Acer Swift Go 14 Review: A Slim Laptop Ready for AI
Acer gives us an inexpensive way to get ready for the AI-powered future with the latest version of the Swift Go 14 laptop. The big headline here is that this is one of the first wave of laptops with Intel's new Core Ultra chips, which are designed to help with onboard AI processing. That's going to be an ever-bigger deal over the next couple of years.
It's also a very affordable way to get future-proofed for AI tasks. For $899, it includes an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU, 16GB of RAM, a big 1TB SSD and Intel Arc graphics, plus a 16:10 touchscreen.
At just under three pounds, it's light for a laptop with a 14-inch screen. The aluminum chassis lifts up slightly in the rear when the lid is open, giving the keyboard a slight ergonomic tilt. The touchpad here is larger than last year's Swift 14, even as the entire system is a little thinner.
That big touchpad is about as good as Windows laptops get in this category, and works well with multi-touch gestures like two-finger scrolling. The keyboard is set up the way I like laptop keyboards to be, with the alternate functions of the function key row enabled by default, including brightness and volume controls -- on some laptops, you need to hold down the Fn key plus the correct function key to do that.
The 1,920x1,200 display has a 16:10 aspect ratio, which I always like seeing because it gives you a little more vertical space on the screen, and makes it a little easier to read work documents or long web pages. The IPS display has a matte finish, which is something usually only found in professional laptops, but I appreciate for cutting down on glare and being generally very readable. The screen gets nice and bright as well, and I spent most of my time with it set at 50% or below, even in a brightly lit airport (where I'm writing this right now).
Where a lot of ultraportable laptops have only a couple of USB-C/Thunderbolt ports, in the Swift Go 14, you get a pair of those, plus two USB-A ports, HDMI out, and a microSD card slot. Having these built in saves me the hassle of carrying around an extra dongle or hub to get these connections.
An opening shot at AI performance
The real reason the Swift Go 14 is notable is that it's one of the first laptops with an AI-ready CPU. In this case, it's the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, which has six performance cores and eight efficiency cores, but also a new low-power, dual-core NPU, or neural processing unit, to help with tasks that use local AI processing.
That's going to become increasingly important in the second half of 2024 and into 2025 and beyond. Right now, there's a limited number of local AI apps you can run -- for example, NVIDIA's ChatRTX -- but in the very near future, having an NPU will help with Microsoft Copilot's local version, apps like Photoshop running local AI, etc.
For now, most AI still runs in the cloud, but there are a handful of NPU-enabled examples you can find, like Microsoft Studio effects, which uses AI to help the webcam frame your image and blur your background, and Acer's own Purified Voice app, which removes background noise from calls. It helps that the webcam is higher-end than most, with a rarely seen 1440p resolution.
Performance and benchmarks
Even without a lot of local AI apps to run today, the 14th-gen Intel Core Ultra has really excellent overall performance, both in our standard benchmark tests and when running real-world tasks. The Arc graphics from Intel are a step above the standard integrated graphics laptops like this usually have. You can even do some light gaming, and the system ran our Dying Light 2 benchmark at 21 frames-per-second on High detail settings, but a more playable 33 frames per second at Medium settings, both at the full 1,920x1,200 screen resolution.
Specs:
- CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 155H
- OS: Windows 11 Home
- RAM: 16GB LPDDR5X
- Storage: 1TB
- GPU: Intel Arc
- Price as reviewed: $899
Scores:
- GeekBench 6 (Single-core): 2323
- GeekBench 6 (Multi-core): 12018
- 3D Mark Wild Life Extreme (Unlimited): 4474
- 3D Mark Time Spy: 3821
- Dying Light 2 benchmark (avg FPS): 21
The benchmark results show impressive performance in jumping to the Core Ultra era, and in addition, battery life was excellent at around eight hours when running real-world tasks.
For great performance, a very high-res webcam, bright screen, and a generous RAM/SSD combo, the fact that the Swift Go 14 is under $900 is impressive. Add in the fact that it'll be ready for the next gen of local AI applications and you have an overall excellent ultraportable laptop to kick off the AI era with.
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Micro Center Editor-in-Chief Dan Ackerman is a veteran tech reporter and has served as Editor-in-Chief of Gizmodo and Editorial Director at CNET. He's been testing and reviewing laptops and other consumer tech for almost 20 years and is the author of The Tetris Effect, a Cold War history of the world's most influential video game. Contact Dan at dackerman@microcenter.com.
