Acer Swift Go 14 (2024) Laptop Review

The Acer Swift Go 14 is only available in the Silver colorway. See the bottom of the laptop.

The build quality is great. Its aluminum and plastic chassis feels sturdy overall; there's some flex on the lid and keyboard deck, but not enough to be of concern. Twisting the screen produces a clipping noise, though it's hard to say whether this will be a problem in the future. There are no complaints about the feet; they feel solid and stick firmly to the bottom. The finish is fairly resistant to scratches. Fingerprints and smudges aren't a problem on most surfaces except for the touchpad (and keys, albeit to a lesser degree), which picks up oil easily.

The Acer Swift Go's hinges are outstanding. They feel smooth and sturdy when opening and closing the lid. You can open the laptop with one hand, though the laptop lifts slightly when doing so. Heavy typing doesn't cause the screen to wobble if you set the display past 90 degrees. There's more wobbling below 90 degrees, but since most people don't use the laptop in that manner, it isn't a huge issue.

The Acer Swift Go's serviceability is decent. Accessing the internals is easy; you only need to remove ten torque screws and release the bottom panel's clips with a thin prying tool. The only component that's somewhat hard to access is the storage slot below the fans, as you must first remove the ribbon to access the connectors. Both storage slots support M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

See the service manual.

• 100W Power adapter and cord
• Documentation

The Acer Swift Go is available with the following displays:

• 14” IPS 1920 x 1200 60Hz (touchscreen, matte, 100% sRGB)
• 14” OLED 2880 x 1800 90Hz (glossy, 100% DCI P3)

A FHD+ resolution looks sharp on a 14-inch screen. You might be able to see individual pixels up close, but that isn't a problem at typical viewing distances. The 2.8k OLED panel, which has a higher pixel density of 243 PPI, looks much sharper; just keep in mind that it'll drain the battery faster. Also, OLEDs are susceptible to permanent burn-in, especially with static elements like Windows' taskbar. Both panels have a 16:10 aspect ratio; this format is well suited for productivity, as it gives you slightly more vertical space than a standard 16:9 display, allowing you to see more information when reading a document or website.

The FHD+ IPS panel has a slow response time, causing visible ghosting in fast-moving scenes. The 2.8k OLED panel has a 90Hz refresh rate, which will provide slightly better input responsiveness and motion smoothness. Acer advertises the OLED panel's response time as less than 0.2 ms, though take that with a grain of salt—it's likely similar in performance as the Acer Swift 3 14 (2022). Neither display supports variable refresh rate to reduce screen tearing when gaming with an uncapped frame rate.

The FHD+ display has a great contrast ratio for an IPS panel. That said, it's still pretty low compared to other display technologies like VA and OLED. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dim settings. The 2.8k OLED panel has effectively an infinite contrast ratio since it can turn off individual pixels to produce perfect blacks.

The FHD+ display gets bright enough for use in most indoor settings. Outdoor use is possible during the day, but you may have trouble seeing some content, especially darker ones. It gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which is great for dark room viewing, as it causes less eye strain. Acer doesn't advertise the OLED panel's brightness, though it's likely in the same ballpark, similar to the Acer Swift 3 14 (2022).

The OLED panel has perfect uniformity because OLEDs can turn off individual pixels to produce black.

The FHD+ panel's horizontal viewing angle is passable. The image dims and washes out quickly as you move to the side, so it's best to be directly in front of the screen if you need perfect accuracy for color-critical work. The OLED panel is likely better in regards to color washout and brightness loss but will suffer more from color shift.

The IPS panel's vertical viewing angle is passable. Like the horizontal viewing angle, the image dims and washes when viewing from above and below, so you need to look at the screen more or less straight on to see an accurate image, which can be challenging in tight places where you have little room to tilt the screen, like on a bus or airplane. The OLED panel won't dim or wash out as much, but it'll suffer more from color shift.

The FHD+ display's accuracy is excellent out of the box. Most white balance and color inaccuracies are minor and hard to spot with the naked eye. The color temperature is a tad warmer than the standard 6500K target, but not enough to make a huge difference visually. The gamma is the only thing that's quite off—most scenes are too bright, while dark scenes are a little too dark.

The FHD+ panel is an sRGB display, meaning it only has full coverage of the commonly used sRGB color space. If you need full DCI P3 coverage to view or produce HDR content, it's best to get the 2.8k OLED panel.

The 2.8k OLED display likely flickers and may bother people sensitive to flickering.

