Is The Acer Swift 3 Any Good? This Is What the Internet Says

Our review of the Acer Swift 3 dropped recently. We thought it was a solid, sleek notebook for everyday work use. You can read it here. But what does the rest of the internet think? We’ve consulted the real-life users of the Acer Swift 3 on Google to get the inside scoop.

The Swift 3 ends up on a lot of lists of affordable laptops that are reliable but light enough to tote around. It also seems that teachers can be spotted using them as well, according to this review: “I am mostly just going to be using Google Drive and Classroom, searching the web, and conducting lessons in Google Meet. I do not play video games, edit videos or images, or create complex coding projects… This laptop runs very fast. There is zero lag when running any application. I specifically waited for the new Intel 11th Gen i5 to be released onto this device.”

Across the board, people were happy with its aesthetics, sturdy aluminium frame, narrow screen to body ratio, with one saying, “The machine is also absolutely great to look at and touch with its cool metal chassis and beautifully cut keys. And it is very light. The attention to detail the laptop’s exterior is great, there is even a SWIFT marking engraved in the body which adds an extra level of stylishness.”  

Its snappy responsiveness due to booting off its SSD, 16GB LPDDR4X RAM, GeForce MX350 GPU, and 11th Gen Intel Core was also praised. Simply put in English: “Fast to load, smooth playing games, battery lasts all day when fully charged.”

The Swift 3 is quick, but not exactly the first piece of tech you’d consider chucking a game onto. With that said, we did find cases of stealthy gamers giving it a thrash: “My wife owns the Acer Swift 3 Radeon R5. I’m not a hardcore PC gamer, but I do enjoy a hefty amount of Gwent, Magic Arena, and the odd Steam game such as Age of Empires, Darkest Dungeon, Loop Hero, etc. If you’re not trying to run Witcher 3, this is the laptop for you.”

If you WERE trying to run Witcher 3, I’d probably recommend the Helios 300 if you were looking for some serious grunt.

Another programmer backs up the claim around casual gaming: “Great battery life, good screen, good keyboard and touch pad, fast and can actually play many games this thing is a beast. I use it primarily for programming and it has been a fantastic mobile workstation with the occasional gaming session.”

Those who are looking to use it for watching movies and TV shows will be pleased to know, “It performs really well with multitasking and is a great display for watching videos.”

For those needing a big storage capacity and good colour and contrast display, this reviewer had nothing but praise: “1Tb SSD hard drive gives huge storage for photographs and very quick start up. Screen display and colour definition is excellent for editing photographs and Windows file structure is great for loading photographs from Android devices and cameras, far, far better than my previous Macbook.”

A review wouldn’t be complete without a few cons for balance. While general word processing on its keyboard was considered ergonomically perfect by reviewers, some of the other keys caused a little trouble. “The power button is very close to the delete and I often catch it and put my laptop to sleep. However it’s just a press away from coming back on again,” said one review.

The screen was also generally praised, although one review pointed out that screen brightness could be better. “The only downside of this device is that the screen is not the brightest. I have to have the brightness turned all the way up to achieve what I would consider a normal screen brightness.”

All things considered, this is a solid laptop which even has some surprises in store. You can read our full breakdown of its specs here.