Laptop manufacturers should really stop over-using the term AI to market their products. The recently launched Acer Swift 14 AI, for example, even has an AI activity indicator that glows when performing AI tasks. Luckily, the Swift 14 AI is a lot more than its AI branding. It’s got excellent battery life, a good display, plenty of ports, a sleek design, and decent performance.
The Acer Swift 14 AI has the latest Intel Core Ultra Series 2 processors. Our review unit, which has the Intel Core Ultra 5 226V processor, costs Rs. 89,999, whereas the top-end variant with the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V CPU costs Rs. 104,999. Should this be your next work laptop? Read on to find out.
Acer Swift 14 AI Design
The Swift 14 AI sports a simple design that won’t turn many heads, though some might be curious about the unusual logo on the lid (other than the Acer branding) or the glowing one on the trackpad. It features an aluminium chassis with a matte finish that can pick up fingerprints and smudges but is easy to clean.
The lid is sturdy and has no flex
The lid is sturdy with barely any flex, and there’s a 180-degree hinge that also feels durable. And for those wondering, yes, you can lift the lid with one finger. The 180-degree hinge also means that you can lay the laptop flat if needed.
The 180-degree hinge seemed durable
I also liked the chamfered metal edges around the display. The bottom is removable and is also made of metal. There’s no flex on the inside unless you press hard at the centre of the keyboard. It’s a well-built laptop despite not using an unibody construction. It does offer MIL-STD-810 durability, which is nice.
The lid features a chamfered bezel that adds to the design
The intake ports are on the bottom, whereas you’ll find the exhaust ports are placed at the rear. You’ll also find large rubber feet and dual bottom firing speakers at the bottom. The design incorporates subtle curves but largely follows a flat, angular aesthetic. At its thinnest point, the Swift 14 AI measures just 9.7 mm.
The laptop has downward-firing dual speakers
There are enough ports to connect all kinds of peripherals: an HDMI 2.1 port, dual USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, two USB Type-C (Thunderbolt 4) connectors, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Above the display is a 1440p QHD IR camera, a physical privacy shutter, and dual microphones.
You get plenty of ports on the Swift 14 AI
On the inside, you’ll find a full-size, backlit keyboard that’s actually nice to type on. There’s enough spacing between the keys, and they also offer a good amount of key travel.
The keyboard is nice to type on thanks to the adequate travel and spacing between keys
The backlight is adjustable and can be turned off. You also get the Copilot key and an AcerSense key on the keyboard. The power button also doubles as a fingerprint scanner, which worked quite well during my review.
Below the keyboard is an adequately sized touchpad. It supports multi-touch gestures as usual, is protected by Gorilla Glass, and has an ‘Activity indicator’ as Acer calls it. The indicator is located at the top right corner of the touchpad and glows whenever you turn on the laptop, use Copilot or AI apps, or use the NPU.
The Activity Indicator pulsates whenever there’s any AI-related activity
Although this indicator doesn’t serve any purpose, it does look cool.
Acer Swift 14 AI Performance
Our Acer Swift 14 AI review unit comes with the Series 2 Intel Core Ultra 5 226V processor, Intel Arc 130V GPU, 16GB LPDDR5X RAM, and 512GB NVMe PCIe Gen 4 SSD. There’s also a variant with the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V chipset, which gets the Intel Arc 140V GPU, 32GB RAM, and 1TB storage. We ran our usual set of synthetic benchmarks to see how it compared to some of the other laptops that we’ve tested with the Series 2 chipsets. The tests were performed with the laptop set to Performance mode.
| Benchmark | Acer Swift 14 AI | Asus Zenbook S 14 | HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geekbench 6 Single | 2,446 | 2,520 | 2,744 |
| Geekbench 6 Multi | 9,478 | 10,688 | 10,957 |
| PCMark 10 | 6,338 | 6,836 | 7,008 |
| 3DMark Night raid | 32,549 | 34,727 | 29,096 |
| 3DMark Steel Nomad Light | 2,405 | 3,243 | 2,622 |
| Cinebench R23 Single | 1,784 | N/A | 1,733 |
| Cinebench R23 Multi | 6,151 | N/A | 6,608 |
| Geekbench AI (NPU) | 27,064 (Quantized) | N/A | 28676 (Quantized) |
The laptop performed quite well when it came to browsing, streaming content, YouTube, and some light gaming. With regular usage, the laptop barely heated up. However, during benchmarks, when playing more demanding games and running multiple apps, the laptop got slightly warm, and the fans kicked up. You can play games on the laptop thanks to the Intel Arc 130V GPU. I played Forza Horizon 4, and the laptop delivered around 30-40fps in low settings. I wouldn’t recommend using the laptop for gaming, though. You could, however, play indie games that are light on graphics.
The laptop performs well in day-to-day tasks
Talking about graphics, the 14-inch OLED display on the laptop is excellent for viewing content. I enjoyed streaming Netflix and Amazon Prime content on the Swift 14 AI. The colours are vivid, and you also get HDR support. The display offers 1920 x 1200 pixels resolution with a 60Hz refresh rate and 400 nits brightness. The top-end model gets a 3K OLED display.
The OLED panel is one of the best features of the laptop
The laptop runs Windows 11 Home and offers several AI features such as Copilot, Cocreator, Live Captions, and Windows Studio Effects. Acer has also baked in some AI features, such as AcerSense, which even gets a dedicated button. This lets you change system settings and more. You also get Acer LiveArt 2.0, Acer VisionArt, and Acer User Sensing 2.0.
The web camera performed well in good lighting conditions, with decent colour reproduction and dynamic range. However, there is a lot of noise in low-light scenarios. The IR sensor also enables face unlock via Windows Hello, but I preferred the fingerprint scanner on the keyboard as it was more accurate.
The laptop features a physical privacy shutter for the web camera
In terms of audio performance, the Acer Swift 14 AI has dual downward-firing speakers, which are below average. They aren’t loud, nor do they deliver any thump. Acer has also provided DTS:X Ultra Audio support, but that doesn’t do anything to improve the audio performance. The sound on the laptop is a big letdown.
Lastly, the Swift 14 AI’s 65W battery impressed me. The laptop easily lasts a full day of work. When the battery is low, you can quickly charge it using the included 65W USB Type-C charger.
Acer Swift 14 AI Verdict
The Acer Swift 14 AI is a very good work laptop with good build quality, an excellent OLED display, long-lasting battery life, and decent performance across all kinds of apps. The laptop is great value for money, no doubt, but it’s not because of the AI branding or features. Don’t buy the laptop for the AI features, buy it for all the other useful features that it offers. However, if all you need is a good laptop for work or home use, the Swift 14 AI is great.
