Review Summary
Expert Rating
For a while now, Acer’s Swift lineup of laptops has been considered one of the best in the market for ultrabooks. They’re pretty affordable, typically costing under a lakh, and offer a sleek and premium design without compromising upon performance. With their latest iteration, it’s a similar story, with the base variant starting at Rs 90,000, but still offering plenty of features.
The new Acer Swift 14 AI is powered by the Intel Core Ultra 5 226V processor with Intel ARC Graphics and also features a stunning 14-inch OLED panel. However, the laptop faces stiff competition from the likes of ASUS ZenBook 14 and Lenovo Yoga Slim, to name a few. So, should you consider getting this one instead? Let’s find out in our in-depth Acer Swift 14 AI review.
Note: Our review unit is the Acer Swift 14 NX.J2HSI.002 provided to us by Acer India. The exact specifications will vary from region to region.
Table of Contents
Design and Display
Starting with the design, the Swift 14 AI carries an aura of elegance with its “Steam Blue” aluminium chassis. This unique colour sets it apart from the standard silver or black ultrabooks, adding a touch of personality. The laptop is incredibly thin at 1.6cm and lightweight at 1.26kg, making it effortlessly portable for daily work or travel.
Acer has retained the 2-axis hinge design, contributing to a robust and premium feel. You can also lay it to a 180-degree flat if you want to. Unfortunately, the weight distribution isn’t top-notch, since the laptop fails the one-handed opening test. Nonetheless, the hinge is quite stable once it props up and helps minimize screen wobble.
Moving on to the display, the Swift 14 comes with a 14-inch OLED panel, which impresses with its vibrant colours, deep blacks, and exceptional clarity. While the 1920 x 1200 resolution and 60Hz refresh rate are fairly standard, the OLED technology compensates by delivering a visually immersive experience for content consumption, creative work, and even light gaming.
Acer states that the display achieves 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage, making it suitable for colour-critical tasks in photography, video editing, and graphic design. Additionally, for professionals, the Eyesafe 2.0 certification ensures reduced blue light emissions, promoting comfortable viewing during extended use.
What’s more, is that the panel works exceptionally well for content consumption too, which is always nice to have. On that note, there’s support for HDR as well, and the panel is VESA Display HDR True Black 500 Certified. The overall brightness is also pretty good, so you won’t have much issues carrying this laptop outdoors.
Ports, Audio and I/O
In terms of connectivity, the laptop comes with a good number of ports despite its slim form factor. On the left, there’s a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port, a USB-A 3.2 port, and dual Thunderbolt 4 ports. Both the Thunderbolt 4 ports support USB4, DisplayPort output, and power delivery.
Over to the right side, there’s another USB-A 3.2 port coupled with a 3.5mm headphone jack. While we are on the topic of audio, the laptop also comes with Bluetooth 5.4 with support for Bluetooth LE audio.
Thankfully, you won’t have to rely on it all the time, as the built-in speakers are pretty capable on their own. They’re not going to win any awards from audiophiles, but honestly, the speakers are quite loud for a laptop of this form factor. On top of that, they’re quite bass-heavy too, so that’s great for bass fans. However, I do recommend fiddling around in the DTS:X app to fine-tune the audio output to your liking.
Acer has also included a webcam at the top of the display, and mind you, it’s a 1440p resolution camera. The camera is capable of capturing clear and detailed images even in dimly lit environments. What’s most impressive to me is how well and accurately it manages to portray colours, and even the HDR works very well.
Of course, being an AI-powered laptop, Acer has also added some software tricks to make the experience even better. There’s the Acer PurifiedView 2.0 and PurifiedVoice 2.0, that enhance video calls with auto-framing, super-sharp resolution, portrait refinement, and AI noise cancellation. If you don’t want to use that, you can always rely on Windows Studio Effects, which enhances video calls by improving lighting, blurring backgrounds, and suppressing noise distractions.
The webcam also helps with the Acer User Sensing 2.0 feature, which uses the camera to detect user presence. As such, it will automatically dim the screen for privacy and power conservation when the user is away, and wake up the laptop upon their return. The good news is that if you’re too picky about these features, you can choose to disable them, or better yet, disable the webcam with the built-in physical shutter.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The Acer Swift 14 AI boasts a comfortable and well-spaced keyboard, delivering a smooth typing experience. The keys provide adequate travel and a pleasant tactile response, suitable for extended typing sessions.
It’s worth noting that the feedback is a bit on the softer side, which should appeal to most professional users who plan on using the laptop in an office setup. Additionally, the white light underneath is also sufficient for working in dark environments, and there’s nothing to complain about here.