The Acer Swift Go has a good keyboard. Its layout feels spacious and is relatively easy to get used to. Although the power button is right next to the Backspace and Delete buttons, you shouldn't have any problems with accidental triggers while typing since you have to press and hold the power button for two seconds to activate it. The keys are stable and have a lot of travel; however, they require a fair amount of force to actuate, which might cause fatigue over an extended period, and they feel somewhat mushy. You can toggle between two backlight brightness levels or turn it off completely; the backlight is white and shines well through the legends.

The Acer Swift Go has a good touchpad. While it could be a tad larger, the size is adequate, making it easy to perform actions like dragging and dropping over a long distance. It feels smooth even though it's plastic, and it tracks all movements and gestures well. Palm detection doesn't always work properly, but accidental triggers don't happen often enough to be an issue. This is a diving board touchpad, meaning you can only click in the bottom half of the touchpad. Though not heavy, the buttons do require a purposeful press to actuate, and unfortunately, they're on the mushy side.

The speakers are sub-par. They have little to no compression artifacts or distortion at high volume levels, but they don't get very loud to begin with. The tuning is very vocal-centric with almost no bass, so they're best suited for speech-heavy content rather than music.

The Acer Swift Go 14 has a good webcam. The image looks relatively sharp; there's some loss of fine details, and the exposure is a hair too high, but the overall quality is good enough for general video calls. Voices sound loud and clear over the microphone, with no noticeable background noise.

The Acer Swift Go 14 has an outstanding port selection. Both USB-As support USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed of up to 5Gbps. You can use the left USB-A to charge a mobile device even when the laptop is in sleep mode. Both USB-Cs support Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gbps data transfer speed and two 4k @ 60Hz displays), DisplayPort, and Power Delivery. The latter lets you fast charge the laptop and other PD-compatible devices (up to 15W). Regarding the HDMI port, Acer advertises HDMI 2.1 support; however, it can only output at a maximum resolution of 4k @ 60Hz. As such, we consider it an HDMI 2.0.

The Acer Swift Go 14 2024's wireless adapter is an Intel Killer Wireless Wi-Fi 6E 1675i. Wi-Fi 6E has faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than previous Wi-Fi standards. However, you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features. Check out our recommendations for the best Wi-Fi routers if you're looking to upgrade your home's wireless performance.

The Acer Swift Go 14 is available with the following CPUs:

• Intel Core Ultra 5 125H (14 cores, 18 Threads, up to 4.5 GHz, 18MB Cache)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (16 cores, 22 Threads, up to 4.8 GHz, 24MB Cache)
• Intel Core Ultra 9 185H (16 cores/22 threads, up to 5.1GHz, 24MB cache)

All three are high-performance CPUs from Intel's Meteor Lake family. Unlike Intel's 14th Gen (Raptor Lake refresh) CPUs, these Core Ultra processors have additional low-power E-cores (LP-E) to handle light tasks, further improving efficiency, as well as an NPU (Neural Processing Units) for AI-based tasks, like background-blurring on video calls and image generation in photo some editing apps. These processors can handle general productivity tasks and more intensive workloads, like programming and simulations. Regarding core composition, the Core Ultra 5 125H has four performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two low-power efficiency cores (4P+8E+2LP-E), while the Core Ultra 7 and 9 have six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two low-power efficiency cores (6P+8E+2LP-E). All three have the same Neural Processing Units (NPU). Due to its higher clock speeds, the Core Ultra 9 is about 10% faster than the Core Ultra 7 in most workloads.

See Intel's product brief for more information about the Meteor Lake CPUs.

The Acer Swift Go 14 is only available with Intel Arc graphics, an integrated GPU designed for light productivity tasks like web browsing and video playback. As for gaming, it can handle some lighter or older titles, but even then, you'll have to play with low graphical settings to get playable frame rates.

You can configure this laptop with 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of RAM. The memory isn't user-replaceable.

You can configure the Acer Swift Go 14 with 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB of storage. The storage is user-replaceable. There are two slots; both support M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

The Acer Swift Go has an outstanding overall score in Geekbench 5. Its Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU performs well in single- and multi-threaded workloads, making it suitable for a wide range of productivity tasks. That said, there are significantly faster CPUs on the market, like the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3, 2023)'s M3 Max SoC and the Razer Blade 18 (2024)'s Intel Core i9-14900HX. The Core Ultra 5 125H has two fewer P-cores, so you can expect a sizable drop in multi-thread performance. The Core Ultra 9 185H is about 10% faster overall. As for GPU computing tasks, although Intel's Arc graphics perform well for an integrated GPU, it's still far behind an entry-level discrete GPU like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU. You're better off getting a laptop with a dedicated graphics processor if your work requires a fair amount of GPU processing power.

