The term “Budget Laptops” has come a long way. One of the latest clichés in this category recently has been a propagation of laptops offering headline grabbing OLED displays. This makes these systems particularly apt for creators & media consumers alike, though some of these systems have passable build quality & overall appeal.
Acer, which has a long tradition of manufacturing budget-oriented systems has made significant thrust in this direction (along with Asus and Lenovo). After lying under the radar for few years, their Swift 3 and 5 are grabbing attention from critics & consumers alike.
Owing an OLED laptop has always been enticing for me, and after much research, I decided to settle on Acer Swift 14 SF 14-71. To save on the cost, I went for model powered by 13th Gen Core i5 Model (13500H). However, if you can afford, it will be much better to go with AI tuned Core Ultra models which will give you better future-proofing along with superior graphics.
However, irrespective of chipset you settle for, there are combination of features that I particularly admired about Acer –
- 3k OLED display with 90 Hz refresh rate. (Some other companies, particularly Lenovo, only offer Full HD display with standard 60 Hz refresh rate)
- Intel EVO certified, implying that the laptop is packed with best & latest of technologies that the platform offers.
- 2 Thunderbolt-4 ports, allowing it to be charged with standard USB-C connectors.
- Has an Always-On USB-A port to charge phones & other peripherals on the go.
- Micro-SD card to ‘expand’ the storage [Would have preferred a standard SD card though]
- Sedate appearance, fit for using in office. This aspect is further supplemented by it’s weight of only about 1.25 kgs.
Of all the other systems I evaluated, none checked all these boxes. So, although I had reservations regarding few of it’s aspects, I was won over by a combination of attraibutes.
Keeping these aspects in consideration, I will be doing a practical, user-focused review of Acer Swift OLED SF14-71. If you want a more technical overview, you may check out RTINGS.com’s review here.
Design & Build Quality
To put plainly, the design of Acer SF14-71 is unassuming with grayish metallic body decked with black keyboard. Appearance is not very different compared to Dell Latitude laptops you commonly find in office settings, although their build will be of slightly higher level. However, it gets the job done and will nicely blend in office setups while still providing you with an outstanding display for binge watching in downtimes.
Build quality is fair with nice rigidity on the top lid and palm rest area. On pressing hard, the keyboard deck does wobbles a bit, but this is of no concern even in heavy typing.
Being made almost completely of metal (except for casing around screen), the laptop doesn’t attract any fingerprints. If kept carefully, it will retain it’s fit & finish for quite a few years.
All in all, I can’t really complain about build & finish especially in it’s asking price. It can’t really match Macbooks and Dell XPSs in this department, but it’s not competing with them in the price bracket either.
Input Devices
Just like the build, the quality of input devices can also be considered as average. Keyboard is on a slightly smaller size, and the keys has short throws. Acer could have made better use of space around the deck, especially since there are no speaker grills on the side. For casual typing though, the keyboard is fine.
Keyboard has 2 levels of back lighting, which is fine. However, the lighting goes away if keys are not pressed for a while, activated again when any of the keys are hit. I would have preferred MacBook style back lighting that stays at all times once activated.
Just like the keyboard, the trackpad is also on the smaller side. Here too, Acer missed the opportunity to provide a really good & generously sized input device. Thankfully, the trackpad is a glass one with fairly smooth surface & multi-touch gestures.
Port Selection
This is one area, where Acer has probably nailed it. SF14-71 comes with all the ports one will need on a day-to-day basis.
On the left side there a 2 Thunderbolt-4 ports along with a HDMI 2.1 and an always-on USB 3.2 Gen-1 Type-4 port.
On right side you’ll find another USB 3,2 port along with headphone jack & micro-SD card slot. There is also a Kingston lock, if you are into those things. The only thing missing in my opinion is a full-sized SD card, something photographers among us would have welcomed. Also, it would have been preferable to have a Thunderbolt port on either side, rather than having them bunched together.
Long story short, Acer has you covered in this regard, something which can’t be said about majority of thin & light laptops.
Screen
As you may expect, this is the standout feature of Acer SF14-71. While it is not uncommon for mid-tier systems to have screen with 100% SRGB coverage, OLED brings the system to a more niche bracket.
Along with 3k resolution (2880 X 1800) resolution, the screen covers 100% DCI-P3 as well as 100% Adobe RGB. The later in particular makes the laptop suitable for professional color correction & video editing. I have been using Photoshop, Capture One, and da Vinci Resolve regularly, the system has both the power as well as beauty to do the creative tasks.
At 500 nits, the screen also gets sufficiently bright to work outdoors. And while plugged in, it provides HDR support to make movie & YouTube watching even more enjoyable.
