Acer Swift 3 (16-Inch) Review

Once a rarity, laptops with 16-inch screens have become more common and impressive in recent years, overcoming the physical design limitations that once limited them to 15-inch proportions. The 16-inch version of the Acer Swift 3 (starts at $869; $999 as tested) continues the trend of bigger screens and adds an impressive set of features under the hood, as well, including a Thunderbolt 4 port, long-lasting battery life, and an efficient processor that performs admirably under load. Those looking for a midrange desktop replacement will find a lot to love with this 16-inch Acer Swift 3.

Large and in Charge

The Acer Swift 3 reviewed here (model SF316-51) is refreshed for 2022 and makes a good first impression based on its internals alone. Equipped with an 11th Generation Intel H-series processor, the Acer Swift 3 is perfectly suited for productivity and is top of the line for a sub-$1,000 laptop. (That is, until the newly announced 12th Generation Alder Lake CPUs start to make their way to the scene.) H-series processors are mostly found in gaming laptops, which makes their appearance here in a general-purpose machine all the sweeter. (Read more about choosing the best laptop processor.)

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(Photo: Molly Flores)

Our review model includes 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, an Intel Core i7-11370H, and Iris Xe integrated graphics. There’s a slightly cheaper configuration available that includes an Intel Core i5-11300H and 8GB of RAM, though the rest of the feature set remains intact. No matter the configuration, you'll end up with a machine with more pep in its step than the 14-inch Acer Swift 3, which we reviewed late last year.

Not too flashy, the Swift 3’s silver metal chassis is a sturdy piece of hardware. Weighing 3.9 pounds, the Swift 3 weighs less than the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus’ 4.4 pounds and is well under the 5.3-pound XPS 17 (9710). For a laptop of this size, under 4 pounds is something to be proud of, even if it’s not really a light machine. It’s not the slimmest laptop, either, measuring at 0.63 by 14.5 by 9.3 inches (HWD), though for a laptop of this screen size and footprint, it’s quite thin.

(Photo: Molly Flores)

Underneath, you’ll find five rubber grips that keep the machine in place, a large vent, and two down-firing speakers that deliver pretty good sound at max volume. Unfortunately, there’s no way you can upgrade your laptop's memory as Acer omitted any extra RAM slots; the memory is soldered down.

Back on top, you’ll find a backlit keyboard. It has specially designed keycaps with space below them, allowing for free airflow to the laptop's interior, with the aim of maximizing the cooling performance. While not noticeable during normal use, you could feel the air being expelled while running the machine in its performance cooling mode. (Switching among cooling modes only requires a press of Fn and the F key—no additional app needed.)

(Photo: Molly Flores)

The touch pad works well and is responsive, though the left- and right-click buttons are a bit uncomfortable to use. It’s not a deal-breaker, but I wish the buttons didn't feel so stiff. If you're looking for some added security and easier logins, you’ll also find an embedded fingerprint reader tucked just under the number keys.

Suited for All Needs

With 16.1 inches of screen to work with (measured diagonally), you would hope that the Swift 3 is worth staring at. For the most part, that’s true. The laptop features a full HD (1,920 by 1,080 pixels) IPS display with ultra-thin bezels that offer approximately an 88% screen-to-body ratio. The anti-glare display looks great, and with 300 nits of maximum brightness, images and video appear bright and colorful. The screen lacks touch-input capability, but that’s to be expected from a desktop replacement machine. (Most don't do touch.)

(Photo: Molly Flores)

The Swift 3’s speakers are a pleasant surprise, however, delivering crisp and clear sound at maximum volume. This is likely the by-product of DTS Audio and Acer’s True Harmony technology, which employs high-quality magnets in its speakers to produce a high magnetic flux, which is then divided between speakers and results in more realistic sound reproduction. We noticed this sound improvement in the recently reviewed Acer Aspire Vero, and the quality sound has rolled over into this year's Swift 3. There's no chassis vibration at high volumes, either, an issue that often plagues budget laptops.

Windows 11 comes preinstalled in the lowest-end model of the 16-inch Swift 3. Our review model came with Windows 10, though a free upgrade is available for users willing to take advantage of Microsoft’s latest OS. The laptop is also Wi-Fi 6-enabled, which means speeds up to 40% faster than computers running Wi-Fi 5.

(Photo: Molly Flores)

The Swift 3 also packs a few choice ports, like USB 3.2 Type-A, HDMI, and a very handy Thunderbolt 4 port tucked away on its left side. You can charge an external device through the USB-A port, even if the Swift 3 is powered off.

(Photo: Molly Flores)

Rounding out the ports on the right side, you’ll find another USB 3.2 Type-A port, a headphone jack, and a slot for a Kensington cable lock.

Benchmarking the Swift 3: A Prolific Silver Medalist

With plenty going for it, the 16-inch Acer Swift 3 is a capable machine, but how does it fare versus other machines with similar specs? To see what the Swift 3 is capable of, we put the machine and a few of its competitors through our rigorous CPU, GPU, battery, and display tests.

The Swift 3 is joined by two fellow Acers: the Acer Enduro Urban N3 (a semi-ruggedized machine) and the Acer Aspire Vero, as well as the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7i Pro (14-Inch) and the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus (7610). While most of the machines here are slightly smaller than the 16-inch Swift 3, they all share similar memory, processor, and GPU setups (with the exception of the dedicated GPU and eight-core CPU found in the Inspiron 16 Plus).

