Acer Swift X SFX14-41G-R1S6 Creator Laptop | 14″ Full HD 100% sRGB | AMD Ryzen 7 5800U | NVIDIA RTX 3050Ti GPU | 16GB LPDDR4X | 512GB SSD | Wi-Fi 6 | Backlit KB | Amazon Alexa | Windows 10 Home

Great Mid-High End Portable Laptop for Software Development and Light-Midweight Gaming. Note: Minor review edits after ~2 months w/ laptopThis is a very powerful laptop that doesn’t have the drawbacks of many gaming laptops. It looks normal, has a charging brick of 90W which is actually portable, and is nice and lightweight. Main distinguishing factors are: – really nice display (100% srgb 1080p 60hz max 300 nits w/ good brightness scaling) – good build quality overall, with the lid being a tiny bit wobbly – the top-notch performance for an 14″ ultra-thin (see details below if interested) – really small size – thermals are decent, especially for what it is, though fan gets very loud under heavy loadsThe screen and keyboard are both pretty nice (keyboard backlight is a nice plus) and webcam is fine (720p). Port selection includes 2 USB 3.0, 1 USB C, 1 HDMI, Combined Audio, and a Kensington Lock. It’s a bit annoying that there’s no ethernet or SD card reader; however, the I got a tp-link ethernet + usb hub for ~$30 and it’s pretty easy to carry around. The speakers are on the bottom and sound kinda meh (they get the job done). I get 5-7 hours of battery life under most use cases, which is pretty good for a laptop this powerful and small. If you play graphically or computationally intensive games, expect lower. While the fan can get really loud, it generally runs quiet unless under stress. The performance is amazing; the Ryzen 7 5800u is one of the (if not the) most powerful CPUs for ultra-portables, and will make a big difference for video/photo-editing especially. The 3050ti allows this to play most modern games at decent framerates. Keep in mind that anything higher than 60 is overkill unless you’re using an external monitor, so this should be fine for any non-AAA games and even some AAA games at high settings. But, don’t expect ray tracing or any other super taxing stuff to run well. Another note is that you’ll only be getting 60-70% of the GPU performance you’d get in a gaming laptop equivalent because of the size. Lastly, if you are so inclined, there is a 2nd M.2 ssd slot inside for future upgrading, and the 1st one is also user accessible. Make sure you have torx bits if you want to open it up. Overall, this machine gets a 4.5/5 (rounded up to 5) from me. Below are more details for performance nerds/diy people:The Wifi card is a Wifi 6 2×2 by Mediatek. Intel is technically better, but honestly it runs fine. The CPU has a listed wattage of 15W, but boosts as high as 40W while plugged in, sits between 85-95C under heavy, fully threaded loads, and stays clocked between 3.7 and 4.4GHz on all 8 cores. The GPU stays nice and cool under stress at around 65C, and runs up to 35-40W. For reference, the NVIDIA 3050ti at that wattage runs 15-20% worse than my desktop NVIDIA 1650 super at 100W. I haven’t tried to max out the CPU and GPU at the same time for a long time, but expect the performance to be a little worse in any games that utilize both parts heavily. The integrated graphics handle the OS and the majority of less GPU-intensive tasks, which saves power and maximizes graphics performance (I feel like this should be a given, but it isn’t).

