It’s a weird time to be reviewing laptops. The industry is currently in the middle of a refresh cycle brought about by Microsoft’s recent partnership with Snapdragon and the Copilot PC+ concept. While the Acer Swift Go 14 may not be one of these newfangled Copilot PC+ laptops, it’s still a great productivity machine suited to most people.
Wielding a Meteor Lake Intel Core Ultra chip, it’s a reasonably powerful laptop. Even though Intel’s Lunar Lake generation of processors is just around the corner, what’s here now is ample for most people’s use cases.
Perhaps just as important as the power the Acer Swift Go 14 wields is its practicality. This is a laptop that doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Instead of flashy designs and superfluous gimmicks, it just works and provides approachable convenience in a reliable form factor.
Acer Swift Go 14 (2024) review
First impressions
Coming straight from the Dell XPS 14, the Acer Swift Go 14 looks comparatively utilitarian. It has the appearance of a functional piece of technology – not some post-modern art installation.
Although I like my devices to have a sense of personality and colour, Acer’s focused on the most important thing: usability. It’s easy to open and use, and there are loads of I/O ports. I even found the keyboard very Mac-like in both design and feel.
The Acer Swift Go 14 doesn’t exude the same sophisticated design as a MacBook Air, but that’s of little importance to how well it does its job. With a nicely compact build, responsive keys (including a physical function row), and reliable performance, it nails the fundamentals.
I won’t spend much time on AI features because, regardless of the “AI PC” branding, there’s not much here that solely relies on the laptop’s neural processing unit (NPU). Most of the Swift Go’s AI functionality extends to AcerSense, a program that helps optimise device performance.
Acer Swift Go 14 specifications
| Display | 14-inch 2.8K OLED SlimBezel Screen 2800 x 1800 |
| Dimensions | 14.9mm x 312.9mm x 217.9mm 1.3kg |
| Processor | Intel Core Ultra 7 155H |
| Graphics | Integrated Intel Arc Graphics |
| Memory | 16GB |
| Storage | 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD |
| Battery | 65Wh Li-ion battery 100W TypeC adapter |
| Connectivity | Two USB-C 3.2 ports Two USB-A 3.2 port One HDMI port One 3.5mm headphone jack One MicroSD card slot Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.3 |
| Price (RRP) | $1,899 |
| Warranty | One year |
| Official website | Acer Australia |
Design
I couldn’t help but imagine the design brief for this laptop was to create a MacBook from memory, changed just enough so it didn’t look like Acer copied Apple’s homework. Think a thin, lightweight aluminium chassis contrasted by dark elevated keycaps. It’s not a bad thing – not at all – why mess with one of the best laptop designs going around?
Where the Acer Swift Go 14 separates itself, not only from Apple, but also from some Windows PC brands, is through its range of ports. Along the sides, you’ll find two USB-C ports, and an additional two slots for USB-A devices. It’s staggering how quickly some brands abandoned USB-A despite the widespread use of USB-A peripherals. A big tick for Acer there.
There’s also a built-in HDMI port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a MicroSD card slot. Not visible to the naked eye, but definitely present, is Wi-Fi 7 connectivity and Bluetooth 5.3 support. All in a laptop that tips the scales at around 1.3kg. Not too shabby, Acer.
But there’s always a catch. In this instance, it was fan noise. When put under load, I noticed the fan kicked in rather quickly and loudly. It didn’t reach obnoxious levels, but enough to notice.
Acer also advertises a battery life of “up to 11.5 hours”, which I didn’t reach while using the laptop. It got me through most of the day, but it’s not rivalling the multi-day battery of the MacBook M3 I use most of the time.
Benchmarks
As far as raw performance is concerned, the Acer Swift Go 14 holds its own alongside the competition. Across a range of benchmarking tools, its processing power matches, and sometimes equals its Dell counterpart.
