 42 fps.

Overall, however, the Zephyrus G14 is the faster gaming notebook in most cases. It seems that Asus has a more efficient cooling system and can push the graphics harder than the Triton 300 SE. Given that the two laptops are almost the same size, this is remarkable.

But I would be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy the gaming experience on the Triton 300 SE. If you set the settings to Medium or High in most games, the frame rates will jump over 100. This is the ideal place for silky smooth animation. The difference between the G14's 120 Hz and the Triton 300 SE's 144 Hz won't appear too often, but having extra leeway to play is never bad.

In addition, there is a clear trade-off in terms of fan noise. The Triton 300 SE is better able to stay quiet for simpler tasks, which was one of my main complaints with the Zephyrus G14. The vents on the top of the keyboard get warm during gaming, but the Triton 300 SE keeps the surface temperatures on the keyboard and palm rests extremely low. All of this helps the Triton 300 SE double as a standard work laptop better than the Zephyrus G14.

Battery life

I don't normally expect long battery life from gaming laptops, but the Triton 300 SE is different here, too. A lower power CPU is being used, which is designed to improve lifespan on a single charge. Acer claims that the Triton 300 SE can even last up to 10 hours under its specific conditions.

I tested this in two ways: a local 1080p playback test and an iMacros web browser test. The video loop lasted just under eight hours on a single charge, while the system lasted just under seven and a half hours in the more realistic web browsing test. You're far better with 25-watt laptops, but I was pretty impressed with how long the Triton 300 SE can last.

The system traded beats with the Zephyrus G14 in terms of battery life. The G14 lasted two more hours on the video loop and just under six hours on the internet. Other gaming laptops with decent battery life include the MSI GS66 Stealth and the Razer Blade 15, both of which are only 30 to 60 minutes shorter than the Triton 300 SE.

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard is not my favorite aspect of this laptop, but it is serviceable. Acer decided to move the standard Predator keyboard over to the Triton 300 SE, which feels like a missed opportunity. It's not a bad keyboard, but I would have preferred something with less feel, bigger keycaps, and more precise bottom-out action. The multimedia buttons on the right don't bother me, although I have to admit that they always put me off when screen brightness and volume control are not next to each other.

The keyboard has a three-zone RGB backlight with four levels of brightness for the backlight. Colors and patterns can all be customized in the PredatorSense application.

The touchpad does better. It's very big and the pursuit is smooth. It's a high quality touchpad, and even the click mechanism feels solid.

The Triton 300 SE has a 720p webcam above the screen. However, it lacks an IR camera, so Windows Hello hands-free logins are not possible.

Our opinion

The Predator Triton 300 SE represents a new generation of gaming laptops. Smaller, yes, but just as powerful. At $ 1,400, it's not overly expensive for a gaming laptop, either. For me, it's the future of gaming laptops.

The only problem? The Zephyrus G14 came here first and has better performance in both gaming and content creation. They are similar in price and end up in the same category depending on size. However, I prefer the way Acer optimized the Triton 300 SE for cooler and quieter operation, which makes it a better work laptop.

Are there alternatives?

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 can hardly be surpassed in this category. It is gaining performance across the board, which makes it a better option for most people. Asus also offers a lot more configurations, including options for cheaper graphics or higher resolution screens.

The Razer Blade Stealth is an even smaller gaming laptop, despite being more expensive and not as powerful.

When you're ready to move on to a bigger 15-inch laptop, you can find some more powerful options like the Razer Blade 15 and MSI GS66 Stealth.

How long it will take?

The Predator Triton 300 SE should last at least four or five years, especially if your main focus is on competitive esports games. The laptop comes with a standard one-year warranty.

Should you buy it?

Yes. It represents a new category of gaming laptop that many PC gamers will love. The category is still in its infancy, but the Triton 300 SE has confirmed to me that the highly portable 14-inch gaming laptop will become an extremely attractive option for PC gamers going forward.

Editor's recommendations




06 Feb
Blog

Acer Swift 3X Review: Intel’s Iris Xe Max Takes the Stage

Acer Swift 3x rating Iris xe max 1

"The Acer Swift 3X presents Intel's impressive Iris Xe Max in a top-class package."

  • Great job

  • Excellent battery life

  • Aesthetics are attractive

  • Rounded port selection

  • The display is overwhelming

  • The processing quality does not meet the premium standards

  • Bad gaming performance

Intel released its first discrete GPU in 20 years, the Iris Xe Max. However, that doesn't necessarily mean trying to compete with Nvidia for gaming laptops. It was not specifically designed to speed up games, but rather to work with the CPU and speed up a variety of other tasks. An interesting idea for thin and light laptops, right?

So far, the Iris Xe Max has come in three laptops, and we got one of them – the mid-range Acer Swift 3X – for review.

The Acer Swift 3X is not a cheap laptop in its Iris Xe Max configuration – at least not for a typical Swift laptop. At Amazon, it costs $ 1,240 with a Core i7-1165G7, 16 GB LPDDR4X RAM, 1 TB PCIe Solid State Drive (SSD) storage, and a 14-inch Full HD IPS display (1920 x 1080 ) in the aging school 16: 9 aspect ratio. You can spend $ 899 and get a version with only Iris Xe graphics, a Core i5-1135G7, 8 GB of RAM, and a 512 GB SSD.

Does the Iris Xe Max graphics make this laptop a must-have mid-range laptop?

performance

We start with the performance because in this test the rubber hits the road. Either the Iris Xe Max makes a difference to real-world tasks or it doesn't. This is the make-or-break test for the Acer Swift 3X. Reading the description of Intel's GPU will expose you to a variety of buzzwords and jargon, but we will skip most of them here. If you want to dig into the details of the new GPU, check out our guide to Intel's Discrete GPUs and our insight into the Iris Xe Max.

However, one term to keep in mind is deep link. This is Intel's term for technology that tightly ties the CPU and GPU (both Iris Xe and Iris Xe Max) together to enable some sophisticated functionality. Not all of them are yet activated or supported by today's software. So we focus on just one thing: Deep Link Dynamic Power Share. With this function, the system can "switch off" the GPU and supply the CPU with the entire system performance. With the Swift 3X and its 11th generation Core i7, more than 28 watts of power and heat can be delivered to the CPU if required, which should theoretically accelerate CPU-intensive tasks.

The Acer Swift 3X occasionally even questions the performance of H-series machines.

It works? Yes, it actually does. The Swift 3X was competitive in all of our performance benchmarks and occasionally took the crown for the fastest Tiger Lake laptop we tested. This makes it one of the fastest laptops in the U series and occasionally even challenges machines from the H series.