Office workers have also not been overlooked. The screen has 16 by 10 aspect ratio, making it taller, more suitable for MS Office applications [which comes bundled with the system]. In addition, it is Eyesafe certified by TÜV Rheinland to reduce fatigue during long working sessions.
However, not everything is rosy on the screen front. For working long hours, the vividness of colors causes slight strain on the eyes. This combined with high brightness & contrast levsls makes it difficult for extended office sessions.
In this regard, I find MacBooks to be better suited for doing a range of work. There screens are also quite bright & color accurate, but lacks extra vividness which makes things slightly uncomfortable.
Audio & video
Acer SF 14-71 has 2 down firing speakers, along with DTS branding. They aren’t very loud (I guess they will be of 2 Watts) but there is DTS branding. DTS which stands for Digital Theatre Sound promises immersive, distortion free audio even at high volumes. And that is the case over here, as the sound has good base & clarity even when cranked up.
Being an EVO certified laptop, SF 14-71 is obliged to provide a webcam of at least Full HD resolution. However, Acer one-up’s it by providing a 1440p QHD camera with temporal noise reduction. The figures though only tell part of the story, and output can be considered as good for most part. There is slight graininess in low light situations and bit of reddish tone to skin, but overall camera is more than sufficient for casual meetings over Skype or Zoom.
Performance & Benchmarks
Powered by 13th generation Intel Raptor Lake CPU, Acer SF 14-71 is plenty powerful for day-to-day tasks. The processor is equipped with 12 cores [4 performance & 8 efficiency cores] and 16 threads. Built using 10 nm fabrication process, the performance cores have base clock speed of 2.6 GHz and can turbo to 4.7 GHz.
If you are wondering about Geekbench scores, according to – website, the processor scores 3479 in single thread and 21857 on multi-thread. These are pretty healthy scores, and should be among the top tiers in consumer laptops.
In case you are wondering, this is how the performance compares with other name brand processors:
As you can see, the benchmarks of 13500H are not very far off from Core Ultra 7 155H, although the Intel Arc graphics of the later will likely be much more powerful than Iris graphics that comes with Raptor Lake architecture.
This powerful chipset is paired with latest iterations of RAM and SSD, as assured by Intel’s EVO platform. 16 GB DDR5 RAM runs at 4800 MHz while SSD is 512 GB Gen-4 variant. Just keep into consideration that the RAM is non-upgradable, and out of 16 GB, Iris graphics will likely branch out 4 GB on majority of occasions.
You may, however, swap out the SSD for a larger capacity (upto 2 TB) if you are tech-savvy type & need more capacity.
Heat & Noise levels
Things are again mixed bag in this department. The system has 2 cooling fans, and they really help things over here. Laptop remains extremely quite for day-to-day tasks, including photo & video editing. The fans do start whirling out when the playing games or doing heavy multi-tasking, although the sound isn’t too distracting.
It’s the same thing about heating. The fans help maintain keyboard and palm-rest at rather comfortable temperature. I could hardly encounter hot air blowing out of exhaust. However, bottom of the laptop, especially area around fans is another story. After 15-20 minutes of normal usage only, it gets sufficiently warm to the extent that putting it on lap is uncomfortable. This combined with the angled, protruding hinge makes working on the go rather difficult.
So, in essence, this Acer is more at home on a flat surface rather than your lap.
Final thoughts..
I really wanted it, but now that I have it, my feelings are mixed. On one hand, I love using it for short bursts and for specific applications like Photoshop, I really don’t really enjoy the keyboard & trackpad, something must for optimal productivity. In addition, as pointed above, this is not the best laptop for working while commuting owing to hot underside & protruding hinge.
These may be minor gripes for someone looking for a cutting-edge configuration with outstanding screen. You also don’t need to worry about dongles, and carrying an adapter if your workday consists of light/moderate usage for 6-7 hours only.
However, do remember that OLED displays are becoming quite common. Both Dell and HP are offering them in their higher-end systems. If you can afford them, they will likely reward you with better built & finish, as well as future support. For people with deeper pockets, MacBook Pro’s with their Mini-LED display will likely have as good a display along with much better performance, build quality, & ongoing support.
I got a really good deal on this Acer, getting it at hair under Rs. 50k during Flipkart’s Big Billion Day sale. It’s normal going price is around 60k with Core Ultra powered iteration going between 70-75k. At that price, I would have explored other options. However, if you can get this Raptor lake powered laptop at a good discount or pick up a good deal on used market, you wouldn’t be disappointed. It has a lot going for it ..
