A few years ago, I recommended a simple, affordable thin and light laptop as the Acer Swift 3, especially those equipped with AMD Ryzen processors. I’m not the only one who thinks they’re great laptops; I remember it was hard to find one in stock at the height of the pandemic.
Alas, those days are long gone and the old Swift 3 is discontinued. Acer has revamped the naming of their main line of Swift laptops, with the flagship Swift 5 now being Swift 14. Swift 3, on the other hand, becomes Swift Go, with the Swift Go 14 and Swift Go 16 announced. back in 2016. CES 2023 at the beginning of the year.
Despite the rebranding, its core remains the same: a no-nonsense, value-focused laptop that sits just below the current Swift 14 in the product stack. Acer Malaysia has finally brought the Swift Go 14 to our shores and when they asked us to review one, we thought it was a good opportunity to see what has changed and what has remained the same since. from Swift 3 days ago.
Steady performance—if modest—
Now, although the original Swift Go 14 debuted at CES 2023 with an Intel processor inside, our shores of processors are instead powered by Team Red. As a result, our review unit comes with an AMD Ryzen 7 7730U paired with 16GB of LPDDR4X RAM and a 512GB PCIe Gen4 SSD.
When put to the test, the 15W Ryzen 7 7730U performed well enough, with the eight-core CPU scoring a single-core 1,475 and a multi-core score of 10,692 on Cinebench R23. This puts it slightly behind Intel’s 15W laptop chip in single-core but marginally better in multi-core workloads. This shouldn’t be too surprising, since the Ryzen 7 7730U — though it means Ryzen 7000 — is actually just a refresh of the previous Ryzen 7 5825U.
As for graphics, since it’s a refresh of the older processor, the Ryzen 7 7730U, it comes with the Radeon RX Vega 8. Although it’s not as powerful as the Radeon 780M on AMD’s latest mobile chips built builds on the RDNA 3 architecture, but the older Vega integrated graphics solution should be fine for casual gaming as long as you’re willing to drop the resolutions and settings down a bit. Heck, I even could type makes Cyberpunk 2077 somewhat playable, as long as I limit the framerate to 30, reduce the resolution to 720p, and enable AMD FSR 2. That being said, the experience is much better across titles eSports games like CS:GO or older games like Sleeping Dogs.
Obviously, though, performance isn’t usually bad in any way – the reality is far from it. For day-to-day workloads, Swift Go 14 performs perfectly well. It can handle my usual set of multiple Chrome windows open at the same time with apps like Photoshop, Spotify, Discord, and things that aren’t running in the background. It does get a bit warm though, especially when I try to squeeze out the life of that tiny Ryzen, which is between 80 and 90 degrees below maximum load, though it won’t really go beyond that. exceed 80°C under normal use. However, note that when trying to play games, you will feel the warmth of the keyboard, leading to sweating in the palms.
As for battery life, it’s Strong. When my screen brightness dropped to about 50-60%, the 50Wh battery inside kept the Swift Go 14 good for about five hours before it got serious even though this wasn’t due to me being positive. try to save battery. may change. Oh, and speaking of screen brightness…
An explosion from the past screen
Unlike its higher-end siblings like the Swift 14 and Swift Edge 16, the Swift Go 14 has to use a standard 14-inch, FHD IPS display in a 16:9 aspect ratio. When placed alongside those Its Swift stablemate, the Swift Go 14 looks a bit out of place as the others come with a higher 16:10 aspect ratio.
For me at least, the extra screen real estate really makes a difference in productivity workloads, and switching back to a 16:9 display requires some getting used to. But again, for most people—especially if you’ve never used a taller monitor before—the regular 16:9 aspect ratio will probably work for you. And in any case, the display will be bright enough although it won’t challenge more expensive laptops with OLED screens like the Acer Swift Edge.
While the display is certainly in the ‘good enough’ category, one thing that’s pretty lackluster is its speakers. They are quite tame, for lack of a better word. It’s not really loud, and at maximum, it will sound rather hollow and lackluster. In this case, you should probably use a decent pair of headphones connected to its 3.5mm audio jack.
And speaking of ports, again, the Acer Swift Go 14 has a decent selection of ports. It comes with two USB-C ports (one of which is for charging), two USB-A ports, and an HDMI 2.1 port. There’s also WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 support, meaning it’s relatively future-proof in this regard, with WiFi 6E connectivity, which I wouldn’t expect in a laptop at this price point. This. Another interesting thing is the fingerprint sensor for Windows Hello and I am also pleased with its build quality. The aluminum chassis is strong with little table top curvature while the typing experience is actually quite good and weighing in at just 1.25kg, it’s not too heavy either.
One last thing about Swift Go 14 that I find a bit annoying: bloatware. It’s becoming a bit of a stretch now with our reviews of Acer laptops while they tend to be pretty great value from a cost-performance perspective, but if you’re not a fan of super tech-savvy, you might not realize how much bloatware they come with. In particular, on Swift Go 14, I was greeted with pre-installed things like Agoda, McAfee, Forge of Empires, Evernote, Amazon, ExpressVPN and Dropbox. It’s easy enough to get rid of it, and I understand why it’s done, but it’s just a little annoying.
Good for students, good for everyone else
Overall, despite my points about the Swift Go 14 above, I’m actually quite pleased with this humble laptop. There were a few issues I had, but overall none of them were a deal breaker. I consider it to be some compromise that has to be made to ensure the Swift Go 14 stays within a certain price range.
That being said, I wouldn’t recommend exactly the same model we reviewed since it’s priced 3,999, but the Swift Go 14 is also available with the Ryzen 5 7530U at a much lower price. You might lose a bit of performance compared to a Ryzen 7 machine, but at as much as RM800 cheaper, it’s hard to recommend a top-spec model.
- Acer Swift Go 14, AMD Ryzen 5 7530U, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD – RM3,199
- Acer Swift Go 14, AMD Ryzen 5 7530U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD – RM3,399
- Acer Swift Go 14, AMD Ryzen 7 7730U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD – 3,999
In fact, for a simple laptop built with an aluminum frame, the mid-range spec option with the Ryzen 5 7530U, 16GB RAM, and 512GB SSD is her best bet. . You’ll certainly be able to find cheaper options like the Acer Aspire Vero 14 or the Asus Vivobook 15X, but then you’ll be giving up the metal construction that the Swift Go 14 boasts. These devices also tend to offer only 8GB RAM with 16GB options pushing them back to the same price point as the Swift Go 14.
The Swift Go 14 may not win any awards for design or innovation, but what it does deliver is a decent, no-nonsense thin-and-light laptop at a very good (customer) price point. choose Ryzen 5 with 16GB RAM). I find it a great choice for college and university students in particular who are looking for a laptop for school, but honestly, almost anyone will find it. is a good enough machine for everyday use.
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