Acer Swift Go 14 review

Our Verdict

92%

A shining example of what production laptops should feel like to use, the Acer Swift Go 14 brings laptop design back to the core fundamentals and does it all perfectly. While there are more powerful and expensive options on the market, few offer the experience that the Swift Go 14 does.

Acer have been on a tear lately, producing some of the best laptops on the market and really starting the process of shedding their association with being a budget laptop specialist. The Acer Swift Go 14 is just another stellar release that is easily one of the best production-focused laptops I’ve ever used.

When it comes to being focused on work and allowing me to stay on task, the Acer Swift Go 14 is the perfect laptop. It may seem odd to praise a laptop of offering no overbearing features or design choices, but sometimes all you need is simplicity.

Here are the specs of the Acer Swift Go 14 that I reviewed:

Pros

• Price to power value is excellent
• OLED screen is stunning
• Webcam quality is insane
• Wealth of ports
• Low Blue Light certification helps with long sessions

Cons

• Noisy under stress
• Plain design

Acer Swift Go 14 design

The one area where I feel the Acer Swift Go 14 could do a little better is overall design on the laptop. It comes across very basic and in their defence, there’s no one really doing anything major with laptop design outside of those in the gaming category, so perhaps it was just an easy way to keep costs down.

That being said, there are some massive design choices that I need to shout out. The inclusion of Low Blue Light certification is a major win because it offers a level of visual comfort that is unrivaled. Long sessions on the Acer Swift Go 14 are a breeze as the reduced blue light rays help with the feeling of fatigue you can often get after staring at a screen for too long.

I was also blown away by the 2.8K OLED display. While higher quality displays like this are becoming more common, the level of quality here is well above what I expected. A super thin bezel also means there’s no distracting plastic rim obstructing the display so you really are getting your money’s worth.

One the flip side, the sound quality is fairly standard when compared to how great the display is. I’ll admit that I typically use headphones or Apple AirPods more often than not, but when testing out the native speakers, they are perfectly fine but nothing special.

While I am happy enough with the feel of the keyboard and track pad, I feel like this could be quite a divisive feature of the Acer Swift Go 14. The track pad is quite small and the clicks of both it and the keyboard could be described as feeling quite cheap. I will argue that they’re basic, yes, but when it comes to sacrifices for the sake of price, I can deal with basics here as long as there is a ton of quality elsewhere (and there certainly is).

Another major win for the Acer Swift Go 14 is the webcam quality. Coming in at 1440p means you can show up to just about any virtual meeting looking your best. I’ll be honest, I kinda wish I had a ring light to help make the most of the immense quality on show here. With most built-in laptop webcams being 720p, this is such a nice surprise and really shows that Acer knows where to focus its efforts when it comes to product design.

One thing I’m a big believer in is laptops having a wealth of well-placed ports. I’m happy to report that the Acer Swift Go 14 meets this admirably. There are two USB-C ports, two USB-A 3.2 ports, A HDMI 2.1, MicroSD slot, 3.5 mm jack, and a Kensington Lock. On top of this is a fingerprint sensor built-in to the power key. This makes signing into the laptop a lot easier and offers an additional level of security that is very welcome.

Finally, the chassis of the Acer Swift Go 14 is about as basic as it comes. I’ve already noted this as a downside for the laptop but it might be extremely bothersome to some potential buyers. For for me, given that everything almost else is above expectations, I was able to just move past the plain overall design quite easily.

Acer Swift Go 14 performance

Now for how the Acer Swift Go 14 performs. The bottom line here is that there is power to spare in the model that I reviewed. Not once did I run into any issues like slowdown, long loading times, or even overheating.

This is what makes the Swift Go 14 one of the finer productivity laptops I’ve had the pleasure of using. My go to is the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5, which probably wins out against some of the basic design features, but from a performance standpoint, the Swift Go 14 blows it out of the water.

With the exception of the TwinAir cooling system being a bit loud at times, there really wasn’t a single issue I could identify as a problem. I kept waiting for that moment where the mask would slip and I would find that one major issue that means I couldn’t recommend buying this laptop, but it never came.

Ample RAM and a 1TB SSD mean that you shouldn’t struggle with memory for as long as you own the laptop which is always a blessing. One thing to keep an eye on though is the pre-installed bloatware that can still be quite intrusive on Acer laptops. Some of it is useful, but certain options like AI audio control can actually have a negative effect on how other people sound in online meetings so it’s worth turning these off until you know they are needed.

Even though it’s not designed to be a gaming laptop, I still tried out a few titles just to see where the performance was with the very capable Intel Iris Xe graphics that also come with 8 GB of dedicated memory. As expected, I got decent performance in some basic games like League of Legends, Valorant, and World of Warcraft and got away with a stable framerate at mostly medium graphics levels. It did, however, begin to struggle with Warzone 2 and Fortnite so I wouldn’t advise trying to push it to play these types of games.

Should you buy the Acer Swift Go 14

I can absolutely recommend buying the Acer Swift Go 14. My only warning would be that you can easily look towards slightly lower specs to save a little money if you need to stick to a budget.

There is so much that this laptop gets right that if you’re in need of a machine that is perfect for any work, be it career or school, then the Acer Swift Go 14 cannot be overlooked.

Verdict

I am incredibly happy with the performance offered by the Acer Swift Go 14. There’s even ample room to move down from the specs that were provided in this review model and still have it be fit for use.

In a market when looking for a laptops under $1,000 feels like having to make far too many compromises, the Acer Swift Go 14 makes it abundantly clear that this doesn’t need to be the case.

I can’t recommend the Swift Go 14 enough for those who need a hugely reliable and easy to use productivity laptop for work or school.