It can't compete with AMD's Ryzen 4000 (or the upcoming Ryzen 5000 laptops) in all cases, but it does show up a lot stronger than most non-Max laptops. However, is that enough to make Iris Xe Max an exciting development? Perhaps not at this point – the GPU on its own makes the Acer Swift 3X a fast laptop, but not without challengers in AMD and Apple, which are faster and either cheaper, thinner and lighter, or both. We'll have to wait and see what other features Iris Xe Max has to offer before we can speak of an unconditional success.

We start with Cinebench R23, where the Swift 3X scored 5944 points in multi-core mode and 1496 points in single-core mode. I tried the utility to switch from optimized mode to performance mode and I didn't see much of a difference unlike some others (e.g. the HP Command Center utility in the Specter x360 14) that have greater impact. This multi-core score is the fastest we've seen in an Intel U-Series CPU. It beats faster Core i7-1185G7 laptops like the MSI Prestige 14 Evo (5,789) and the Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 in its more effective performance mode (4,988).

Note that with a 45-watt Core i7-10750H, the Razer Blade scored 6,166, meaning the Swift 3X was in close proximity to a much faster CPU.

In Geekbench 5, the Swift 3X wasn't quite as strong – probably because Dynamic Power Share has the greatest impact on longer, sustained processes. The Swift 3X scored 1,551 points in the single-core test and 5,847 points in the multi-core test. The Prestige 14 Evo was slightly faster (1,593 and 5,904), as was the Intel Tiger Lake reference laptop, which is based on the same MSI computer (1,563 and 5,995). The Acer Swift 5 with the same CPU as the Swift 3X scored higher in the single-core test with 1,580 and almost as high in the multi-core test with 5,836. Interestingly, the Swift 3X managed to outperform the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15 with a Core i7-10750H (1,285 and 5,551).

In our handbrake test, which encodes a 420MB video as H.265, the Swift 3X finished the process in 2 minutes and 36 seconds, which is again (technically) the fastest among Intel U-series laptops. The Prestige 14 Evo – also with its faster CPU – took four seconds longer, which resulted in a virtual tie. Note that the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 with an AMD Ryzen 4800U processor takes 2.2 minutes to complete. This means that while Iris Xe Max speeds up Tiger Lake's performance, it cannot compete with AMD on some tasks.

Finally, I ran the PCMark 10 Complete benchmark, where the Swift 3X scored 5,117 points. This is the second highest score in our laptop database, only behind the Lenovo Yoga 9i 15. The individual essentials, productivity and creation values ​​of the Swift 3X were not all individually highest, but were in the upper range. To examine the creation portion of the test, which focuses on photo editing, video rendering and playback, and video editing, the Swift 3X had the highest score (5,334) of any U-series laptops we tested – shown once again, Deep Link does its Job.

The closest was the Prestige Evo 14 with 5036 points. This is a good sign of performance in Adobe apps and other creative tools, which will only improve as more Deep Link features are introduced. Simply put, the Swift 3X did very well in this benchmark.

Intel didn't specifically design the Iris Xe Max to speed up modern games.

Intel's Iris Xe Max has a real impact on a laptop's performance even at this early stage. The Swift 3X screams through productivity tasks and is well suited for creative tasks for a U-series CPU. If you're looking for the fastest CPU performance in an Intel-based ultrabook, contrary to your intuition, you should choose a model that includes Intel's discrete GPU.

If you're looking for a gaming laptop, as mentioned in the introduction, Intel didn't specifically design the Iris Xe Max for speeding up modern games. With some titles it works well, with others Intel transfers the order to the Iris Xe, which is also on board. The Iris Xe Max did well in the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark with 1,889, which is a few hundred points above the typical Iris Xe GPU.

In Fortnite, however, the Max managed 34 fps (frames per second) with 1080p and high graphics and 22 fps with epic graphics. This is comparable to the Yoga 9i 14, which achieved 40 fps and 27 fps in performance mode, and the MSI Prestige 14 Evo, which achieved 42 fps and 28 fps. Fortnite is clearly a title that the Iris Xe Max doesn't shine on.

design

Acer didn't just copy the design of the non-Max Acer Swift 3 when creating the Swift 3X. There are some similarities, but the Swift 3X looks very different, including a choice between Steam Blue (my review unit) and Safari Gold instead of plain utility silver.

The hinge has also been redesigned and decorated in an “electric blue” that draws attention to the laptop lid. And the back corners have a nice angularity that adds to the aesthetics. However, it is not an attention seeker like the HP Specter x360 14. The bezels disappoint a bit. First, they're not as small as some other modern day laptops, with a screen-to-body ratio of 84% (many exceed 90%), and second, they're made of plastic rather than behind the glass. This gives the laptop a no-nonsense look when viewed from the front.

The Swift 3X isn't quite as slim as some of its 14-inch competitors, either.

The construction doesn't quite match the standard of many other premium laptops. The chassis is made entirely of aluminum, but the lid is quite flexible and the keyboard deck has some flex. However, the underside of the chassis is robust. The hinge is very stiff and requires both hands to open the laptop – in contrast to the Dell XPS 13, which can be easily opened with one hand – but holds the display firmly in place. Overall, I'd say the build quality is more in the mid-range than the premium range, which makes the laptop more attractive than the $ 1,200 on my review unit at a starting price of $ 899. The MSI Prestige 14 Evo, for example, is the same price – without the Iris Xe Max, of course – and feels a lot more solid than the Swift 3X.

The Swift 3X isn't quite as slim as some of its 14-inch competitors, either. It comes in at 0.71 inches thick and weighs 3.02 pounds. This compares to the Prestige 14 Evo at 0.63 inches at 2.85 pounds, the Asus ZenBook 14 UX425 at 0.54 inches and 2.58 pounds, and the Acer Swift 5 at 0.59 inches and 2.31 pounds. It's not that the Swift 3X is a humorous ultrabook – it just doesn't feel as thin and light as some of the other options.

Finally, the Swift 3X offers a solid range of connectivity options. On the left side of the case, you'll find a proprietary power port (which will likely provide enough juice for the Iris Xe Max), a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, a USB-A 3.2 port, and a USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 On the right side you will find another USB-A 3.2 port and a 3.5 mm audio jack. What you won't find is an SD card reader. This is a bummer as this machine is at least partially geared towards creative types.

The wireless connection is provided via Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1.

display

The Swift 3X has a 14-inch Full HD 16: 9 IPS display which, according to my colorimeter, is generally a little below average for premium laptops. For example, the color gamut is a bit narrow at 95% of sRGB and 71% of AdobeRGB (premium laptops usually achieve 97% and 75%, respectively). However, the color accuracy is quite good at 1.18, with 1.0 or less being considered excellent.

