Acer Swift 3X Assessment: Energy-packed Ultraportable

New thin-and-light laptops in accordance with Intel’s newest 11th Gen Core CPUs were hitting the marketplace for a couple of months now, and as of late we have now some of the first ones to have introduced in India – the Acer Swift 3X. It is a compact 14-inch Home windows pc with an emphasis on slimness and lightness, nevertheless it additionally showcases Intel’s new 11th Gen CPUs and it is first discrete GPU in a long time, known as the Iris Xe Max.

The Acer Swift 3X guarantees all-day battery existence, nice stressed out and wi-fi connectivity, and powerful productiveness efficiency. It is time to see if it manages to reside as much as those claims.

Acer Swift 3X design

The Acer Swift 3X may be very mild, which is the very first thing you’ll be able to realize while you select it up. The 1.37Kg weight is sent effectively so this pc does not really feel too top-heavy in case you apply it to your lap. Additionally it is narrow sufficient (17.9mm) to suit into maximum backpacks. The full dimensions are compact because of the narrow bezels on 3 aspects of the show.

Acer has used steel for the many of the frame paintings which makes the Swift 3X glance a little bit top class from the out of doors, however the black plastic insert across the show dilutes this a little bit. Nonetheless, the frame is well-built with none type of flex across the keyboard space, and the steel lid gives nice coverage for the show.

The Acer Swift 3X is narrow and feels strong because of the steel chassis

 

The Steam Blue color that Acer despatched me appears to be like distinctive, particularly with the teal accessory alongside the duration of the hinge. You’ll additionally get the Swift 3X in a Safari Gold color trim. The bottom of the pc is solely thick sufficient to deal with full-sized ports on both sides. Those come with one HDMI, two USB 3.zero ports, a headphone jack, and a USB Sort-C port with Thunderbolt 4.

The latter has the similar theoretical bandwidth as Thunderbolt Three however now helps connections for as much as two 4K presentations or a unmarried 8K show. There is a thin-pin charging port, even if you’ll rate by way of USB Sort-C too. The wall adapter pin feels flimsy, as there is an excessive amount of play when it is hooked up to the pc. There is not any SD card slot, which I discovered a little bit disappointing.

The Acer Swift 3X’s hinge is designed in the sort of means that it raises the bottom at a slight incline when opened, which makes typing a little bit extra ergonomic. There are massive vents at the backside of the pc for air flow and an exhaust vent that is visual simply above the keyboard.

The chiclet-style keys are a little bit small, which takes a little bit of having used to. The buttons also are flat and now not contoured so it takes some time prior to you’ll hopefully kind rapid sufficient. I feel the keys can have been a little bit higher. The path keys additionally really feel squashed, and the Pg Up and Pg Dn keys are positioned very with regards to them.

The keys are comfy however the measurement will take some being used to

 

The trackpad is relatively large nevertheless it does not have the similar responsiveness or accuracy as a pitcher trackpad. There is a fingerprint sensor at the proper facet of the palm leisure space for Home windows Hi authentication.

The Acer Swift 3X has a 14-inch IPS show with a full-HD (1920x1080p) answer, and a nice most brightness of 300nits. This may now not sound like a lot, however in apply, the panel will get very brilliant, or even all through the day, I did not really feel the wish to crank the brightness point past 30 %.

Acer Swift 3X specs

The massive spotlight of the ‘X’ variant of Acer’s new Swift Three collection is Intel’s Iris Xe Max discrete GPU. Intel introduced this a month after it unveiled its ‘Tiger Lake’ 11th Gen CPUs closing 12 months. Iris Xe Max is a devoted entry-level GPU that is situated towards Nvidia’s GeForce MX350, and guarantees 1080p answer gaming which would not be imaginable with Intel’s built-in answers in thin-and-light laptops.