The first benchmark in our gauntlet is PCMark 10, a test that simulates a variety of Windows programs to give an overall performance score for office workflows. In this test, a score between 4,000 and 5,000 points indicates good performance—the higher, the better. Interestingly here, while the Acer Swift 3 performs well, it was trumped by the smaller-footprint Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7i Pro despite having the same processor.

The Swift 3 performs just as well on the PCMark 10 Full System Drive storage test, which measures program load time and the throughput of the laptop's boot drive. Here, the Swift 3 closes the gap significantly thanks to its PCl Express Gen 4 SSD, while the Acer Aspire Vero comes in behind the lot, likely because it uses an older-generation PCIe Gen 3 SSD.

The next benchmark for our lineup is Handbrake 1.4, an open-source tool used to convert multimedia files to different resolutions and formats. In our test, we have each machine convert a 12-minute 4K file to a 1080p format. While doing this type of CPU-heavy task is possible on most machines, it's really best relegated to better-equipped workstation laptops. 

With that disclaimer out of the way, we see that most of the machines took over 10 minutes to complete the benchmark, with the exception of the Enduro Urban N3, which wrapped up its work in just under 8 minutes. (Note: we were unable to complete the Handbrake 1.4 benchmark on the Inspiron 16 Plus.)

Things start to look up for the Swift 3 in our next test, the Cinebench R23 benchmark, another multi-core test meant to exercise all of a processor's cores and threads. The four cores and eight threads of the Intel Core i7-11370H produce high marks for both the Swift 3 and the IdeaPad Slim 7i Pro, with the latter edging out the lead by just a few hundred points. Both finished well below the Dell Inspiron's score, however, which was powered by its eight-core Core i7.

Similar results were observed in Geekbench 5.4 benchmark, yet another multi-core CPU stress test meant to simulate real-world activities.  In this benchmark, the Swift 3 took the top spot over the IdeaPad, if only just barely, but came up short again to the Inspiron 16 Plus.

Our final productivity benchmark is PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses Adobe Photoshop 22 to measure a range of content-creation and multimedia functions, harnessing both CPU- and GPU-accelerated tasks. Evenly matched across the board, most of the machines performed within 100 points of one another, with the Dell machine taking the top spot again, thanks in part to its dedicated GPU and more CPU cores.

Graphics Tests

Integrated graphics have come a long way, and even though these laptops are not gaming machines, that doesn’t mean they can’t run simple to moderately complex games at decent resolutions and frame rates.

The first graphics benchmark we run is the 3DMark benchmark, a graphics test suite for Windows that contains several subtests for different GPU functions and software APIs. We queue up two DirectX 12 tests in particular: 3DMark Night Raid and 3DMark Time Spy. The Swift 3 produced pretty good results in this test, besting the other laptops using integrated graphics. Needless to say, the Dell Inspiron performed the best, thanks again to its dedicated GPU.

The next graphics benchmark is GFXBench 5.0, a graphics simulator that stress-tests both low-level and high-level routines. Like the 3DMark benchmark, we run two subtests, the 1440p Aztec Ruins and the 1080p Car Chase, rendered off-screen to accommodate different display resolutions and make comparisons valid.

In this test, we can see that the Swift 3 almost hits a 60fps average during the 1440p Aztec Ruins but goes above and beyond that in the 1080p Car Chase test. In theory, this means that the Swift 3 can manage some demanding software, given the right circumstances. (See our deeper dive into the performance of laptop integrated graphics in recent games.)

Display and Battery Tests

The last major tests we run are our display and battery tests, the former which measure the laptop’s screen’s brightness and color coverage. To test the laptop’s battery, we charge up the battery to 100% and then deploy a locally stored copy of the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel on a loop, cutting the brightness to 50% and raising the volume to the max, along with a few other battery-testing tweaks to ensure consistency across all tested devices. 

The Swift 3 impresses, coming out on top with almost 12 hours of playback time, besting most of the competition. The key word is most, because the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus once again stole the top spot. The Swift's battery life is impressive nonetheless. Acer also claims you can get four hours of battery life on one 30-minute charge. While we didn’t test this ourselves, we’re inclined to believe it by just how well it performed here.

The final trial in our benchmark grand prix is the display brightness and color measurements. Using Datacolor's SpyderX Elite calibrator and its software tools, we measure display performance, screen-brightness output levels, and gamut settings for the three most relevant color spaces for laptop users: sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3.

The Swift 3 promises 100% sRGB coverage and 300 nits of brightness, and sure enough, it delivers. It's even brighter than the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus. The IdeaPad does get brighter still, and it's also using a higher-resolution screen.

A Swift Upgrade

The Acer Swift 3 may not have been our favorite ultraportable machine when we looked at the smaller version a few months ago, but as a 16-inch machine in the latest refresh, it works really well. The H-series 11th Generation Intel processor gives the Swift 3 a much-needed performance boost. Couple that with excellent battery life, and you have a very capable productivity machine.

However, if you're looking to squeeze some more performance from your 16-inch machine for about the same price, we'd recommend grabbing our Editor's Choice pick, the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus, which will net you a GeForce RTX 30-series GPU, as well as a peppy H-series processor and even better battery life.