At the same time, the brightness is 284 nits below our 300 NIT threshold, which ensures that a display with the typical bright office environment lighting is visible. And the worst contrast is at 740: 1, where many premium laptops are at 1000: 1 or more, or at least very close to it. The combination of brightness, low contrast and a narrow color gamut gives the display a subdued appearance.

Overall, the display is certainly good for productivity work and watching Netflix, but it won't blow your mind. Throw in the 16: 9 aspect ratio when many competitors are switching to higher ratios like 16:10 and 3: 2 and the Swift 3X's display isn't exactly impressive.

Audio is closer to par, with two downward-facing speakers that provide enough volume for YouTube videos but not enough for watching a Netflix movie with friends. The mids and highs are fine, but the bass is missing. You want to use headphones or bluetooth speakers for Netflix binging and listening to music.

Keyboard and touchpad

It appears that Acer pulled the keyboard from the previous Acer Swift 3. The Swift 3X has the same appearance, meaning the keycaps are smaller, which in my experience leads to a search for keys. The mechanism is very clicky and requires a bit of pressure to intervene, but offers a solid ground effect. It depends on preference, of course, but I would rate the keyboard as being behind the HP Specter x360 14 and Dell XPS 13 in terms of accuracy and general typing speed.

The touchpad is small but functional. The surface is pleasant to swipe and the keys respond, but are a bit loud. Thanks to the Microsoft Precision touchpad drivers, multi-touch gestures react quickly and precisely. There is no touch display which is a shame for me personally. I miss touch when it's not there, especially for scrolling long web pages and tapping the occasional on-screen button.

Windows 10 Hello login support without a password is provided by a fingerprint reader in the upper right corner of the keyboard deck. It was quick and accurate in my tests.

Battery life

You'd think that 59 watt hours of battery life in a 14-inch laptop and very fast CPU performance could result in poor battery life. You'd be wrong as the Swift 3X is way behind the nine hours of typical Evo spec use.

In our web benchmark, which runs through a number of popular websites before the laptop goes to sleep, the Swift 3X lasted 11.5 hours. The Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 outperformed this by more than an hour and the MSI Prestige 14 Evo by almost four hours. Next, I went through our video test grinding a Full HD Avengers trailer and the Swift 3X lasted about 15.75 hours, a strong score that is still nearly three hours less than the Yoga 9i 14 and 30 minutes less than the MSI Prestige 14 Evo was.

In the battery test for PCMark 10 applications, the Swift 3X lasted 14 hours, second only to the Yoga 9i 14 in our database and almost four hours longer than the Prestige 14 Evo. In the PCMark 10 gaming test, which stresses both the CPU and the GPU, the Swift 3X only lasted 1.5 hours, which was the worst, with the Prestige 14 Evo and Dell XPS 13 finishing second and third. Most other laptops lasted about an hour longer than the Swift 3X in this test.

Overall, the Swift 3X showed solid battery life that lasted a full day with no issues, at least as long as you don't push the CPU and GPU. Again, the Swift 3X exceeds the Intel Evo certification requirements of nine hours of typical use, which not every Evo-certified laptop we tested has achieved.

Our opinion

The Acer Swift 3X on its own is a pretty mundane, high-budget, low-midrange ultrabook without considering the inclusion of the Iris Xe Max. The components are okay for $ 1,200, but the build quality and keyboard aren't snuff-safe.

Take advantage of the great CPU performance of the Iris Xe Max and Deep Link, plus long battery life, and the Swift 3X becomes a more attractive option. It's a good choice for anyone who wants to occasionally encode video but don't want to spend the money on a laptop with a 45 watt CPU and faster discrete GPU.

Are there alternatives?

The MSI Prestige 14 Evo is almost as fast as the Swift 3X without the Iris Xe Max on board and costs the same. It's also thinner, lighter, better built, and better looking. However, the Swift 3X offers better battery life.

If you are looking for the ultimate in CPU performance, then you should take a look at an AMD Ryzen 4000 laptop (soon to be Ryzen 5000). One option today is the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 with the Ryzen 7 4800U. It's cheaper than the Swift 3X, but it offers much faster CPU performance and extends battery life.

Finally, the Dell XPS 13 9310 remains a solid competitor, as is the case with every laptop we test in the 13- or 14-inch class. It has a smaller display, but a productivity-friendly aspect ratio of 16:10. The XPS 13 is also significantly better built, also offers a superior display, and can be configured with more RAM and storage.

How long it will take?

The Acer Swift 3X is not the most rugged notebook we've tested, but it should offer years of reliable service. The components are up to date which is a plus, but the 1 year warranty (industry standard) is, as usual, too short.

Should you buy it?

No. Iris Xe Max graphics offer the best CPU performance you can get in an Intel-based ultrabook. However, if CPU performance is most important to you, there are other, better options. And apart from the equipment of the Iris Xe Max, the Swift 3X cannot be particularly highlighted.

Editor's recommendations




02 Dec
Blog

Porsche Design Acer Book RS: Porsche Designed, Porsche Tuned

Porsche Design Acer Book RS Featured image

Porsche Design Acer Book RS

"The Porsche Design Book RS is very, very fast for a Core i5 laptop – Porsche tuning at its best!"

  • Unique and modern aesthetics

  • Impressively fast performance of the Core i5 CPU

  • Competent gaming performance for a Core i5

  • Solid build quality

  • Good battery life

  • Expensive, even with an unusually fast Core i5

  • Average keyboard and touchpad

Acer has teamed up with Porsche Design to develop a laptop for “trend-conscious mobile professionals”. Sure, the companies have made a great looking laptop that has its own unique aesthetic, but often such collaborations can only be up close. So I was excited to find out if that's the case with this 14-inch laptop.

I got the entry-level Book RS configuration for $ 1,399 that came with a Core i5-1135G7, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB solid-state drive (SSD), and a 14-inch Full HD -Drive (1,920 x 1,080). IPS display. Read on to find out if there's more to the Porsche Design influence than good looks.

design

Porsche Design Acer Book RS DesignMark Coppock / Digital Trends

I'm not going to say that I look at this laptop and immediately think of the Porsche sports cars. The Acer Book RS is quite angular in many ways, while I usually think of Porsche cars as more curvy. It doesn't matter because it's a beautiful laptop that absolutely stands out from the rest.