The same goes for the touchpad. It’s very well-sized, considering it’s a 14-inch laptop chassis, and the surface is quite smooth to the touch. The palm rejection works very well, and there’s enough room for all of Windows gestures.
Acer has also added a unique AI icon in the touchpad’s upper right corner, illuminating with a “Breathing” effect when Acer Sense AI applications are active. Technically, it should light up when other AI apps also work, basically when the NPU is in effect. Is it a gimmick? Yes. Does it look cool? Also yes.
Performance and Battery Life
Moving to the performance part, the Acer Swift 14 AI is one of the first laptops in the country to be powered by Intel’s Lunar Lake processors. Our unit here comes equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V processor coupled with 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM clocked at 8533MT/s. There’s the on-board Intel ARC Graphics 130V for GPU prowess, while a 512GB SSD from Kingston takes care of storage.
As you can see in the CrystalDiskMark benchmark, the bundled storage is fast enough. It doesn’t quite reach the advertised speeds for Gen4 but should get the job done for most business and consumer needs. The good news is that the app launches and everything else works quite “swiftly”. The same goes for the CPU. Even though the highlight of the new Lunar Lake processors is the added NPU, the Intel Core Ultra 5 doesn’t disappoint in terms of performance. It spits out pretty respectable scores in both Cinebench R23 and R24, and its Geekbench performance is pretty impressive. The same goes for the GPU performance, with the Intel ARC Graphics 130V holding its front in various 3DMark tests.
Of course, everything looks great in isolation. So, I decided to compare it with the Acer Swift Go 14, powered by the older Intel Core Ultra 5 125H processor. Side by side, the difference is noticeable, but unfortunately, it’s the other way around. Sure, the 226V does have the edge in single-core performance, but in multi-core benchmarks, the 125H still holds a sizeable lead. This is primarily down to the lower core count on the 226V, so there’s that.
Benchmarks aside, the real-world performance is pretty good, and I was able to multitask on the Swift 14 AI with ease. Also, while the laptop isn’t designed for gaming, you can enjoy a game or two of Rocket League on Low settings. Just make sure not to push it since the single-fan setup will definitely make it break a sweat.
Speaking of which, digging inside the laptop is mostly easy, with all the screws laid out in the front and not behind any rubber feet. However, the locks are quite tight, so take your time prying it out, or just ask a technician to do it. Inside, both the SSD and Wi-Fi card are user-replaceable, while the RAM is soldered on, as expected.
So far, the Swift 14 AI hasn’t proved to be any better than the Swift 14 Go despite featuring a newer processor. Perhaps because I haven’t talked about the battery life yet. The Swift 14 AI comes with a 65Wh battery, but the new Lunar Lake CPU is supposed to be quite power efficient. In fact, Acer itself claims a multi-day battery life of up to 29 hours. That’s a lot, but the good news is that Acer’s numbers might not be wrong after all.
In the PCMark 10 Battery Video Loop test, the Swift 14 lasted a whopping 16 hours, making it one of the best laptops for battery backup that we’ve tested. For a more realistic scenario, if your usage revolves mostly around web browsing, just run everything in Dark Mode, and you can actually squeeze out more juice from this thing. Even in my daily use, I would start the day at 100% and head back home with close to 40%, all while running multiple apps simultaneously on it. Your mileage may vary, of course, but the good news is that you won’t have to carry a charger along to work for the most part. Even when you do need to charge this laptop, there’s support for USB-PD charging up to 65W.
Verdict
With a starting price tag of Rs. 89,999, the Acer Swift 14 AI is a compelling ultrabook offering a blend of style, performance, and impressive battery life. Its vibrant OLED display delivers an immersive visual experience, while the powerful Intel Core Ultra 5 226V processor ensures smooth handling of demanding tasks. It’s not the most powerful chipset on the market, but it’s still quite reliable and offers unmatched battery life.
As for alternatives, we are still waiting on other brands like ASUS, Lenovo, and HP to update their lineups with the latest Intel Lunar Lake processors. Once that happens, the competition would be a bit stiff. Otherwise, at the time of writing, the only other laptops that can compete with the Acer Swift 14 AI are Snapdragon-powered, such as the Microsoft Surface Pro or the ASUS Vivobook S 15. However, you will have to consider app compatibility on the other side of the field, so there’s that. For what it’s worth, the Acer Swift 14 AI gets a thumbs-up from our end.
Editor’s Choice: 8 / 10
Pros:
- Lightweight and portable design
- Vibrant OLED display
- Good webcam with AI-powered features
- Excellent battery life
Cons:
- Multi-core performance isn’t that great
- 60Hz refresh rate only