Acer Swift 3 SF315 (i5-7200U, GeForce MX150) Laptop Review

Acer provides its newbie with a metal case, which in the case of our test unit is in midnight blue. The top of the base and the lid have a brushed-metal finish which makes fingerprints stand out and really hard to remove, if possible at all, so that they look quite unattractive.

This is unfortunate, since we actually like the design. Acer put neat silver edges around the base, the touchpad, and the fingerprint scanner. These form the visual highlights, together with the edgy hinge typical for Acer and the silver Acer lettering on the back. Unfortunately, the edge of the base is somewhat sharp, even though this did not lead to any ergonomic problems during the test.

Despite the use of metal, it does not take much force to twist the base to some extent. This produces unattractive but harmless-sounding creaking noises. The lack of a notch makes the device slightly difficult to open and if you don't keep it down with the other hand, the base comes up as well when you try to lift the lid. On the other hand, the lid does not bounce much after jerky movements. It can only be warped to a limited extent, and if you press on the back, you can see distortions in the image in front. The base appears solid but can be easily depressed in the center above the keyboard. 

In terms of the workmanship, all is in best order. The few case parts were assembled cleanly, and we did not notice any overhanging edges or irregular gaps.

"Swift 3 Ultraslim" is the slogan on Acer's website of the Swift 3 SF315-51G. Compared to the other devices in the test (15.6-inch), this is absolutely true. The test unit has the smallest footprint as well as the lowest thickness and weight. Particularly in comparison to the quite large, thick, and hefty Acer Aspire VX5, our Swift 3 appears very compact. However, in light of the considerably more powerful hardware (i7-7700HQ, GTX 1050 Ti), the VX5 has more need for cooling. The same also goes for the Asus FX553VD, which takes up slightly less room than the VX5, but is the thickest of the devices.

"Standard fare plus USB Type-C" - this could best describe the connection equipment. Right-handed people will thank Acer for positioning the only USB-2.0 port, which is intended for an external mouse, sensibly far back on the right side. Next to it is just the card reader, from which half of the SD card will still stick out, and the opening for the Kensington lock. In this way, there can be no collisions between cables and USB sticks. The USB 3.0, HDMI, and audio ports are in the back area of the left side. Acer deserves praise for this almost ideal positioning of the ports.

Acer remains faithful to their preference for very slow card readers and equips the Swift 3 SF315-51G with a reader that is slow even for its measly USB-2.0 connection. In contrast, Asus and Lenovo have a heart for photographers and have equipped their competitors at least with a USB-3.0 connection. As always, we measured the transfer rates with our Toshiba Exceria Pro SDXC 64 GB UHS-II reference storage card.

Even though it is not very up-to-date anymore, thanks to the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265 MIMO-2x2 module with Bluetooth 4.2 (possibly a driver update might be necessary), the Acer Swift 3 achieves standard IEEE-802.11ac speeds in the 5-GHz band during sending and receiving. Of the theoretical gross data rate of 867 MBit/s, about 200 MBit/s is regularly used for the overhead. Except for the ThinkPad, the competitors in the test all use the same model as our test unit and also have the same speed, while the Qualcomm-Atheros module in the Lenovo clearly falls behind particularly during sending.

The Acer Swift 3 SF315-51G-55Z0 has a fingerprint-sensor for placing your finger. After a slightly hairy setup procedure with Windows Hello, the laptop could be unlocked quickly and reliably with it. A Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0 is also included.

Besides the required power supply, only the customary setup and warranty instructions are in the box. Acer does not offer any accessories designed specifically for the Swift 3. On the web page under "Purchase together with this," you can take a look at several universally usable accessories such as a USB Type-C to HDMI adapter and warranty extensions subject to charge.

Some maintenance tasks might turn out to be difficult, since there is no maintenance flap and the bottom of the case is flush with the top of the base, so that after having removed 12 Torx screws, you might only get access to the insides, including the battery, from the top.

Acer offers a two-year send-back warranty. The company also offers warranty extensions for purchase. Please see our Guarantees, Return Policies & Warranties FAQ for country-specific information.