Let's start with the carbon fiber lid, which is manufactured using the NIL (Nanoimprint Lithography) process and covered by silver aircraft aluminum with the Porsche Design logo. It's noticeable and the carbon fiber stands out more than, for example, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 3, where it's much more subdued. Here, the texture gives a futuristic look, drawing attention to the sides of the laptop, which – as mentioned – are chiseled into an angular aesthetic exemplified by the hinge on the back. The chassis doesn't have much, if any, angle – oddly enough, the blocky look stands out instead of being overly simplistic. When you open the lid you will find a standard island keyboard with black keys and white letters. The Porsche Design logo above the keyboard is the only outstanding design feature. The frames aren't as small as on many newer computers like the Dell XPS 13, but they aren't too big either.

Build quality is solid, with no bending, bending, or twisting unless you put way too much pressure. It's as good as any other premium notebook, and you'll have a hard time finding unsightly seams or misaligned parts. The Asus ZenBook 14 UX425EA is another 14-inch laptop with a solid build, and the Acer Book RS matches it – as do the Dell XPS 13 and Apple MacBook Pro 13. That shouldn't come as a surprise – Porsche clearly doesn't. I don't want his name to be tainted by a sloppy build. Acer has also used the Micro-Arc Oxidation (MAO) lacquer that has been used on some of its recent laptops to harden the case surface and resist scratches and corrosion.

The Book RS is a very thin and light 14-inch laptop that measures 0.63 inches and 2.65 pounds. That's slightly thicker than the 0.54-inch ZenBook 14 UX425EA and a bit heavier than the ZenBook's 2.58 pounds. It's also not as thin as the 0.58-inch XPS 13, but it's lighter compared to the Dell's 2.8 pounds (to the touch). Of course, you don't mind carrying the basic case around with you.

Connectivity is another strong point: a USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 support (a second port would have been handy), two USB-A 3.2 ports, a full-size HDMI 2.0 port with HDCP support, and a 3rd port , 5mm audio jack. A major complaint is that there is no SD card reader. Hence, photo and video editors need to buy an adapter. The wireless connectivity is state of the art with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1.

performance

Porsche Design Acer Book RS performanceMark Coppock / Digital Trends

If you've looked at the $ 1,399 price tag and were disappointed that the Book RS only has an 11th Gen Core i5-1135G7 CPU rather than the Core i7 you can usually find for that kind of money , you have the feeling. I felt the same way when I first saw the specs and pricing, but found that Acer had paid the Porsche Design group a fair amount of money that was passed on to the buyer. The thing is, this is a Porsche Design laptop, and if there's one thing usually associated with that name, it's performance.

I'll give it to you right away: the Porsche Design Acer Book RS with its Core i5 is just as fast – if not faster – than any Tiger Lake Core i7 laptop we tested, with the exception of the reference device that Intel sent us to look at Has . This laptop featured the fastest Tiger Lake CPU, the Core i7-1186G7, compared to the Core i7-1165G7 machines we tested.

Take a look at the synthetic benchmark GeekBench 5, in which the Book RS achieved 1,415 points in single-core mode and 5,364 points in multi-core mode. That's a lot faster than the other Core i5 laptop I tested, the Lenovo Yoga 7i, and it challenges the Core i7 machines. For example, the Dell XPS 13 9310 scored 1,540 and 5,432 points, which means that it was significantly faster than the Book RS in single-core mode, but less in multi-core mode. The same goes for the faster Acer Swift 5 with 1580 and 5836 points – again faster than the Book RS, but not as much as you might expect.

But check out the handbrake results, a more realistic test that converts a 420MB video to H.265. The Book RS finished the test in three minutes, faster than the Swift 5, the XPS 13 9310 and the Asus ZenBook 14 UX425EA (all Core i7 machines). And the Book RS was only eight seconds away from the faster Intel reference laptop. That's a remarkable feat of a Core i5 laptop, and I was tempted to pry open the case and look for a turbo-charger hidden inside.

Cinebench 20 was similar: The Book RS was faster than the XPS 13 9310 in multi-core mode and in close proximity to the Swift 5 and the Intel reference device. The Book RS was a bit slower in single core mode, but not by much. As I said in the headline, Porsche not only designed this laptop, it must have optimized it too.

You lose next to nothing when you buy the Book RS and its Core i5, and you can spend an extra $ 600 and get a Core i7 that I can imagine will do even more spectacularly. That leaves the question of GPU performance unanswered, however – the Yoga 7i's Core i5 Intel Iris Xe graphics underperformed significantly, and I feared I'd see the same on the Book RS as well.

Play

Porsche Design Acer Book RS GamingMark Coppock / Digital Trends

Fortunately, that wasn't the case. While the Book RS couldn't quite keep up with its Core i7 competitors, it was close enough that you won't be too disappointed here if you opt for the supposedly slower chipset.

We start with the synthetic 3DMark Time Spy test, in which the Book RS scored 1,504. Compare that to the Yoga 7i with the same Core i5, which only hit 913. The Dell XPS 13 was faster at 1,647, as was the Acer Swift 5 at 1,686, but the difference is nowhere near as big as the Yoga 7i. In short, in this benchmark at least, the Core i5 of the Book RS was competitive with our Core i7 comparison machines.

In Civilization VI with 1080p and medium graphics, the Book RS achieved 46 frames per second (fps) compared to the Swift 5 with 53 fps and the Asus ZenBook 14 UX425EA with 36 fps. The Yoga 7i could only reach 28 fps, which shows that it was slow in real games, and not just benchmarks – and that the Core i5 itself isn't that much slower. When switching to epic graphics, the Book RS achieved 25 fps compared to the Swift 5 with 27 fps and the ZenBook 14 with 24 fps.

I also ran Fortnite, and the Book RS was competitive again at 27 fps on 1080p and high graphics and 20 fps on epic graphics. There aren't any good results either, but they're not far behind the Swift 5 at 31 fps and 22 fps and are identical to the Dell XPS 13 at 27 fps and 20 fps. The Yoga 7i only managed 20 FPS and 12 FPS in this title.

The bottom line is that the Book RS is almost as light a gaming notebook as the Tiger Lake Core i7 systems I tested. Even the Intel reference laptop with its faster chip wasn't much faster.

display

Porsche Design Acer Book Case DisplayMark Coppock / Digital Trends

Lately – and by that I mean the last few years – premium Full HD IPS displays are pretty similar in performance. They're great for productivity work and Netflix, but they don't offer the huge gamut of color and accuracy that photo and video editors require. I was excited to see how the Book RS display behaved, and that's how my colorimeter came out.

Basically, the laptop's display is at least average – which is very good – or a little better in some cases. First, it reached 318 nits of brightness and exceeded our preferred threshold of 300 nits. So this is a good thing. The contrast was 970: 1, just below our 1,000: 1 standard for great displays. That too is good enough. The colors were typical of 73% of AdobeRGB and 97% of sRGB – the vast majority of premium laptops fall in the same range, maybe a few percentage points higher or lower on either color gamut, but not enough to be noticed. Finally, the color accuracy was very good with a DeltaE of 1.15, with 1.0 or less indistinguishable to the human eye and considered excellent.

