Acer Swift Go 14 AI review: A Snapdragon PC that lives up to its promises in terms of endurance

The Acer Swift Go 14 isn’t original when it comes to AI, taking the cues from its Swift range, while carefully touting its quality as an “AI” PC with a discreet corner. The logo is The dark gray brushed aluminum shell is nevertheless successful, solid in appearance and soft to the touch.

Upon opening, we certainly once again deplore the presence of stickers that are as useless as they are ugly, but for the rest, we’re positively surprised. The machine’s backlit keyboard is excellent, and typing long texts on it is really nice. Ideal key travel, discreet and satisfying noise; Nothing to complain about!

The touchpad is very pleasant and precise, even if it sinks a bit under clicks and has a bit of stiffness in the lower corners. We’re also a bit wary of that funny logo in the upper-right corner, which is there to remind the user that they’re facing a PC full of artificial intelligence. So it lights up as soon as the processor’s NPU is used, which is rare at the moment. Everyone will decide the relevance of this thing…

A word about hinges that can be lowered to an angle of 180°. It’s nice, but we’re sorry it’s a little too loose. When you turn on the PC by opening it, holding it against the base, the screen opens completely by itself.

Connectivity is certainly not perfect, but we have the right to the essentials. On the left side, we identify a USB-A (3.2) port and two USB-C 4.0 ports, both of which can be used to charge and connect an external screen.

On the right side, we discover another USB-A port and a jack socket. It’s a shame not to have an HDMI socket and a memory card port, such a practical pairing for everyday use.

Qualcomm SoC is bound, however wireless connectivity is excellent. Acer Swift Go 14 AI has Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. It is impossible to improve at the end of 2024.

The camera is also a nice surprise. It delivers a stunning image with good contrast, up to a resolution of 1440p. This makes it a very good tool for video conferencing, knowing that here we can take advantage of effects specific to NPU-equipped PCs (filters, eye tracking, etc.). Oh, and that logo that lights up on the touchpad…

Even in terms of noise and heat, this PC performs well. This rarely happens, and when it’s used seriously during handbrake encoding in our test case, it remains very sensible with our probe measuring just 34.3 dB. This often goes hand in hand: the maximum temperature measured by our thermal camera at the hot air outlet of the hinge at 43.6°C is also very high.

The Acer Swift Go 14 AI is equipped with a very modest Snapdragon X Plus chip, poetically named X1P-42-100. A chip that differs from its high-end counterparts with an Orion core count of 8, less cache (30 MB) and a maximum frequency of 3.4 GHz. Its Adreno graphics circuit is much less efficient than the Snapdragon X Elite and even the Snapdragon X Plus X1P-64-100.

Obviously, this is felt when using the computer on our test bench. It logically gets a slightly weaker index of 57 after passing all the tests we submitted to it. As a reminder, these consist of a mixture of synthetic standards and perform tasks required in various software programs (Photoshop, Handbrake, Blender, Premiere, etc.).

Don’t let these figures mislead you: if the machine isn’t clearly equipped for intensive creative tasks, it’s perfectly capable of office automation, web consulting and multimedia.

Where it certainly won’t shine is in-game given its very low 3D computing power. However, this machine is more than enough to entertain with casual titles, or even some competitive games. Rocket League For example, native definition (1920 x 1200 pixels) runs perfectly at around 70 images per second (fps), with all details maximized.

Finally, a word on the satisfactory performance of the SSD, even if we have seen faster disks recently. With 4.9 GB/s read and 4 GB/s write, you should have no problem handling large files.

The Acer Swift Go 14 AI is equipped with a 14-inch IPS panel (1920 x 1200 pixels, 120 Hz) non-touch and matte, excellent in some aspects and a little less good in others. Let’s start with the good points: color calibration is near perfection with an average delta E measured at 2 with our probe. The aspect ratio is also very accurate with a ratio of 1287:1. Finally, the machine’s matte panel absorbs reflections well with an average reflectance of 20.5%.

On the other hand, the color temperature curve shows a relative distance from the target of 6500 K to an average of 5924 K and therefore leans slightly towards the warmer side. More seriously, maximum brightness, measured at 331 cd/m², is a bit low. This isn’t a problem when used indoors, but if you plan on occasionally using this machine outside, when the sun is shining it can be a problem!

This is a real strong point of this machine! First, the Swift Go 14 AI is light enough (1.3 kg) and thin (15 mm) to easily slip into a bag without being too noticeable. Its charger is otherwise discreet and lightweight, and there’s nothing stopping you from using another USB-C charger to recharge it.

It was above all its independence that appealed to us. Sure, it doesn’t quite reach the 17 hours and 14 minutes of its big brother, the Acer Swift 14 AI, which is even better in that area, but the Swift Go 14 AI still managed 15 hours and 53 minutes in our conventional battery life video playback. continued. Chrome, screen calibrated at 200 cd/m²).

This is a very good score, which is obviously linked to the energy efficiency of the Snapdragon X Plus that puts this PC among the best students in the Snapdragon world. It is also important to mention that Acer has equipped it with a large 75 Wh battery.