Acer Swift 5 SF514-55T Laptop review: Slim allrounder on EVO basis

Acer has manufactured the case of the Swift 5 SF514 from a magnesium-aluminum alloy, making it very light but also extremely robust. The display is protected by Corning Gorilla glass, and the whole laptop is covered by a coating layer that was created based on silver ions and is supposed to have an antimicrobial effect, according to Acer. This goes for the whole laptop, including the rubber feet, keyboard, and hinges. The latter allow a display opening angle of about 140 degrees and always keep the display tightly in its position.

In the comparison with other laptops of its class, the Acer Swift 5 SF514 offers similarly small dimensions. These are about the same as the Asus ZenBook 14, with that being even slightly slimmer. However, at a weight of only 1 kg (~2,2 lb), the Acer laptop is the lightest in our test field.

While the amount of connections is limited in the Acer Swift 5, with the available Thunderbolt 4 port, you can add numerous additional connections using the corresponding adapters. However, you have to make do without a storage card reader.

The Acer Swift 5 SF514 is able to create wireless connections via WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0. While the WLAN speeds when transferring data using our Netgear Nighthawk AX12 reference router turn out very good at 1329 Mbit/s on average, when receiving data it is only sufficient for the last place in our test field with an average of 744 Mbit/s.

Like many manufacturers, Acer also uses only a low-resolution webcam with 0.9 MP in the Swift 5 SF514. The image quality turns out correspondingly meager, blurring the contents even in good light conditions. 

The box of the Swift 5 SF514 only contains the laptop and its power supply. However, Acer offers numerous general accessories on its own website.

Acer offers buyers of the Swift 5 SF514 a warranty period of 24 months.

Keyboard

The keys of the Swift 5 SF514 offer a clearly noticeable pressure point that could almost be called "crisp." After a short period of getting used to the keyboard, typing tasks can be accomplished easily. There is also a single-step keyboard illumination.

With the Swift 5 SF514, Acer targets users who are looking for a light laptop with a good system performance to take along with them on the road. Buyers have the choice of several processors from Intel's Tiger Lake generation that also have an influence on the price. There are also several configurations of storage and working memory, depending on your selection of equipment. 

For users with a slightly higher demand on the 3D performance, some models with Nvidia's GeForce MX350 are also available.

The Intel Core i5-1135G7 used here is a quad-core processor from Intel's Tiger Lake generation. Its clock speeds lie between 2.4 and 4.2 GHz, with the configured TDP and cooling system being the determining factors on the performance. Acer has configured the Swift 5 with a PL2 of 64 watts and PL1 of 28 watts, allowing it to reach the maximum performance of the i5-1135G7 at least in theory.

In our Cinebench R15 constant load test, the CPU starts with a good value. Even though this drops over time, it still turns out better than the Intel Core i7-1165G7 in the Asus ZenBook 14, for example. The Swift 5 SF514 also shows itself significantly more powerful than other laptops with the i5-1135G7 such as the Lenovo ThinkPad L13. In the single benchmarks, the CPU in the Acer laptop achieves an above-average result, with the multi-core value in particular turning out higher than for other laptops with the Intel Core i5-1135G7.

In the PCMark 10 benchmark, which evaluates the system performance, the Acer Swift 5 SF514 is able to achieve the second place in our test field. Particularly the values for "Digital Content Creation" and "Essentials" turn out very good here. In everyday operation, the Acer laptop also always runs smoothly and there are no micro stutters or anything like that.

You can find out about the performance of other laptops in our tests in our CPU benchmark list.

In our test configuration, Acer uses a 512 GB SSD from SK Hynix that achieves average results in the storage benchmarks. In the comparison with our selected competitors, the storage also shows itself to be average. However, the read and write rates are still good and are reflected by quick data access and short wait times when starting applications in everyday operation.

You can find out about the performance of other storage solutions in our tests in our HDD/SSD benchmark list.

The internal Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 80EUs graphics unit in the Acer Swift SF514 is responsible for the display of image content. It shares its working memory with the CPU and benefits from a multi-channel configuration as we see it here. Correspondingly, the benchmark results also turn out good, with the Xe Graphics G7 80EUs in the Acer laptop almost reaching the Xe Graphics G7 96EUs. With this, the graphics unit is suited for tasks such as simple image processing, for example.

You can compare the performance of other graphics units in our GPU benchmark list.

The graphics unit of the Acer Swift 5 SF514 is suited only for older games or those with little demands on the graphics performance.

We list the performance that you can expect in additional games in our GPU games list.

During our about hour-long constant load test, the temperatures inside the Swift 5 SF514 rose up to 97 °C (207 °F). Until the end of the test, these were lowered by the cooling system down to an average value of about 60 °C (140 °F), with the clock speeds being lower than the basic clock speed at an average of 1.5 GHz. However, the system could still be operated smoothly. Since a load as in our stress test is almost impossible in everyday operation, users don't need to expect any limitations due to temperatures being too high.

According to our measurements, the Acer Swift 5 has the lowest average performance consumption in idle operation, and with a power consumption of up to 67.2 watts under load, it is also able to lead our test field in the highest power consumption. 

The included power supply is rated for a maximum power delivery of 65 watts, so it is just sufficiently dimensioned to be able to deliver the necessary power to the Acer laptop.