In short, this is a fine display that makes productivity a pleasure and makes watching videos a pleasure. I have no complaints about this display and have enjoyed using it as much as the rest of this excellent laptop. You will find that it is on par with other similar laptops like the Acer Swift 5 (which may have used the same display, the results are so similar). Note that the Yoga 7i had a very low contrast ratio of 690: 1, so the Book RS gives this laptop a superior experience.

The audio, on the other hand, suffers from low volume – turn it all the way up and there is no distortion but not much sound either. The mids and highs are okay and the bass is missing as usual. You should therefore use headphones or an external speaker with the Book RS.

Keyboard and touchpad

Porsche Design Acer Book RS keyboard and touchpad

The Book RS has a typical island keyboard with smaller function keys on top. The keycaps are a little small for my tastes, and the key spacing is such that I occasionally find my fingers looking for keys. The switches are also softer than I like – not muddy, but with no crunchy floor effect. Acer uses the same keyboard on multiple laptops and I would have preferred to see something special on this one. In terms of precision, the keyboard is certainly not in the same class as the Dell XPS 13, HP Specter x360 13, and the latest MacBooks.

The touchpad is fine, responsive to swipes and taps, and supports Microsoft Precision touchpad drivers. The key clicks are a bit loud, which I don't like. Finally, the fingerprint reader for Windows Hello login assistance without a password is embedded in the top left of the touchpad. This is something companies have moved away from, and something I think Acer should have avoided here. It worked well enough that I rarely had to enter my PIN to sign in.

There is a Gorilla Glass touch display which is good to have and which responds as usual. You will benefit from an antimicrobial coating if you use it. This doesn't protect you from the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, but rather reduces the bacteria that build up.

Ultimately, I was a little overwhelmed by the input options given that the laptop is excellent in so many other areas. It just feels like Acer cut a corner here where it could have done something special.

Battery life

Porsche Design Acer Book RS battery lifeMark Coppock / Digital Trends

The Book RS only contains a 56-watt-hour battery, which isn't much for a machine with a 14-inch display. In comparison, the Lenovo Yoga 7i has a battery capacity of 71 watt hours, which would theoretically result in better battery life – and an even better comparison since both laptops use the same Core i5-1135G7.

The thing is, the RS book lasts longer than the Yoga 7i, which is all the more remarkable given that it works so much faster. For example, in our web browsing test, which provides the best estimate of productivity longevity, the Book RS lasted nine hours while the Yoga 7i lasted just under an hour less. The Book RS also beat the Acer Swift 5 (almost eight hours) and the XPS 13 9310 (by 27 minutes). According to Intel's Evo certification, a laptop's battery should last nine hours of normal use, and the Book RS is the first that I'm sure will meet that requirement.

When switching over to our video test, in which a local Full HD Avengers trailer is repeated until the laptop is shut down, the Book RS took a little over 13.5 hours. This is a decent score that once again surpasses the Yoga 7i, Acer Swift 5, and XPS 13.

While I usually use the Basemark web benchmark test to see how long a laptop will last when the CPU and GPU are under heavy strain, every Tiger Lake laptop I have tried failed this test. So I used the PCMark 10 gaming benchmark for this purpose, and the Book RS took just under two hours. Here the Yoga 7i lasted 50 minutes longer, while the XPS 13 9310 lasted more than twice as long. The Acer Swift 5 was away from the Book RS within four seconds. It is likely that the same tuning that led to the Book RS's exceptional performance resulted in the battery burn out faster in this test.

Overall, the Book RS impressed me with its battery life, especially considering the relatively small battery and excellent performance. Would I rather have seen a bigger battery? Sure, but I wouldn't be disappointed with the longevity of the laptop at all.

Our opinion

The Porsche Design Acer Book RS is an impressive laptop in both looks and performance – as befits the Porsche nickname, I suppose. Thanks to its solid construction, it feels good in the hand and lasts long enough on one charge that you can probably last a whole working day – a real achievement for such a runabout.

The keyboard and touchpad were a bit underutilized, and let's face it – the Core i5 is fast in this computer, but it's still a Core i5. So $ 1,399 for this configuration is steep and you are definitely paying for Porsche Design's dedication. But if you're looking for a beautiful, uniquely designed laptop that performs well, then you might not mind the price, just like Porsche sports cars.

Are there alternatives?

The Acer Swift 5 is an obvious competitor to the Book RS. It offers the best performance you can find in any of the Tiger Lake laptops tested so far by Digital Trends, and it's a well-built laptop in itself. You also pay less for a Core i7 (that's no faster than the Book RS's Core i5, remember), more RAM, and more storage.

If you are craving a 2-in-1 device, the HP Specter x360 13 is an excellent choice. We haven't tested it yet, but it is also available with Tiger Lake and has its own attractive gem-cut look. You can also get it with a stunning OLED display that puts the Book RS display to shame.

Finally, the Dell XPS 13 always remains a solid alternative as it is one of the best laptops out there. It also runs on Tiger Lake, and while it can also be expensive and have a slightly smaller screen, these may be trade-offs that are worthwhile if you're not impressed by the Porsche Design look.

How long it will take?

The Porsche Design Acer Book RS is a well-made laptop that will work reliably for years and perform well in this way. We don't like the one-year guarantee. What can you do? It's the industry standard.

Should you buy it?

Yes. The Porsche Design Acer Book RS is beautiful, thin and light, well built and fast. Just be ready to pay a little extra for this logo.

Editor's recommendations




09 Nov
Blog

Acer Swift 5 2020 Review: Tiger Lake Comes Into Its Own

Acer Swift 5 in late 2020

Acer Swift 5 Intel EVO Thin & Light Laptop

"The Swift 5 is light and fast, making it a comfortable 14-inch workhorse to take with you."

  • A performance that fulfills Tiger Lake's promise

  • Very thin and light

  • Solid build quality

  • Good keyboard and touchpad

  • Below average battery life

  • A bit expensive

I haven't evaluated many Intel Tiger Lake systems, but I've seen enough to know that there are kinks that need fixing. So far, there hasn't been a Tiger Lake laptop (officially reviewed or just benchmarked) that performed as I expected. Now Acer has released its latest Swift 5 based on the Tiger Lake platform – this isn't the only update to this premium microlight – and there is one more example that needs to be evaluated.