Aside from higher framerates, the brand new GPU is able to sharing thermal headroom with the CPU and its built-in GPU by way of a not unusual tool layer known as Deep Hyperlink. In idea, this must serve as very similar to AMD’s SmartShift generation which we noticed in motion within the Dell G5 15 (SE) (Assessment) gaming pc.

The Intel Iris Xe Max GPU has a base clock velocity of one,650MHz and has 4GB of devoted LPDDR4 reminiscence. Along with the discrete GPU, you additionally get an built-in Intel Iris Xe GPU with the CPU, which is in accordance with the similar structure because the discrete one. Intel claims you are able to leverage the AI processing and video encoding engines from each GPUs concurrently for sure workloads, with appropriate apps someday.

The Acer Swift 3X is without doubt one of the first laptops to have Intel’s discreet Iris Xe Max GPU

 

Coming to the CPU, my Acer Swift 3X overview unit had an Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor which is one point under the top-end type on this technology for thin-and-light laptops. It has 4 cores, 8 threads, a base frequency of two.8GHz and a most turbo frequency of four.7GHz. My unit additionally had 16GB of quad-channel DDR4 RAM, a 512GB NVMe SSD, and 32GB of Intel Optane reminiscence. That is somewhat an excellent spec record for an ultraportable pc.

The Swift 3X options bottom-firing stereo audio system with toughen for the DTS Sound Processing app, an HD webcam, and a 57WHr battery. You additionally get Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1.

Acer ships the Swift 3X with Home windows 10 House, in conjunction with Microsoft Workplace House and Scholar 2019 and an ordeal model of Norton 360 antivirus. There also are the standard Acer apps comparable to Care Centre, which is at hand for keeping an eye on firmware and BIOS updates. One choice I want Acer had incorporated could be a option to lock the default purposes of the Fn keys, since keeping the Fn button after which hitting F3 or F4 to regulate the brightness is usually a chore. I’d have prefered to try this with a unmarried press.

Acer Swift 3X efficiency and battery existence

The Acer Swift 3X does a very good process of dealing with common computing tasks. Home windows 10 runs rather well, apps open and shut temporarily, and multitasking is not slow both. Movies glance nice in this show, and viewing angles are first rate. On the other hand, the audio system don’t seem to be very loud even at complete quantity.

The contact reaction of the trackpad can have been significantly better, and now and then even easy gestures were not registered accurately. The keyboard simplest has a unmarried point of white backlighting, and as i discussed prior to, the keys are smaller than standard which takes some being used to. The fingerprint sensor works effectively and the pc is fast to wake from sleep and permit you to resume your paintings.

The Acer Swift 3X appears to be like fashionable on this color and is comfy to shuttle with

 

On the subject of heating, the Acer Swift 3X does run quite heat when idling on battery persistent, however that is simplest noticeable in case you contact are across the consumption vents beneath the pc or the distance close to the exhaust vent above the keyboard. The warmth is not felt a lot at the keys themselves so it did not trouble me an excessive amount of.

The rapid efficiency will also be observed in robust benchmark ratings too, for a pc of its magnificence. The Acer Swift 3X scored 579 and a couple of,282 issues within the unmarried and multi-core checks of Cinebench R20. In 3DMark’s Night time Raid check, it controlled 16,802 issues, which is an effective rating so far as narrow and lightweight laptops cross.

With regards to record compression and video encoding, Intel’s new CPU and GPU placed on an excellent display. Compressing a three.24GB folder of varied information the use of 7Zip took simply 2 mins and 13 seconds, which is faster than what the Dell G5 15 (SE) controlled with its AMD Ryzen 7 4800H CPU. Encoding a 1080p AVI record to MKV H.265 the use of Handbrake took somewhat greater than a minute, which is beautiful fast.