Note: We've performed all benchmarks using the laptop's best performing mode (Performance in this case) instead of the default Balanced mode, which usually throttles the performance to prolong battery life. This is more representative of the laptop's maximum potential (you can always turn it down if you prioritize battery life and/or lower fan noise and thermals), whereas the Balanced mode would only show the manufacturer's tuning of that mode.

The Acer Swift Go 14's overall score in Cinebench R23 is outstanding. Its Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU can easily handle intensive, multi-threaded workloads and general heavy multitasking. Again, there are significantly faster CPUs on the market if you need even better performance.

While you can perform 3D rendering tasks in Blender using the CPU, getting a laptop with a discrete GPU is best. Even an entry-level dedicated GPU, like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU, can render images significantly faster.

The Acer Swift Go laptop's Basemark GPU score is mediocre. The integrated Arc GPU is far too slow for graphically intensive games. You can play some simple, puzzle-like games or older titles at 1080p, but you'll have to play at a lower resolution or with low graphics settings to get playable frame rates.

Models with the 2.8k OLED display will likely have a shorter battery life. To better simulate typical usage, we've conducted the web browsing and video playback tests using the Normal mode and the gaming test using the Performance mode. There's a pin hole on the bottom of the laptop to reset the battery if you encounter issues. This simulates removing and reinstalling the battery.

Borderlands 3 isn't playable on the Acer Swift Go 14. The Intel Arc integrated GPU can't handle this and other similarly demanding games. You can get over 60 fps with low settings, but the gameplay is far too choppy.

Civilization VI runs well enough to be playable. This game (and other similar strategy games) isn't graphically intensive, and you don't really need high frame rates to play since it doesn't require fast reaction time or precise aiming. The average turn time is decent and within the expected range for an Intel Meteor Lake CPU. The average turn time is likely in the same ballpark on models with a Core Ultra 5 125H and Core Ultra 9 185H CPU.

Counter-Strike 2 runs poorly on the Acer Swift Go 14. Although you can get well over 60 fps with low settings, the gameplay is choppy due to frequent frame drops, which isn't ideal for a competitive FPS.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is playable at 1080p on the Acer Swift Go, but only with the lowest graphical settings, and even then, you'll likely experience some stutters. The large frametime spikes are scene changes and aren't representative of the performance.

The Acer Swift Go 14's keyboard gets a little toasty when using the Performance mode, with the hot spot around the number 4 key. This might cause some discomfort, as it's close to where most people rest their left hand. The fans are relatively quiet, though. Unfortunately, using the device on your lap might be difficult without a lap board, as the bottom of the laptop gets very hot, reaching 52 °C (125.6 °F). Switching to the Normal (Balanced) mode raises the keyboard temperature slightly to 47.7 °C (117.86 °F) but lowers the fan noise to 41.9 dBA. The Silent mode lowers the keyboard temperature to 42.6 °C (108.68 °F) and the fan noise to 37.6 dBA.

We've conducted this test using the laptop's best performance (Performance) mode with the fan speed at max instead of the default Normal mode we've used in previous laptop reviews.

The Acer Swift Go has many pre-installed applications, including:

• Acer Jumpstart: Link to Acer's website.
• Acer LiveArt: Lets you remove the background from an image with people, animals, or objects using AI.
• Acer Product Registration: Lets you register your laptop for warranty.
• Acer Quick Panel: Lets you quickly access Acer's PurifiedView and PurifiedVoice settings, like AI noise canceling during video calls, background blurring, Auto Framing, etc.
• AcerSense: Lets you see system information, access hardware diagnostic tools, and download software updates.
• AlterView: Lets you convert 2D images into animated wallpapers with 3D effects using AI.
• App Explorer: Lets you explore the pre-installed apps on the laptop and contains ads for other apps.
• Care Center: Lets you check for system issues, update firmware and drivers, clean unnecessary files, and backup data.
• Evernote: Note-taking application. Requires subscription.
• ExpressVPN: Link to ExpressVPN virtual private network service website.
• Google Play Games beta: Lets you play mobile games from the Google Play Store.
• McAfee LiveSafe: Antivirus and internet security software. Requires subscription.
• Solitaire: Card game.
• Spades: Card game.
• WebAdvisor by McAfee: Protects you from malware when browsing the internet. Requires subscription.

The Acer Swift Go has a fingerprint sensor built into the power button. You can use it to log into Windows, authorize Windows Store purchases, and auto-fill saved passwords on supported websites.