Acer Swift 14 AI review: long-lasting laptop won’t let you forget about AI

Introduction

Acer really wants you to remember its latest thin and light laptop is all about artificial intelligence. If the name wasn’t a big enough clue, the Swift 14 AI puts a new AI logo in prominent position on its lid, and has a touchpad that lights up whenever its Qualcomm chipset’s NPU kicks into action. That’s certainly one way to visualise something a lot of laptop shoppers have a hard time understanding – but is there anything else to separate it from the influx of Copilot+ PCs from rival brands?

The spec sheet is typical Copilot+ fare, which should mean potent performance and epic battery life, but it’s thicker than most and doesn’t have luxuries like an OLED screen to fall back on. It launched at $1199/£1199, but do a little shopping around and you’ll find versions that are a little easier on the wallet. It also has few extra ports that could be a win for productivity. A few more wins could help it lure customers away from similarly-priced alternatives that aren’t so fussed about machine learning, like the M2-powered MacBook Air. Let’s see if it can pull off an upset, shall we?

Design & build: light worker

The Swift 14 AI isn’t the most distinctive-looking laptop, but has a few funky lines along the rear exhaust vents and sides that help it stand above Acer’s more mainstream models. The all-aluminium chassis feels suitably first-rate, and the dark grey colour manages to avoid looking too business-like.

At 1.32kg this machine is lighter than a 15in MacBook Air, but heavier than an Asus Zenbook 14 OLED. I had no trouble throwing it in a backpack for a week-long work trip, and the bundled power brick is suitably svelte, but this isn’t the last word in portability. It’s not nearly as thin as some rivals, either, though I wouldn’t call it chunky. There’s the smallest bit of flex to the screen, but otherwise it all feels reassuringly sturdy.

Those extra millimetres make room for more ports than I’ve come to expect on Copilot+ ultraportables. You get two USB4 Type-Cs and two USB 3.1 Type-As here, along with a 3.5mm headphone port. There’s no HDMI or DisplayPort, but one of the USB4 ports can output to an external screen. Acer also puts a USB-C to HDMI dongle in the box.

A privacy slider for the webcam is a nice touch, as is the fingerprint sensor built into the power button. You’ve got the choice of face or fingerprint biometrics, with both working well to skip the Windows 11 lock screen.

The Acer and AI PC logos on the lid are pretty subtle. Open it up and the one etched into the glass touchpad is a little more blatant, catching the light even when not illuminated. Launch any app that calls the chipset’s NPU into action and it’ll light up, making it clear where AI is lending a helping hand. For the uninitiated it’s a neat way to see what your money has been spent on, though I’m not convinced it needs to light up every time I press the Copilot key. There’s an option to disable it in Acer’s software suite.

Keyboard & touchpad: the write stuff

Like most ultraportables, Acer has kept the Swift 14 AI’s keyboard nice and simple. It hasn’t tried to squeeze a numerical keypad in, so pretty much all the keys you’ll use on the regular are full-size. Only the function row (which doubles as a series of useful shortcut keys) has been shrunk to half-size.

The island-style keys are brightly backlit, with quite a lot of bleed around the edges from the white LEDs. I had no issues working in low light, but have definitely used other laptops that manage to keep their backlights to just the key legends.

There’s not a huge amount of key travel, despite the slightly thicker chassis, so I would regularly bottom out when typing at speed. At least the springy action meant they always popped quickly back into place. Press with any real force and you can’t miss how much the keyboard tray flexes.

The expansive touchpad is super smooth, with a satisfying physical click at the bottom of the pad. It sometimes missed softer taps towards the top, and doesn’t have the best palm rejection I’ve seen lately. I never felt forced to reach for an external mouse, though, which is more than I can say for the Dell XPS 13.

Screen & sound: could do better

Acer’s value-minded approach to the Copilot+ programme means the Swift 14 AI makes do with an LCD display, rather than the superior OLEDs you’ll find elsewhere.

It simply can’t compete on colour, with merely average DCI-P3 coverage and vibrancy that’s merely OK. Contrast is pretty standard, giving darker scenes in streaming TV shows a grey, washed-out appearance when placed side-by-side with an OLED rival. This isn’t the brightest screen going, either. It’s bested by the latest MacBoook Air, and outshone by several Copilot+ models from rival brands I’ve tested this year.

The Swift pulls it back in a few areas, though. The 14.5in, 2560×1600 panel is crisp and detailed enough for desktop duties, and the fantastically smooth 120Hz refresh rate made scrolling through spreadsheets and web pages a treat. An anti-glare finish on my review unit helped stop light reflections from causing problems while working outdoors, too. I wouldn’t recommend it for colour accurate work, but it gets the job done for most office jobs.

The side-firing speakers lack any real bass presence, leaving music sounding rather flat. The onboard DTS software upmixing couldn’t improve things either, though there’s a respectable amount of volume on tap. Headphones are a must for anything more than social media video feeds.

Performance: long lifer

The Swift 14 AI Acer sent me for testing has Qualcomm’s more mainstream Snapdragon X Plus X1P-64-100 chipset, paired with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. Other territories get versions with beefier Snapdragon X Elite silicon, but you can hardly call this machine a slouch. Its ten cores tick along at 3.42GHz, and synthetic tests show a performance gap that’s only minor.

Geekbench 6 sees it stick very closely to rivals like the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, which costs several hundred pounds more. Some benchmarks see it draw level with an M3-powered MacBook Air, while the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H is pushed into second place. I’d call it overkill for simple desktop duties, and perfectly capable of photo editing or video rendering while on the move. My regular mix of browser tabs, Photoshop, Spotify and chat programs were no match for the Swift, which always felt responsive in use.

Qualcomm still has work to do on the 3D side, with the chipset’s integrated graphics not being suited to modern gaming – if you can get them to run on the ARM-based architecture, without relying on performance-sapping emulation layers. Simpler titles are no problem (my Balatro addiction was well served), and this isn’t trying to be a gaming laptop, so I can’t be too critical of performance here.

My biggest takeaway from using the Swift 14 AI while travelling was its phenomenal battery life. In video rundown tests it managed north of 17 hours at sensible brightness levels, and in real-world use I could last several days of basic word processing before needing to plug in. That’s better than the Intel-powered Asus Zenbook 14 OLED and the Snapdragon Dell XPS 13 (which makes do with a considerably smaller battery) and not far off Apple’s outstanding MacBook Air.

One last note on the software side: Acer has over-egged the preinstalled software a bit here, with a bunch of tools and start-up apps that are a bit too intrusive. The one that’s constantly pushing adverts for games to the Windows notification panel is particularly obnoxious, and cheapens a laptop that costs four figures. It’s not like there’s anything above and beyond Windows’ Copilot+ features to take advantage of the NPU, either.

Acer Swift 14 AI verdict

It’s great to see Snapdragon-powered ultraportable laptops drop in price, even just a little, as there’s little else out there running Windows that can match them for battery life. The Acer Swift 14 AI comfortably lasts all day, delivers plenty of performance for most desktop working, comes with ample storage, and has a decent selection of ports for a thin-and-light.

A merely average screen lets the side down, and the way it highlights AI-powered applications doesn’t really add much to the experience – especially while such apps are still a small part of Windows 11. Even with retailer discounts, it’s a decent rather than class-leading notebook.

If you don’t need to go quite so long between trips to a plug socket, there are rivals like the Asus Zenbook 14 and its excellent OLED display that can be had for less cash.

Acer Swift 14 AI technical specifications