Solid laptop all around. Jack of all trades laptop that does everything pretty well. Ill go over some of the important categories in detail. I did end up returning this laptop for reasons Ill mention but it is a good device overall.Build Quality -Build quality is good overall with metal construction and not too much flex on the chassis or lid of the laptop. It has some upgradability with a second, empty m.2 drive slot. Which is pretty nice since you can expand on the original 512gb SSD without having to replace it. The RAM is soldered onto the board and, therefore, cannot be changed. 16GB should be enough for most cases, but again, with them marketing towards creators the option to expand past 16GB may have been nice even if only a single so-dimm slot was accessible like in the Asus g14 for example.I/O -I/O is solid for a 14 inch laptop with it housing 2 USB type As, 1 USB 3.2 type C (charging capable), a mic/headphone combo jack, and an HDMI port. Though for a device marketed as a “Creator Laptop” Id have expected either a full size or at least micro sd card reader.Keyboard/Touch pad -The keyboard provides a nice typing experience. Though the keys are a little mushy for my liking.The touch pad is also very solid with a smooth surface and accurate tracking. Could be a little larger possibly but is fine for the size of the laptop.Battery Life-Battery life is pretty good for this segment. Could probably find better at a similar price but given the hardware in this laptop it is plenty good I’d say. I was generally reaching around 7-9 hours at 50% brightness and with background apps disabled. Usually while web browsing, watching videos, and coding in Visual Studio. Make sure to turn off one drive syncing though as its on by default and drastically lowers battery life.Display -The Display is both a pro and a con for me. It is very bright and color accurate but it is not very good for gaming. Now this is not a gaming laptop so i was not expecting a high refresh rate display or anything along those lines. What I was not expecting was to be so impacted by the high response time of the display. Every game I played experienced ghosting and was generally not very responsive. It ended up being a deal breaker for me as, while I bought this for university primarily, gaming is an important 2nd use case for me. The performance is not the problem as ill touch on shortly, but the screen hinders the gaming experience too heavily for me. This is a subjective opinion as I am sure it wont be a problem for most and it may have to do with the fact that I have always had a high refresh rate display on both laptop and desktop for the past few years but its an issue for me nonetheless.Performance -Performance is great for the price and size of the laptop. My model was equipped with the R7 5800u + 3050ti. This combo could handle pretty much any workload I threw at it. I never completely stressed the 8 cores and 16 threads the CPU had to offer but I did not experience slowdown when coding in visual studio or when I had a large amount of chrome tabs open. I am not a content creator but I would imagine this hardware combined with the color accurate display would make it a great fit for any kind of photo or video work, as it should given its advertised towards this use case. For the gaming side, the 3050ti in this thing is only a 40w part but its no slouch. Easily beating out integrated graphics or the underwhelming MX line of dedicated GPUs from Nvidia. There wasnt a single game I tried that was unplayable. Even cyberpunk can hit 60fps with DLSS. The most graphically intensive game I consistently play at the moment is Battlefield V which will run at a steady 60fps on medium or 50-60fps on high with some dips. The 3050ti in here seems to be on par with a full wattage GTX 1650ti while trading some blows here and there from what I have seen. Again, certainly not a gaming laptop, especially given the screen, but it is more than capable of allowing you to play pretty much any game in your library at some level of settings. Pretty impressive for a laptop with this combination of price and portability.Thermals/Acoustics -Thermals are a strong point of this laptop. Unlike full fledged gaming laptops, the 3050ti in here is a bit easier to handle. As such, this laptop running only a single fan. While the CPU can run a little toasty from time to time it will usually spike then drop to a more comfortable operating temperature. Seemingly up to around 95C then settling in the low to mid 80s in my testing. The GPU stays pretty cool at all times, even when being maxed out. Thankfully, due to that single fan, even under load the laptop does not get very loud. I did not test the exact decibel count but its quiet enough to where I could play a game without worrying about putting on headphones as opposed to a traditional gaming laptop where eventually jet engine mode activates. That said, when installing programs and doing some other seemingly mundane tasks that can put a little stress on the CPU, the fans will spike which can be annoying.Closing Thoughts -Overall I really liked this machine. It offered good performance, battery life and build quality for a good price. The display ended up being a deal breaker because gaming is too high of a priority for me to compromise in that area. Which this laptop showed me honestly as I was not expecting it to be something I found to be such a problem. All that said, it probably wont be an issue for most and if it sounds like it would be to you Id recommend looking elsewhere. Otherwise this is a great option for pretty much anyone looking for a good all around device in this price range.

Very good specs in a portable package of 1.4kg. However, 1 glaring flaw is the uneven keyboard backlight. In addition, with the backlight on during daytime makes the keyboard characters almost unreadable. Silver keys and a white backlight is a bad combination. I have a hp laptop with black keys and I do not face this readability issue.

I like that it lasts all do with moderate load but can handle somewhat heavier loads when needed. I do a lot of photo editing which it handles well. It can do simple editing of 4k video when I need it to.

Ryzen 7, Solid choice multipurpose laptop. I have had this laptop for one year as of this month, so it is not the bleeding edge of technology. That said, I have been very satisfied with my purchase. I am in grad school, I do a lot of writing, and I think the build quality and the keyboard is great. I have never once hit the off key accidentally or had any trouble with the back-lit keyboard on the light colored keyboard. I mention those because I remember them as issues in another review. My PC is not working right now and I have been doing some gaming when I have time, and I would advise a cooling fan that sits under the laptop and raises it up to add to circulation or it will get hot. I think that is a general issue with laptops unless maybe they have some built in specialized cooling mechanisms, and even those may have to have the extra cooling. The only con I have for this laptop is that it only has 2 USB 3 ports and I wish it had 1 more, it has a micro USB so it can be charged that way with a string enough charger (the one that fast charges my s23U works great) and it does charge fairly quickly and holds the charge well for daily use. It will need to be plugged in for gaming and I use the charger that it came with for that. Speakers seem ok, for YouTube, good enough. Gaming I definitely use a headset. Screen is only a 60ghz refresh rate, it still looks fine to me, I think the 300 nits brightness and color balance are good. I have windows 11, not sure if that’s how mine came or if it upgraded when I got it. I feel like it’s how it came, but can’t remember. Oh, the RAM is 16 which is fine for me, but a drawback is that it is not upgradable. You can add another SSD for storage, I will need to do this soon. The light weight, build quality, length of charge with the ability to do some gaming are the selling points for me. I have been very satisfied with this computer and have used it daily for a year.