Intel’s Iris Xe Max GPU and the 11th Gen CPU’s true attainable will also be absolutely realised in case you use productiveness apps designed to profit from Intel’s Deep Hyperlink generation. Intel has partnered with corporations comparable to CyberLink, Topaz Labs, HandBrake, and many others, to lend a hand accelerate duties comparable to video encoding, 4K streaming, and AI-based symbol upscaling, amongst others. However what about gaming? Is Intel’s new Iris Xe Max GPU able to operating trendy video games at playable framerates?

I fired up DOTA 2, which is a very talked-about MMORPG and is somewhat forgiving on non-gaming laptops. At 1080p and with the graphics slider driven all of the option to ‘Very best Taking a look,’ the Acer Swift 3X was once averaging round 50fps. Subsequent up was once Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, which is a handsome RTS sport that occurs to have a at hand in-game benchmark. With the graphics preset at ‘Prime’ and the use of DirectX 12, I averaged 22.9fps, which isn’t nice. In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which continues to be a tough open-world sport, I were given on the subject of playable framerates of round 23fps with the ‘Prime’ preset. Losing the standard settings in fact led to smoother gameplay, however it is nonetheless nice to peer that you’ll play this sport even with most of the bells and whistles enabled. 

The Acer Swift 3X will get scorching when taking part in video games and the exhaust fan above the keyboard is audible

 

Whilst older 3-d video games ran ok, I then shifted my focal point to more moderen, extra tough titles simply to peer how some distance Intel’s new GPU can cross. I selected two relatively graphically tough video games constructed on very scalable sport engines – A ways Cry Five and Doom Everlasting. In A ways Cry 5, I used to be ready to run the in-game benchmark at the built-in in addition to discrete Intel GPUs. With the graphics preset set to ‘Prime’ and at 1080p, I averaged 26fps the use of the built-in Iris Xe GPU, and 29fps with the Iris Xe Max GPU. It is not an enormous jump in efficiency, however a greater outcome however. Doom Everlasting ran simplest at the discrete GPU, and right here, I controlled to get a decently playable moderate of 29fps at 1080p, with ‘Medium’ high quality settings within the ‘Hell on Earth’ point.

When gaming, the Acer Swift 3X were given relatively scorching, and the exhaust fan was once audible. The truth that more moderen 3-d video games ran at 1080p with applicable graphics high quality is somewhat a departure from Intel’s previous GPU answers. The Iris Xe Max is not any alternative for Nvidia’s entry-level GeForce GTX or RTX GPUs nevertheless it seems like a step in the correct path. I’d additionally suggest the use of Intel’s Motive force and Give a boost to Assistant device to stay the drivers of the Iris Xe Max GPU up to the moment, slightly than depending on Home windows Replace.

Acer guarantees as much as 14 hours of battery existence from the Swift 3X however as everyone knows, those claims are frequently achievable simplest in managed lab checking out stipulations. In the true global, you must be expecting someplace round six to seven hours of tangible utilization, which is what I averaged all through my check length. The Swift 3X did carry out effectively in our Battery Eater Professional check, operating for a forged 3 and a part hours. I feel this type of battery existence is first rate for a Home windows pc of its weight and measurement, and also you must be capable to get thru a complete paintings day on one rate.

The Acer Swift 3X is a power-packed ultraportable, with nice I/O and function

 

Verdict

The Acer Swift 3X is to be had with a Core i7-1165G7 CPU, which is the variant that I had for this overview, or an Intel Core i5-1135G7 CPU, with the remainder of the configuration staying the similar. The Core i7 variant is priced at an MRP of Rs. 1,09,999, whilst the Core i5 variant is priced at Rs. 92,999. You must be capable to in finding those fashions promoting for a little bit much less on Acer’s on-line retailer and at different e-tailers comparable to Flipkart and Amazon.

General, the Swift 3X is a relatively robust thin-and-light pc. It gives considerable garage, a in reality brilliant show, first rate battery existence, and powerful CPU efficiency. Intel’s devoted GPU can pull off 1080p gaming in some trendy video games because it promised, and you should see new {hardware} choices that may make ultraportable laptops much more flexible.