Acer Swift 14 AI review: battery life for days

The Acer Swift 14 AI is the latest laptop to adopt Intel’s new Lunar Lake chips, which promise a serious jump in battery life to combat the reign of the MacBook and the newcomer to the Windows world, the Snapdragon X Elite.

Acer has joined in with the Swift 14 AI, a new machine based on Intel’s efficiency-focused Lunar Lake chipset. It matches a reasonable price with exceptional battery life to make for a compelling option. Does that make it one of the best laptops? Well, the display isn’t as great as some, but if you’re not married to OLED, then you’ll find a lot to like here.

Specs and configuration

Acer offers two configurations of the Swift 14 AI, both featuring 14.0-inch FHD+ IPS displays. For $1,200, you get an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. For $1,300, there’s a slightly faster Core Ultra 7 258V and 32GB of RAM.

That makes the Swift 14 AI a reasonably priced laptop. The HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 uses the same Intel chipsets and is more expensive at list, coming in at $1,450 for a slower Core Ultra 5 226V, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. But, HP often has its laptops on sale, and when configured to Acer’s high-end specs, the OmniBook is slightly more expensive at $1,400 but that includes a higher-resolution 2.8K OLED display.

The Asus Zenbook S 14 is another similar machine that’s more expensive at $1,500 also with a 2.8K OLED display.

Design

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The Swift 14 AI manages to straddle the line between today’s more common minimalist designs and something a bit different. It does so through the use of a rounded rear chassis edge and sides that incorporate a curved design. It’s still just a dark gray colorway with minimal bling, so it’s a conservative design. But it manages to stand out a little more than some. The OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 and MacBook Air M3 both have their own attractive styles, and it’s down to personal tastes if the Swift 14 AI manages to be as good-looking.

In terms of its build quality, the Swift 14 AI is a mixed bag. It’s made of aluminum, and its bottom chassis and keyboard deck are both solid enough. The lid is a bit flexible, however, something that the MacBook Air M3 shares but the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 does not. It’s fine, but not the best I’ve reviewed lately.

In addition, the Swift 14 AI is a little thicker than many recent machines, and much more so than the MacBook Air M3 that’s one of the thinnest laptops ever made. It’s fairly light, and its bezels are reasonably thin so the overall size is competitive. Interestingly, Acer borrowed Lenovo’s reverse notch to house the webcam and other electronics, avoiding Apple’s more controversial display notch.

Keyboard and touchpad

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The Swift 14 AI has a typical island keyboard with slightly small keycaps compared to what I’m used to but great spacing and a standard layout. The switches are light and snappy, and I found the keyboard comfortable while I was typing this review. It’s up there with the best, including Apple’s Magic Keyboard and the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14’s excellent version.

The touchpad is reasonably sized, although there’s room on the palm rest for a few more millimeters. It’s mechanical with quiet clicks, but more laptops are including haptic versions that are even quieter and allow clicking along the entire surface. Haptic touchpads, like the excellent versions you’ll find on the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 and Apple’s entire MacBook lineup, provide more customization options and are just a lot more pleasant to use. One unusual feature is an LED symbol in the upper-right quadrant that lights up when Microsoft Copilot AI features are activated.

The display is touch-enabled, which is a good thing. Overall, input options are fine.

Connectivity and webcam

Connectivity is very good, with a mix of Thunderbolt 4 and legacy ports. I’d like to have seen an SD card reader, but that’s my only real complaint. Wireless connectivity is fully up-to-date.

The webcam is a 1440p version that has a number of Acer utilities to optimize video and audio quality. There’s a fast neural processing unit (NPU) running at 47 tera operations per second (TOPS), which is more than the 40 TOPS required for Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC initiative. As more AI features roll out, the Swift 14 AI will be ready to run them with sufficient on-device performance and better efficiency.

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An infrared camera provides support for Windows 11 Hello facial recognition, and it’s reliable and fast.

Performance

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The Intel Lunar Lake line of chipsets is aimed squarely at efficiency, replacing the older Meteor Lake 15-watt Core Ultra S-series chipsets with 17-watt Core Ultra Series 2 chipsets. They’re all 8-core/8-thread parts running at various clock speeds, and they all use the latest Intel Arc integrated graphics. For the Swift 14 AI, that means the Intel Arc 140V that falls somewhere between the previous generation and entry-level discrete graphics.

In our benchmarks, the Swift 14 AI is fast enough but not the fastest in its class. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X chipsets, also aimed at efficiency, are also faster. Apple’s M3 chipset, which will be supplanted by the M4 in the MacBook Air in early 2025, comes in the middle, although its GPU cores are faster than each of the thin-and-light Windows competitors.

The Swift 14 AI is fast enough for demanding productivity users, although gamers and creators will want to look elsewhere.

Battery life

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Intel’s Lunar Lake chipsets are aimed at efficiency much more than performance. As we can see, performance is fine but nothing to write home about. But so far, while Lunar Lake laptops still haven’t been generally as efficient overall as Apple’s MacBook lineup, they’re much better than previous Windows laptops. Poor battery life is no longer a reason to skip Windows.

The Swift 14 AI was a very strong performer even among their immediate Intel competitors, in spite of having a 65 watt-hour battery that’s no larger than some other machines. In fact, outside of our most demanding Cinebench R24 battery test, the Swift 14 AI is basically as efficient as the MacBook Air M3. It’s a very impressive performance that’s likely aided by the FHD+ IPS display as compared to the OLED display in a few comparison machines.

Display and audio

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The Swift 14 AI’s 14.0-inch 16:10 IPS display runs at FHD+ (1920 x 1200), which isn’t quite as sharp as I like to see in a display this size. It’s probably OK for most people, and it does add the benefit of being more power-efficient than the higher-res OLED displays on many laptops I’ve reviewed lately. Subjectively, the display was bright and colorful and overall a nice enough IPS display.

My colorimeter found it to be above-average for IPS technology, which is a good thing because that average is a lot better than it was just a few years ago. The display is bright at 408 nits, way above our baseline of 300 nits that needs to be adjusted upward at some point. Contrast is also excellent at 1,340:1, better than our old standard of 1,000:1. Colors are slightly wider than most IPS displays at 100% of sRGB, 81% of AdobeRGB, and 84% of DCI-P3, compared to most IPS panels that come in at around 75% of both AdobeRGB and DCI-P3. Color accuracy is very good at a DeltaE of 1.35 (anything less than 2.0 is great for productivity use).

It’s a good display for most users. It won’t be the best for creative work or HDR video, but for everything else it will be more than suitable.

The audio quality is just OK, with two downward-firing speakers. Sound is loud enough and mids and highs are clear, but bass is lacking. You’ll want a good set of headphones or Bluetooth speakers for music and streaming.

Is the Acer Swift 14 AI worth it?

The Swift 14 AI is a well-built and attractive laptop with good enough performance and a reasonable — but not exceptional — price. Its battery life is the standout feature, with efficiency that’s among the best Windows laptops we’ve tested.

However, it owes that battery life at least partially to the IPS display. It’s not a bad screen, but it lacks the sharpness and contrast of modern OLED displays. That’s the one tradeoff to consider, but if battery life is your main concern, the Acer Swift 14 AI is a solid option.