CPU
The model I reviewed used an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, running through Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024 tests neck-and-neck with the Dell XPS 14 and Apple’s MacBook Air with an M3 chip.
| Device | CPU (Single-core) | CPU (Multi-core) |
| Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 | 2,903 | 17,385 |
| Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 8) | 2,870 | 17,089 |
| MacBook Pro M2 Max | 2,701 | 14,916 |
| Dell XPS 14 | 2,349 | 12,941 |
| Acer Swift Go 14 | 2,421 | 12,639 |
| Macbook Air M3 | 3,075 | 12,015 |
| Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 | 2,581 | 12,160 |
| Asus ROG Ally | 2,543 | 12,181 |
| Lenovo Legion Go | 2,346 | 9,619 |
| Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2 | 1,567 | 8,761 |
| Device | CPU (Single-core) | CPU (Multi-core) |
| Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 | 123 | 1,395 |
| MacBook Pro M2 Max | 122 | 1,031 |
| Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 | 86 | 927 |
| Acer Swift Go 14 | 104 | 903 |
| Asus Zenbook Duo (UX8406) | 105 | 763 |
| Dell XPS 14 | 102 | 660 |
| Macbook Air M3 | 141 | 550 |
Graphics
Even though the Acer Swift Go 14 doesn’t have a discrete graphics card, the integrated Intel Arc GPU is no slouch. You’ll notice a gap between Acer’s laptop and machines with their own GPUs, which is to be expected.
What is impressive, however, is how far integrated graphics have come. In years gone past, you wouldn’t dare attempt any 3D work or gaming without a dedicated GPU. Now, video editing, 3D rendering, and a bit of gaming is entirely possible just by using what’s included on the system on a chip. And at a more affordable price, I might add.
Not being a gaming laptop, I didn’t use the Acer Swift Go 14 to run a gauntlet of games. Instead, I just played what I currently had on the go, which was Hades 2, an action game where reaction time is everything. Sans graphics card, I had no trouble at all playing the game (beyond my questionable skill levels). The Acer’s crisp OLED screen certainly brought out the best of Hades 2‘s vibrant colour palette, too.
| Device | GPU (OpenCL) |
| Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 8, RTX 4070) | 158,787 |
| Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 (RTX 4070) | 119,970 |
| Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (RTX 4060) | 96,452 |
| MacBook Pro M2 Max | 72,833 |
| Dell XPS 14 (RTX 4050) | 65,396 |
| Acer Swift Go 14 | 34,388 |
| Macbook Air M3 | 30,479 |
| Device | Score |
| Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 8, RTX 4070) | 13,796 |
| Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 (RTX 4070) | 12,881 |
| Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (RTX 4060) | 9,620 |
| Asus TUF A16 | 9,196 |
| Dell XPS 14 (RTX 4050) | 5,445 |
| Acer Swift Go 14 | 3,879 |
| Asus Zenbook Duo (2024) | 3,235 |
| Asus ROG Ally (30W) | 3,198 |
| Lenovo Yoga 9i (2023) | 1,655 |
Storage speed
Despite impressing in most categories, the Acer Swift Go 14 uses a slower SSD than competing laptops. Using the CrystalDiskMark benchmark laptop returned sequential read speeds of up to 4,800MB/s, and write speeds reaching 3,480MB/s.
These numbers aren’t sluggish by any means, but other Intel Core Ultra laptops tend to wield SSDs reaching speeds around 7,000MB/s and 5,000MB/s respectively.
Who is the Acer Swift Go 14 for?
There’s not much that this laptop doesn’t do at least competently well. So, if you need a portable PC for work, study, or general home use, this is a strong option. Or, if you’re like me, someone who likes playing games, but PC isn’t your main platform, you’ll find a solid companion here.
As I mentioned at the start of this review, the consumer PC industry is in the midst of an early refresh cycle. Laptops launched only earlier this year will soon be “obsolete” in the coming months thanks to chipmakers’ scramble to capitalise on the AI market. That does mean good prices on previous-gen hardware though. At the time of publishing, I saw Harvey Norman selling this laptop for less than $1,200, which is great value.
If the promises of better graphics and battery efficiency have you interested, it might be worth waiting just a bit longer. Based on what’s out now, the Acer Swift Go 14 is a tidy jack-of-all-trades that keeps up with the competition. It may not be the most exciting-looking laptop, but it’s definitely one of the most useful.
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