Acer sent me a well-configured machine with an 11th generation quad-core Intel Core i7-1165G7, 16 GB of RAM, a 1 TB PCIe solid-state drive (SSD) and a Full HD 14 Inch IPS display. This Swift 5 configuration costs $ 1,300 on Amazon and includes some features that stand out from the crowd of premium laptops. My biggest question, however, is: has a Tiger Lake laptop finally got the performance of the chipset?

performance

Acer Swift 5 late 2020 ventMark Coppock / Digital Trends

Don't waste time answering this question: so far, the Acer Swift 5 is the fastest Tiger Lake system I have personally reviewed or rated, and in Digital Trends' experience, it only gets (hardly) from the Tiger Lake reference machine surpassed that Intel sent us to see (which uses the faster Core i7-1185G7).

Geekbench 5 tells part of the story. The Swift 5 achieved 1,580 points in the single-core test and 5,836 points in the multi-core test. The higher-clocked reference laptop scored 1,563 and 5,995 points, which means the Swift 5 could more than keep up. Compared to the Asus ZenBook Flip S, which managed 1535 and 4913, the Swift 5 was significantly faster in the multi-core test. In some contexts, consider that the Microsoft Surface Book 3 13 with a 10th generation Core i7-1065G7 only scored 1,316 and 4,825 points.

However, in our more realistic tests, the Swift 5 performed well. First off, in our handbrake test, which encodes a 420MB video as H.265, the Swift 5 took a little over three minutes to complete. The Intel reference machine was only 17 seconds faster. The Asus ZenBook 14 UX425EA with the Core i7-1165G7 lasted four minutes in normal mode and 27 seconds longer than the Swift 5 in performance mode. The ZenBook Flip S also lasted almost exactly four minutes. The Microsoft Surface Book 3 13 also took four minutes, which shows that Tiger Lake is not yet consistently impressive in the performance department.

Next, I tested the Swift 5 in Cinebench 20. He scored 2,091 in multi-core and 542 in single-core mode. The ZenBook 14 was slower in both normal (1,746 and 497) and performance modes (1,766 and 498), and the ZenBook Flip S fell behind at 1,264 and 482, respectively. The Surface Book 3 13 managed 1433 and 429, which means that only one of these other Tiger Lake laptops was slightly faster than the Ivy Lake Surface Book 3, the Swift 5 was a lot faster. Then consider that the Intel reference laptop scored 2092 and 570 in Cinebench 20, which means the Swift 5 managed to stay close to the higher-clocked Tiger Lake machine again.

It's also educational to compare the Swift 5 to AMD Ryzen 4000 laptops. In Handbrake, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 with the Ryzen 7 4800U finished the test in about two minutes, a full minute faster than the Swift 5. The Cinebench scores were 3,255 and 482, much faster in multi-core mode than in the Swift 5 managed to improve it in single core mode. While Tiger Lake has the potential to beat its 10th generation predecessors, it can't compete with AMD's latest Ryzen chips on many tasks.

However, there is one area where Tiger Lake competes well with AMD's chips – Adobe applications. I ran our Premiere Pro test encoding a two minute 4K video on the Swift 5 and it took 11 minutes and 52 seconds. That's not fast compared to Intel's 45-watt parts, which can get the job done in under three minutes in some cases, but it's a lot faster than the Ryzen 7 CPU in the IdeaPad Slim 7, which is more than one Hour needed. The Intel Tiger Lake reference system lasted 11 minutes and 13 seconds, so the Swift 5 was competitive again. If you're an Adobe user, don't assume that an AMD system will better meet your performance needs.

If you're expecting enhanced gaming from the Swift 5 thanks to Tiger Lake and Intel's Iris Xe graphics, you're in luck. You get better performance than Intel's previous Iris Plus graphics and almost as fast performance as a discrete GPU like the Nvidia GeForce MX350. I saw 53 frames per second in Civilization VI at 1080p and medium graphics and 27 fps on ultra graphics. This exceeds the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 (Intel version) with the MX350 with medium graphics by 2 fps. In Fortnite, the only other game I tested, the Swift 5 managed 31 fps at 1080p and high graphics that dropped to 22 fps for epic graphics. The IdeaPad Slim 7 achieved 37 fps with high graphics and 24 fps with epic graphics. The bottom line is that you can play some modern titles at 1080p if you keep the graphical details in check – a serious improvement over the previous generation from Intel.

In short, the Swift 5 shows what Tiger Lake can do, at least when compared to the previous version of Intel CPUs. It's very quick in practice and I certainly didn't notice any slowdowns no matter what I threw at it during my review. As more Tiger Lake systems continue to be released and the inevitable initial issues with the chipset are fixed, this will be a significant upgrade for Intel users. And the Swift 5 will be hunting right there.

design

Acer Swift 5 in late 2020Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The Swift 5 was updated with 10th generation CPUs in early 2020, but was otherwise identical to the 2019 version. The latest model of the Swift 5 brings more changes than just an update for Tiger Lake.

First, it's a little heavier at 2.31 pounds compared to last time versus 2.18 pounds. That said, it's still a remarkably light 14-inch laptop, just not quite as much as the last version. However, it's still 0.59 inches thick, which makes it a very thin laptop too. That's comparable to the ZenBook 14 at 2.58 pounds and 0.54 inches. In the thin-and-light category, 14-inch laptops have clearly proven their worth. The latest Swift 5 also benefits from smaller bezels all around (the chin is only slightly larger than some laptops with tiny bezels, but not by much), resulting in a 90% screen-to-body ratio. This is competitive with the latest Dell XPS 13, which weighs 2.65 pounds and is 0.58 inches thick, and is better than the 84.5% of the previous Swift 5.

The low weight of the Swift 5 is due to its construction from magnesium-lithium and magnesium-aluminum alloys. According to Acer, these materials are two to four times stronger than aluminum, but weigh 20-35% less. Certainly the Swift 5 feels sturdy, with a lid that won't bend if you don't apply too much pressure, a keyboard deck that is as stiff as any other, and a lower case that is just as stiff as any Has compliance. So the Swift 5 feels light, but it doesn't feel cheap. This is what you get when you use plastic to cut the pounds. I would love to see the hinge redesigned so that it can be opened with one hand, but it stays nicely in place.

The laptop's durability extends to the case surface, where Acer used a micro-arc oxidation process to create a finish that is hard as ceramic and resists scratching and corrosion. That's a good thing, because my test device has the optional mist green color (gold is the other option), which is quite subtle and elegant and deserves protection. The case itself is relatively simple in the gem-cut design compared to extremes like HP's Specter x360 line, but the color – including the yellow accents and keyboard lettering – and angles make the laptop look good overall.

