Acer - Swift 14 AI - Copilot+ PC - 14.5" 2.5K 120Hz Touch-Screen – Snapdragon X Elite – 16GB Memory – 1TB SSD - Steel Gray

I knew coming into this that compatibility would be an issue, but Windows Prism emulation is really good, aside from not being able to run virtual machines. Besides that, the laptop has amazing battery life—18 hours when doing school work on Chrome. The build quality is very nice, and it comes with an upgraded SSD inside. The webcam is even better than my iPhone 14’s camera, which shocked me. However, the speakers are pretty bad; they are downward-facing and sound very flat. Additionally, the Windows install on here was full of so much bloatware that it took an hour to wipe. Despite these two cons, overall, this is a really nice laptop, and I can’t wait for more updates and greater compatibility down the road.

The Acer Swift 14 AI is a premium mobile laptop equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 ARM Processor. I was excited to see if this laptop could become my daily driver and it passed the test easily. The unique characteristic of this computer is that it has hardware that is dedicated to AI. My first impression: this computer is fast, it's portable, it runs cool, and the battery lasts forever. The Swift 14 is ideal for professionals or students that also use it for entertainment or creative needs. The native ARM application library is much larger than I anticipated. Additionally, this laptop can virtualize programs that aren't native and does it well. *Design & Build* The Swift 14 AI is lightweight and thin weighing in just under 3 pounds. Dimensions are 13 x 9 x .75". There's a backlit keyboard with no flex. The keyboard feels good, with adequate tactile response. The keyboard is standard with the exception of an AcerSense & AI CoPilot key. Every component feels like quality, although the keys are a little small, but this is most likely due to the size of the laptop. There are 2 USB 4 Type-C ports and 2 USB 3.2 Type A ports. I would prefer one more USB-C port instead of the 2 USB-A ports because most devices are slowly moving towards USB-C. Although depending on your peripherals you might want 2 USB-A. There's also a headphone jack if needed. The display is outstanding. It's 14.5" with a 120 Hz refresh rate, 2560 x 1600 resolution, and it's touch screen. It has a glossy finish that really makes the display pop. The webcam is among the best I've seen on a laptop, 1440p IR. The mouse pad has solid clicks everywhere and feels smooth and consistent. The monitor is solid, no flex, and hinges feel strong. This aluminum chassis is well made. *Specs* This laptop is equipped with Windows 11 Home Edition, and conveniently allows you to sign in securely with Windows Hello. CPU - In my opinion this is the highlight of this laptop, a 3.4 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 ARM Processor. This 4 nanometer tech processor is very quick, uses low power, and temperatures typically sit around 35 to 50 degrees Celsius. There are 12 High Performance CPU cores. This CPU is one of the best ARM processors out there handling everything I threw at it with ease. You will also notice that fans rarely come on to cool it down. I had about 15 tabs open on my web browser and several apps open in the background, no lag anywhere. In fact, I haven't experienced any slowdown at all while web browsing, running apps, playing games, or even booting up. Above all, it's quiet. GPU - The Adreno GPU is an integrated GPU but still offers approximately 3.8 TFLOPS. NPU - This is one of the fastest Neural processing units available on a laptop equipped with the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU. This unit is dedicated to handle AI tasks. This unit helps blur the background in video calls and adds special effects. It also helps recognize photos and create images without putting an excessive load on the CPU or GPU. The advantage with an NPU is it acts like a 3rd processor dedicated to AI tasks. Memory - 16GB of soldered memory (LPDDR5x-8448) I typically had about 50 to 55% usage of memory when processing typical tasks. This high memory bandwidth is designed for on device AI acceleration. Hard Drive - There's a speedy NVME SSD Hard Drive that I tested at 5700 MB/s Read and Write. 1 TB of space is plenty of space for me, but this is upgradeable too. This is Gen4 technology. Display - 14.5" 120 Hz Refresh, WQXGA IPS, 2560 x 1600 (1440p) 16:10 aspect ratio, touch screen, gloss finish. The brightness specs are around 300 nits, but I think with the gloss finish, the display looks great. I tested my unit and actually had about 360 nits of brightness. You can lean it back to 180 degrees as well so it lays flat. This unit conveniently comes with an HDMI to USB-C plug if you want to use an external monitor. I hooked up 2 external monitors with no problem. There is 100% sRGB which is great for creative. Webcam - 1440p (really impressive), AI helps with blurring the background. I haven't seen a webcam anywhere close to the quality here. The resolution, color, and responsiveness is high quality. There are also numerous options to change settings and add special effects. Keyboard - The keyboard is backlit (white) and feels like a typical keyboard. The keys are easy to click with a small travel distance. I didn't notice any excessive fatigue or issues here with typing. *Battery* I was able to get 17 hours of battery with daily usage and I did a video test that got an outstanding 25 hours. These are excellent results for any laptop. I'm looking forward to taking this laptop on my next long flight. *Software* The Acer Swift 14 AI comes with built-in software that lets you register your computer, monitor your computer performance, set the performance level and a host of other settings. You can also check for Live Updates to keep your software/hardware up to date. You can check the health of your battery, hard drive, memory, and optimize hardware space by cleaning up files. There's a little bit of bloatware, mostly small games, but nothing considerable. *AI* AI helps blur the camera during video calls. There's an AI CoPilot dedicated key and there are ai features built into creative software where you can create pictures and artwork. Most pictures I created were processed within 10 to 15 seconds so the NPU is doing great work here. *Gaming* Even without a dedicated GPU, I installed two of my favorite games and there was zero lag, and framerate looked great. Both games were quick and graphics were beautiful. I wouldn't used it as a dedicated gaming machine though due to a lack of discrete graphics. I am looking forward to trying out a few simulation games to see how it handles them, especially with AI. I would recommend this laptop to students, work professionals, and those that use productivity, entertainment, and creative apps. The Acer Swift 14 AI is easy to travel with and even comes with a travel bag. It's speedy while remaining quiet through most daily tasks such as web browsing, creative apps, and music or movies. A nice added plus is its ability to play games as well. *Pros* *Exceptionally long battery life *No lag *Speedy CPU & NPU *AI is a breeze on this laptop *Laptop runs very cool *Exceptional Webcam *Well built *Travels easily *Responsive Touch screen *Runs very cool *Needs Improvement* *GPU is integrated with average speed *Keys feel close together *External speakers could use more bass

