Acer Swift X 14 (2024) Review: Compact, Compelling Core Ultra OLED Ultraportable

8.4/ 10
SCORE

Acer Swift X 14 (2024)

$1,700 at Acer

Pros

• Sharp, smooth and vivid OLED display
• Powerful RTX 4070 GPU
• Core Ultra CPU helps battery life

Cons

• Meh design
• So-so build quality

The Acer Swift X 14 is the company's RTX-powered 14-inch laptop, and this year's edition gets a bump with an Intel Core Ultra processor and the option for higher-tier Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics. The internals received an update, but the design and display remain unchanged from last year's model. While I'm happy to see the 2.8K, 120Hz OLED panel return, I was hoping to see an update to the laptop's generic design. 

Plain looks aside, the Swift X 14 offers a strong component mix for the price. Our test system costs $1,700 for a Core Ultra 7 155H CPU and an RTX 4070 GPU, while also supplying an ample 32GB of RAM. Most laptops priced at less than $2,000 feature an RTX 4050 or 4060 graphics and 16GB of RAM. This year's Swift X 14 offers greater graphics performance than last year's RTX 4050-based model, along with better battery life thanks to the more efficient Core Ultra chip. When you add it up, the arresting OLED display and strong overall performance outweigh the uninspired design and make the Swift X 14 a strong contender for content creators looking for a high-powered yet portable OLED laptop. 

Acer sells two Core Ultra-based models of the Swift X 14 in the US. The lower-end config (model SFX14-72G-72VP) with the Core Ultra 7 155H CPU, 16GB of RAM and RTX 4050 graphics costs $1,400. Our test system (model SFX14-72G-7422) adds $300 to the bill for double the RAM and an RTX 4070 GPU. Both models feature a 1TB SSD and a 2.8K (2,880x1,800-pixel) OLED display. 

A Core Ultra 7/RTX 4050 config sold under the Acer Swift X OLED Pro name is available for £1,600 in the UK. Our test system is available for AU$3,599 in Australia.

14-inch OLED with RTX

The only physical difference between this year's model and last year's is a pair of keys that have been reassigned. The right Ctrl key is replaced by a Copilot key to call up Microsoft's AI assistant, and Acer replaced an unused key in the Function row with a key to call up the AcerSense app. The app can be used to set a color profile for the display, adjust power and charging modes and select the GPU mode. 

The Swift X 14 features a MUX switch, so you can choose between Nvidia Optimus, which lets the laptop switch between using the integrated graphics processor and the RTX 4070 GPU depending on the workload or a dGPU-only mode that forces it -- after a reboot -- to use only the high-powered, battery-draining discrete GPU.

The chassis is all aluminum, which is better than an enclosure with perhaps an aluminum lid but a plastic keyboard deck and/or bottom panel. But it doesn't feel as rigid and solid as the all-metal Dell XPS 14 9440 or Lenovo Slim 7i, and the plastic display bezels give it a budget-y look. Check out my review of last year's model for more details on the design. And you can keep reading to see where the performance has improved from last year as well as how much the battery life has increased.

As we've seen with previous Core Ultra laptops, the Swift X 14 didn't offer any performance gains on our application benchmarks compared with its 13th-gen Intel predecessor. It was slightly faster on Geekbench 6 and slightly slower on PCMark 10 than the 2023 model. 

Where we usually see gains with Core Ultra systems is with graphics performance; the integrated Intel Arc GPU shows considerable improvement over the previous Intel Iris Xe iGPU. In the case of the Swift X 14, its graphics boost comes from the fact that we received the step-up model with RTX 4070 graphics compared with last year's model with an RTX 4050. Its scores on our graphics and gaming benchmarks are clearly superior to those of the systems with RTX 4050 or 4060 graphics. 

The Acer Predator Triton 14 gaming laptop had better 3D scores and frame rates because its RTX 4070 is able to run at as much as 105 watts, which is at the higher end of the RTX 4070's scale. The Swift X 14's RTX 4070 is set to run at a max of 50 watts and can borrow an additional 10 watts from the CPU. The Swift X 14 isn't geared toward gaming, though, and has a thinner enclosure than most gaming laptops, so its GPU is set to run at roughly half the wattage of a gaming laptop, such as the Predator Triton 14 to help manage thermals in a tighter space.

The other area where we've seen solid gains from Core Ultra laptops is battery life, and this year's Swift X 14 adds to this trend. It lasted about an hour longer in battery testing than last year's model with a Core i7-13700H chip. Running for nearly 8.5 hours on our online streaming battery life drain test, it's an acceptable result for an OLED laptop.

Using a Spyder X Elite colorimeter, I tested the color gamut and brightness of the 14.5-inch OLED display. It offers good color coverage with 100% of the sRGB and P3 spaces and 93% of AdobeRGB. It reached a peak brightness of 385 nits, which falls short of the 500-nit rating Acer advertises but is typical of a laptop OLED panel. With its excellent contrast and effectively perfect black levels, an OLED display doesn't need to be as bright as an LCD display to remain visible in brightly lit environments.

In addition to its lovely saturated colors and deep blacks, the Swift X 14's display produces crisp text and images thanks to its 2.8K resolution, which offers more than enough pixels across the 14.5-inch, 16:10 screen. With a 120Hz refresh rate -- double that of the standard 60Hz refresh -- videos and games show smooth movement.

The Swift X 14 is a great pick for those who are looking for an OLED ultraportable backed by RTX power but who don't have the budget for the better-built Dell XPS 14 9440. Meanwhile, other 14-inch OLED models, such as the Asus ZenBook14 Q425M, HP Spectre x360 14 and Lenovo Slim 7i, don't offer RTX options. It's more common to find an OLED display and RTX graphics in 16-inch content creation laptops, including the Dell XPS 16 9640, HP Spectre x360 16 and Acer's own Swift X 16. Lastly, the 14-inch Lenovo Slim Pro 9i 14 offers an excellent DisplayHDR 1000 mini-LED screen and an RTX GPU but has yet to receive a Core Ultra update, making it less attractive now than it was last year when we reviewed it.