The surface of the housing is not only more durable, but also more resistant to microbes. Acer created the first complete antimicrobial laptop solution that includes two main features that I have never seen on any other computer. First, there is a silver ion antimicrobial agent in a coating on the surface of the case, keyboard, hinge, fingerprint reader, and even the labels attached to the laptop. Even the rubber feet are made from an antimicrobial silver ion material. Second, the screen uses Corning's Gorilla Antimicrobial Glass, the world's first to bake silver ions for antimicrobial properties.

I won't go into all the details here – you can visit this page to learn more – but the overall solution promises a reduction rate of greater than 99.9% that involves a "broad spectrum of bacteria". Note that this does not say anything about viruses, so to my knowledge the solution does not protect against the coronavirus that is causing COVID-19. Even so, Acer is the first to take you seriously if you want your laptop to be bacteria-free.

Note that the Swift 5 is Intel Evo certified. That promises a few things, including an 11th generation CPU (Natch), Thunderbolt 4 support, constant battery responsiveness, waking up from hibernation in less than a second, nine or more hours of battery life, and four hours with just 30 Minutes charging time. As we'll see later, I'm not sure if the laptop lives up to the promise of actual battery life, but it does seem to meet the rest of the Evo certification requirements.

Finally, connectivity with the thin and light Swift 5 is a strong point. On the left is a proprietary power port (but the laptop charges via USB-C), a full-size HDMI 2.0 port with HDCP support, a USB-A 3.2 port, and a USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 -Support. On the right side there is a Kensington lock port, a USB-A 3.2 port and a 3.5 mm audio jack. Unfortunately, there is no SD card reader, which is disappointing.

display

Acer Swift 5 late 2020 adMark Coppock / Digital Trends

We have reached a point where most premium laptops (and many budget computers) have very good displays that fall within a relatively narrow range on most objective criteria. According to my colorimeter, this is almost exactly where the Swift 5 is rated – it's "average," but today's average makes a nice display for everyone but creatives who need the widest, most accurate colors.

First, the Swift 5's 14-inch touch-enabled display exceeded our preferred brightness threshold of 300 nits at 327 nits, and its contrast ratio barely missed our preferred 1000: 1 brightness at 950: 1. This is a great indicator for productivity work unless you are working outdoors in direct sunlight. An example of a similar laptop with a slightly better display in these metrics is the Asus ZenBook 14 UX425 with its 352 nits and a contrast ratio of 1060: 1. The Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Yoga is an example of that with just 274 nits and 720: 1 Opposite.

Next, the Swift 5's colors are good, but not great, just like most premium laptops. The coverage of the sRGB color gamut is 96% and 73% of the AdobeRGB color gamut. Most premium laptops are similar to the ZenBook 14 with 94% sRGB and 72% AdobeRGB. You have to jump to something like the Dell XPS 15's 4K display, with 100% coverage of both color gamuts, to get a display that creatives crave. The Swift 5 achieved a spot color accuracy of DeltaE of 1.27, with anything below 1.0 indistinguishable to the human eye and considered excellent. Note that the Dell XPS display had a DeltaE of just 0.73%, while the ZenBook 14 was slightly higher than the Swift 5 at 1.42%.

In real use, the Swift 5's display was a pleasure, with lots of brightness for my needs and black text that jumped off the side thanks to the (almost) excellent contrast ratio. Binging Netflix was pleasant enough thanks to a perfect gamma of 2.2 that nothing was too light or too dark. I have no complaints about the display.

The audio quality wasn't quite up to standard. First, the two speakers couldn't produce much volume even though they were 100% undistorted. The mids and highs were fine, but (as usual) the bass was missing. The audio system works well for occasional viewing of YouTube videos. However, if you want to watch TV shows, movies, or listen to music, consider using headphones or external speakers.

Keyboard and touchpad

Acer Swift 5 late 2020 keyboard and touchpadMark Coppock / Digital Trends

The standard island keyboard is well spaced and has keycaps that were a little too small for my taste. The mechanism had a nice click but was a little loose, so I didn't find it quite as precise as my favorite keyboards, HP's Specter keyboard and the Magic keyboard on Apple's latest MacBooks. As a writer, I'm particularly sensitive to this aspect of laptop design, and while I wasn't thrilled with the Swift 5, it will likely make most users happy.

I like the color scheme with pale yellow letters and backlighting (only on and off unfortunately) that works in both light and dark environments. This is an improvement over some keyboards, like that of the latest Dell XPS 13, which has a backlight that makes it almost impossible to read the letters when they are on and with ambient lighting.

The touchpad is medium in size and uses Microsoft's Precision touchpad drivers. As such, it was able to swipe and use Windows 10's multi-touch gestures – something that can be said about most touchpads lately. The touch display was accurate, responsive, and very welcome.

Windows 10 Hello support was provided by a fingerprint reader on the top right of the touchpad. It was quick and accurate during my tests.

Battery life

Acer Swift 5 late 2020 side viewMark Coppock / Digital Trends

The Swift 5 packs 56 watt hours of battery capacity into its thin frame, an average amount for a laptop with a 14-inch full HD display. We don't have that much experience with Tiger Lake efficiency so I wasn't sure what to expect.

We usually use the Basemark web benchmark to test a laptop's battery life when the CPU and GPU are under stress. So far, however, every Tiger Lake laptop I've tested, including the Swift 5, won't complete this review. So I can't tell how long the laptop will last if you work hard.

In our web benchmark, which runs through a number of complex websites and is the best indicator of battery life in our tests, the Swift 5 lasted just under eight hours. This is an average score topped by the Dell XPS 13 with its 10th Gen Core i7 that lasted over 11 hours and the Tiger Lake Asus ZenBook 14 UX425EA that lasted almost 10 hours. It is debatable whether the Swift 5 meets the Evo requirement of nine hours of productivity life – that depends entirely on your workflow.

Finally, the Swift 5 lasted 11.5 hours in our video test grinding a Full HD Avengers trailer. The XPS 13 lasted 14.5 hours and the ZenBook 14 12.25 hours, which means the Swift 5 also fell behind in this test.

Ultimately, the battery life was a little disappointing, but not terrible. If you don't put that heavy load on the CPU and GPU, you might be able to do it for a full day. However, if your tasks are demanding, you need to keep your power adapter with you.

Our opinion

The Swift 5 is better than the previous generation in everything but weight and isn't exactly heavy. It makes extensive use of Intel's Tiger Lake platform and uses some innovative techniques to make the case surface more robust and resistant to microbes.

It's also a nice looking laptop and has some weaknesses. When it comes to 14-inch laptops, the Swift 5 is one of the best on the market today.

Are there alternatives?