The Acer - Swift 14 AI - Copilot+ PC - 14.5" 2.5K 120Hz Touch-Screen – Snapdragon X Elite – 16GB Memory – 1TB SSD - Steel Gray is a fast, sleek, lightweight all-day laptop. Kudos to Acer on the laptop packaging being entirely recyclable cardboard materials! The laptop was well-packaged and arrived without issue. The build quality seems excellent with a solid premium feel. The laptop comes with a nice laptop carrying case to keep it protected and has a large pocket for the power adapter and a few accessories. It comes packaged with a micro-USB to HDMI adapter which is a nice extra and wasn't expected. It comes with a power brick that plugs directly into an outlet and has a 6 ft USB-C cord attached to it for charging or powering the laptop. The laptop recharges quickly with the included power brick. The keyboard has a nice tactile feel to it and is pleasant to type on. It has 2 levels of backlighting brightness and seems adequate. The large touchpad is smooth and responsive. It has an interesting feature built into the trackpad... when an app is using the AI features of the laptop it lights up a little graphic on the trackpad so you know AI features are being used. Nice added touch. The sound quality is pretty good for a laptop of this size. Nice crisp sounds at all volumes with plenty of volume range for most people I would imagine. The DTS sound settings app on the laptop has one EQ adjustment, but I honestly couldn't tell a difference in the sound when I tried to adjust the EQ to add a bit more low end. The 2560 x 1600 120Hz touchscreen at 14.5 inches is crisp and bright with plenty of brightness for most situations. The touchscreen is responsive and comes in handy when you need to scroll or zoom if you're used to using a tablet or smartphone. Reflections are handled quite well and were not an issue even though it's a shiny surface. The hinge is sturdy and smooth and does not wabble at all. The laptop angles up a bit as you open the screen which is nice for ergonomics. Windows 11 setup is easy and walks you through everything like installing updates and getting connected to a network. No issues there. The laptop does come with a Macafee antivirus trial and a few bloatware games that are easy enough to remove if you want. Acer includes it's AcerSense app for managing the laptop settings and updates as well as doing some maintenance tasks on the hardware. Seems pretty straight-forward and useful. The laptop makes quick work of everyday tasks with the Snapdragon X Elite – 16GB Memory – 1TB SSD combo. Things like browsing the web, editing documents with Office, editing photos and videos all run smoothly. The battery life on this machine is incredible! I was able to play video for approximately 16 hrs in power-saving mode on medium brightness! I believe this is the first laptop that I've owned that achieves that kind of battery life! Quite impressive! If you're looking for a true all-day laptop, this machine will do it. You can also do some moderate gaming on this machine. One cool thing I discovered is that Windows can use the NPU AI to enhance gameplay for certain games. This makes a huge difference in performance as it runs the game in lower resolution and scales it up in realtime. I tried a few games like Borderlands 3 and Tomb Raider and both performed really well without the AI assist but even better when that kicked in. Borderlands 3 did take a bit of messing around with to get it to set the resolution properly. Note that some games and apps will not run on the Snapdragon processor but I find that the majority do. I tried running New World and that was a nope and Fortnite as well. I'm guessing both of these games will add support at some point with the number of Snapdragon processors that will be out there soon. World or Warcraft ran just fine. The laptop has 2 USB-C and a couple USB 3 ports as well as an audio jack port. One of the USB-C ports is used for charging as well. The built-in Wifi was fast and connected to my new mesh network with high speed throughput. I tried the Copilot app and it runs fast as far as I can tell. Image generation was pretty quick... not 100% sure yet what all can leverage the NPU abilities of the laptop. I think this will expand and become clearer over time with more and more applications leveraging the AI chips. It definitely helps with gaming in certain games. The laptop has a dedicated Copilot key which makes it easy to quickly pop into the app when you want to use it. Overall this is a great machine with excellent battery life and form-factor for anyone needing a lightweight carry everywhere laptop.