Not a new name but certainly the contents are a lot more powerful than the unit I reviewed three years ago. This is a light Notebook that is powerful at the same time; it can happily show a presentation onto an external HDMI panel so ideal for those that travel around.
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The Acer Swift 3 measures 31.5x21.5x1.5cm where the last measurement at the back with the front being as thin as 1cm. The viewable screen is 30.5x17.5cm which gives the notional diagonal imperial screen measurement of 14 inches; the screen resolution is 1920x1080 which by default is shown at 150%.
It arrived with me with Windows build 1903 and after some updates I was able to upgrade it to Windows 1909 and although I have seen build 2004 on a device it was not available here until the very end of my review time.
After all the updates I used it until it screams for power were answered and I was surprised that a full charge took only 90 minutes. Due to unusual circumstances I was unable to do any more work with it for a week and when I started using it pleasantly surprised to see 99% battery left most units lose several percent over that period of inactivity.
Going around the outside has on the left side Power Input, HDMI, USB3 and USB ‘C’. Both the front and back have no connections. The right side has 3.5mm socket for headphones or earbuds, USB and Kensington Lock socket before the last named socket are two LED’s. The base has a long 27.5cm rubber strip towards the back and two 2.5cm strips towards the front, speakers are on the outside of the two front strips.
It comes with an Intel Core i7, it has 8GB RAM and a 475GB SSD with around 40GB of that used.
Bootup is a very rapid 8 seconds and shutdown only 4 seconds. A full recharge is only 90 minutes which is very rapid, in continuous use I got 8 hours and 22 minutes with continuous Internet and music streaming as well as the screen being always on at a good level of brightness.
As an indication of the speed of the unit the reset and reinstallation of Windows that I do at the end of every review took less than 30 minutes, on many occasions this task has been well over an hour and on occasions over two hours, of course this is partly down to the SSD.
This excellent unit has a decent sized SSD, good brightness and colour, and is light enough to take with you even when you travel by public transport. The amount you see on the screen – at 150% - is somewhat less than you might like and when in the office or back home you can plug into an HDMI panel to see much more.
At the time of publication The Acer Swift 4 SF314-57 is available from Amazon for the slightly lower price of £799.99 including free delivery.
The full range of Swift 3 models can be seen on the Acer web site.
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