Acer certainly has a lot to be proud off this year. The company has gone from manufacturing a decent laptop lineup to providing premium quality laptops at the most aggressive price points. Case and point; the stunning Acer Swift 5 SF514-51-54T8.
On its latest entry towards the ultrabook market Acer has managed to equip this relatively affordable laptop with features typically reserved for the higher end models. Stuff like a 13 hour battery life, a seventh generation Core i5 CPU and a Full HD display with Acer Color intelligence are just a few reasons why we completely love this laptop (and you'll likely love it too).
Overall, we can safely say that this is one of the best options in the market but don't take our word for it, check out our review of the Acer Swift 5 SF514-51-54T8 and draw up your own conclussions.
Acer Swift 5 SF514-51-54T8 Review of Acer's finest work
High end design at its finest
From the moment you lay your eyes on the Acer Swift 5 SF514-51-54T8 you're bound to fall in love with it and once you hold it in your hands you'll never wanna let go. Here's a 14 inch laptop with an aluminium body that only weighs 2.7 pounds. That's right, it's about as light as the 13 inch MacBook Air while also delivering 0.7 inches more in screen real-estate. It's also incredibly thin, measuring 0.57 inches, almost half the thickness of a "traditional laptop".
The display is Acer at its finest. You see, it's not "just a Full HD display". No, this is an IPS CineCrystal LED-Backlit display with Acer color intelligence and Acer's very own BlueLightShield technology.
What does this mean? Well, for one thing you're less prone to strain your eyes when staring at the screen for long periods of time. Also, Acer won't oversaturate your colors while at the same time delivering a vivid image that's perfect for photographers looking for a laptop to edit their best pics.
Finally, to top it all off we've got both a backlit keyboard as well as a fingerprint scanner. Specifically, the scanner uses Windows Hello to securely and automatically log you onto your Windows account by using your fingerprint making the process both seamless and more secure.
The best components in town...
Moving on from its stylish design and onto its key features we've got an 7th generation Intel Core i5-7200U processor that works at a base speed of 2.5GHz and can reach a maximum turbo speed of 3.1GHz with 3MB of Intel's smart cache and a 14nm process. It goes without saying that this is possibly the best consumer processor you could hope for.
Sure enough an i7 would give you a better performance by about 10% but you also carry the weight of it being more powerhungry and therefore less efficient in terms of battery performance. We simply love the i5 lineup and the seventh generation makes it even better than ever before offering a laptop that's up and ready for pretty much anything you can think off.
Be it editing videos or streaming Full HD video to working with several virtual machines at a time, this CPU is more than equipped to take on the challenge without breaking a sweat.
As far as multitasking goes, we're excited to see 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM, a type of RAM that's less powerhungry whilst also extremely efficient at managing multiple tasks at a time. The most dedicated powerusers who need to launch several apps at any given time need not worry with this set of specs. The only downside we see here is that, being an ultrabook, RAM is not user upgradable (as far as Acer's let us know). However, if you're not gonna be able to expand RAM then 8GB is where you wanna be so as to keep working without any lags in sight.
Finally, the last key component and one of our personal favorites is the inclusion of a 256GB SSD storage unit. That's a great capacity that means you don't have to compromise between storage capacity and storage velocity since Acer is offering you both, a very rare thing in the current market.
The solid state drive couples with the 7th generation CPU and 8GB of RAM will give you a snappy performance that will load up in seconds and will launch apps in a blink of an eye. And trust me, once you get a taste for the velocity of an SSD unit you will wonder why you ever used a slow hard drive.
Casual gaming is on the table and so is massive battery life
Typically ultrabooks don't offer all that much in terms of gaming because they come with an integrated graphics controller. The Acer Swift 5 SF514-51-54T8 is no different but it does pack the latest Intel HD Graphics 620 graphics chip which will deliver a smooth performance on both indie games as well as some current blockbusters.
It's not a gaming laptop by any means but, as shown in notebookcheck you should be able to see a decent frame rate on an HD settings (or a bit less) with games like Overwatch, TitanFall 2 and Battlefield 1 as well as your less intensive Fifa 15 and Rainbow Six Siege.
As for battery life, you can forget all about your charger, at least on a normal day. Specifically, whilst still maintaining a slick profile, the SF514-51-54T8 packs a 3 cell 4670mAh battery that delivers an impressive 13 hour battery life at its max.
Of course these numbers aren't set in stone and you can bet battery life won't be as impressive if you're watching all your favorite movies on a marathon but with relative normal usage that mixes web browsing, editing docs, coding and watching videos you can hope to hit the solid 10-11 hour mark which is quite impressive either way.
More stuff worth knowing
Being an ultrabook also means making a few sacrifices along the road. Amongst such sacrifices is the lack of a DVD reader as well as the lack of an ethernet port for a wired internet connection. Setting that aside, connectivity is pretty neat with two USB 3.0 ports, a standalone USB 3.1 Type C first generation port, an HDMI port and an SD card reader. All in all, a pretty sweet combo.
As for the WiFi aspect, you get the latest and greatest WiFi ac standard with a dual band antenna that supports both 2.4 and 5GHz frequencies as well as MU-MIMO technology. This is pretty great as it amps up download speeds considerably though I should point out that it's better if you have a compatible ac router otherwise you'll still be using the standard b/g/n frequencies.
It's also worth a mention the HD webcam with built in mic as well as the Acer True Harmony speaker technology which is reinforced thanks to Dolby Premium Sound which manages to deliver a richer sound quality then your standard laptop sound system.
What's the verdict? Should I buy this laptop?
Ok, so we know this isn't the cheapest laptop to hit the market, but it is relatively cheap -check pricing here- for everything it packs. For what you'd usually pay for a mid range laptop you're getting a high end premium design laptop with all the benefits that come attached to it.
As we've mentioned in our review of the Acer Swift 5 SF514-51-54T8, we've got a spectacular display, a nice lightweight design, 7th generation CPU, a pretty good integrated graphics, amazing battery life and, to top it all off, a massive 256GB SSD storage, all this on a secure laptop that even comes with fingerprint recognition.
Overall, you're getting a high end ultrabook that's bound to satisfy your needs and unless you're a hardcore gamer we can't imagine anyone not loving this laptop.