The Asus ZenBook 14 UX425EA is an obvious competitor to the Swift 5. It's almost as fast if you hold it in Performance mode, but then the fans spin louder and more frequently than the Swift 5. It's just as well built and looks just as good and also offers excellent input options.

If you want the flexibility of a 2-in-1 device, the HP Specter x360 13 is a great alternative. It uses Intel's latest generation of chips, so it's not as fast, but it has a more eye-catching appearance, stunning OLED display, and the morphing nature of a 2-in-1 device.

Finally, you can consider the Dell XPS 13, one of the best laptops out there. It was recently updated to Tiger Lake and features one of the best laptop designs out there. It's a bit more expensive and has a slightly smaller screen, but those may be tradeoffs worth making.

How long it will take?

The Swift 5 is well built and robust, with modern components that will meet your productivity needs for years to come. The one-year warranty is disappointing on a premium laptop, but it is industry standard.

Should you buy it?

Yes. The Swift 5 is thin, light and powerful. It is the first Tiger Lake notebook we tested that lives up to the chip's performance promise.

Editor's recommendations




21 Oct
Blog

Acer Spin 3 2020 Hands-On Review

acer spin 3 2020 hands on review p1012411

Acer Spin 3 2020 Practical Review: More for the Money

  • Solid build quality

  • Nice 16:10 QHD + display

  • Thin and relatively light

  • Docked rechargeable pen included

  • Tiger Lake promises good performance

  • Keyboard keycaps were a little slick

  • Large top and bottom bezels look old-fashioned

Acer & # 39; s Spin 3 marks the company's entry into the 360-degree convertible 2-in-1 market. The previous iteration was well received as a 2-in-1 version with some interesting features, such as: B. a pen that charged while docked in a convenient slot on the side, plus solid performance and build quality.

However, this wasn't good enough for Acer as it announced an updated version that changes the design of the laptop while promising to keep the best of the previous version. I used a hands-on pre-release device of the Acer Spin 3. Here are my first impressions.

design

The most important update for the Spin 3 is the switch to a display with an aspect ratio of 16:10 instead of the usual 16: 9. This makes the display larger, offers more information and has to scroll less. A 16: 9 aspect ratio is becoming more common as laptops like the Dell XPS 13 have led the charge, but Acer's approach is different.

While Dell used nearly the same size display case and just filled everything with a 16:10 panel, leaving behind some tiny bezels and a screen-to-body ratio of 90%, the Spin 3 has a big bezel and a surprising one big chin on the floor. The screen-to-body ratio is only 79%, which means the Spin not only looks less modern than the XPS 13, but it also looks bigger than it could be. One benefit of Acer's approach is that the palm rest remains large and comfortable, unlike some laptops with tiny bezels that run out of space.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The Spin 3 feels far more solid than its price suggests. The lid is twist-proof, the keyboard deck has no bend and the underside of the case does not move when handled roughly. This time it's an all aluminum design where the previous version had some plastic parts in it and I can tell. I like the way the Spin 3 feels.

Speaking of how it feels, the Spin 3 weighs about 3.08 pounds and is 0.62 inches thin. That makes it heavy, but also thin compared to the HP Specter x360 13 at 0.67 inches and 2.88 pounds. Even so, I found the Spin 3 comfortable to wear and use in all of its different modes. Tablet mode was a bit clunky, but that goes for all non-tablet 2-in-1 devices (including the Specter x360 13).

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The Spin 3 is an attractive, if not surprising, 2-in-1. My device was available in the usual semi-gloss silver found on so many laptops and had few chrome parts, including the Acer logo on the lid and hinge.

The hinge is well tuned so that the lid can be opened with one hand while holding the display in place in all four modes – clamshell, tent, media, and laptop. This is an attribute usually found on more expensive machines.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Connectivity is another strength. On the left are two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 ports, a full-size HDMI port, a USB-A 3.2 port, and a miniSD card reader. On the right side you will find another USB-A 3.2 port, a 3.5 mm audio jack and a Kensington lock port. The wireless connection is provided via Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1.

performance

The Spin 3 looks great on paper. It offers up to a quad-core Intel Core i7-1165G7 of the 11th generation with Intel Iris Xe graphics, up to 16 GB LPDDR4X RAM and two PCIe SSDs with 512 GB or 1 TB. For example, the computer I'm looking at has a Core i5-1135G7, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

We haven't tested enough Tiger Lake machines to draw definitive conclusions, but what we've seen from the Intel reference machine gives us hope of solid performance. At the very least, Tiger Lake should help reduce the distance with AMD's Ryzen 4000 series, which so far has proven to be considerably faster than Intel's 15-watt CPUs.

display

The Spin 3's display is a beauty. The 16:10 display is available in either FHD + (1920 x 1200) or QHD + (2560 x 1600), and my device included the latter.

I found it to be very sharp (although I prefer 4K displays) with a lot of contrast. The colors were natural and bright, and I found the display to do a wonderful job of whatever the job I did.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The 16:10 aspect ratio is great too. It offers more vertical space, which is useful as documents and web pages are designed to scroll vertically. You can easily see more on a 16:10 display than you can on a 16: 9 display.

The sound was competent and, thanks to the upward facing speakers, offered a lot of volume without distortion. Highs and mids were prominent and as usual the bass was minimal. I can use the speakers for the occasional YouTube video and solo Netflix shows, but for music and action movies I would recommend headphones.

Keyboard and touchpad

The Spin 3 uses the usual island keyboard with black keycaps and white letters. I don't know if the keyboard is backlit. I couldn't find a button to turn it on. I found the keycaps themselves a bit small and that affected the spacing, and they were a bit slippery too. The mechanism was comfortable, however, with a light touch and a soft ground movement that isn't as sharp as I like, but still allowed me to type at almost full speed.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The touchpad was moderately large and coated with plastic. It's a Microsoft Precision touchpad that is quick to respond when swiping and using multi-touch gestures. The display is of course touch-sensitive and the included Wacom AES 1.0 pen works well with Windows inks.

Interestingly, my device didn't have Windows 10 Hello support, neither a fingerprint reader nor an infrared camera for facial recognition. I understand that while this will be the case with the base model, updated machines will come with a fingerprint reader.

Battery life

I was unable to do our usual battery tests and so cannot report on the longevity. The Spin 3 has a 56 watt hour battery, which is average for a machine with this screen size. I envision that the Core i5 and FHD + versions will have very good battery life, while the Core i7 and QHD + will suffer thanks to the extra performance and higher resolution.

Prices and availability

The Acer Spin 3 starts at $ 850 for an 11th generation Intel Core i5, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB solid-state drive (SSD). Further prices and availabilities will be announced shortly.

Editor's recommendations




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