The current Core i5-7200U is probably the most widely used Intel Kaby-Lake ULV processor, which is often encountered in office or business and multimedia notebooks in particular. Thanks to its two cores with Hyper-Threading and a basic clock speed of 2.5 GHz to 3.1 GHz (Turbo), it handles even the most demanding tasks without any complaints, but it is less suitable for demanding games, which often profit considerably from four or more physical cores. The CPU integrates Intel HD Graphics 620 and a DDR4-RAM controller and is suited for very compact and flat laptops, thanks to its TDP of only 15 watts.

The single and multi-core performance is on the expected levels and is almost identical with that of the ThinkPad E570's with the same CPU. Due to its higher clock speed, the i7-7700HQ (4x 2.8 - 3.8 GHz, Hyper-Threading, TDP 45 W) in the two other comparison devices achieves a slightly better score in the single-core benchmark of Cinebench R15 and is able to fully use the power of its four cores with eight threads in the multi-core benchmark. As you can see in the results of our CB-15 multi-core loop, the performance remains the same even under constant load, which can only lead to the conclusion that the 2-core Turbo or 3.1 GHz is optimally used. Away from the power grid, the performance does not change. 

For our measurement of the system performance we use PCMark 8 again, which does not put too much stake in the GPU performance, as is well known. The first thing we see is that all the laptops in the tests are very close in their test scores with differences of at most 13%, so that the differences in practice should be very limited. The bad results of the Acer Aspire VX5-591G can be traced back to its HDD, and the first places of the Asus FX553VD can be attributed to its combination of quad-core CPU and SSD.

Subjectively, the performance conforms to the good PCMark results, and the operation is almost always very smooth.

With the new Pascal-based GeForce MX150 (Laptop GT 1030, GP-108 chip), Nvidia has finally introduced into the market the long-anticipated successor of the widely used but now outdated GeForce 940MX, which could or can often be found in multimedia laptops. The standard storage is 2 GB of GDDR5-VRAM with an effective clock speed of 6000 MHz. Fortunately, there is no DDR3 variant anymore, as in the 940MX. As in the slightly more economic predecessor, the 64-bit storage interface is the bottleneck. However, the MX150 can still best even the older GeForce GTX 950M (128-bit).

Our chart below shows the typical differences between the usual mid-range GPUs in the 3DMarks, up to the GTX 1050 Ti which beats the MX150 by up to 119%. Battery operation has no influence on the overall score of the Fire-Strike benchmark.

In contrast to the old 940MX, the MX150 represents a clear improvement compared to CPU graphics such as the Intel HD 620. It enables medium presets at 1366x768 pixels even in many of the current games such as the fancy Rise of the Tomb Raider. Less demanding games such as Rocket League even run smoothly in high settings and Full HD, while in other top games such as Ghost Recon Wildlands or PUBG you are again limited to lower presets at 1280x720 pixels.

Frequency comparison (checkboxes selectable!)

Since the components of the Acer Swift 3 and the Lenovo ThinkPad E570 use a similar amount of power (both i5-7200U, MX150 <-> 950M), they also reach a similar overall power consumption, with the ThinkPad being slightly more efficient in idle mode. With its quad-core and the GTX 1050, our Asus has slightly more power-hungry hardware. However, it profits from Nvidia Optimus, which was deactivated in the Acer Aspire VX5 (i7-7700HQ, GTX 1050 Ti), which uses G-sync instead, leading to the highest overall consumption by far. Under load, the 65-W power supply reaches its limits.

The Lenovo ThinkPad E570 has a similar power usage as our test unit, but it has a slightly smaller battery, which reflects in the 8% shorter runtime. Due to the different hardware, a comparison with the two other laptops in the test is not very useful. If we search for 15.6-inch notebooks with an i5-7200U and SSD in our database and limit ourselves to the practically relevant WLAN-test (how we test), we can attest the Swift 3 with an above average endurance. Eight-and-a-half hours with medium brightness does not offer a lot of reserves but should get most users through the workday.