Acer Swift Go Intel Evo Skinny & Mild Premium Laptop computer 14″ 1920×1200 100% sRGB Contact Display screen Show Intel Core i7-1355U Intel Iris Xe 16GB LPDDR5 512GB Gen 4 SSD SFG14-71T-72QV

Don’t bother with the Core Ultra; this unit is great
It’s still very early days so I can’t comment on durability yet. But I will provide some opinions and commentary.This Acer Swift Go 14 replaced a new Asus Zenbook 14 with OLED screen and Core Ultra 155h. The Asus arrived with a defective touchpad so it went back to BestBuy.So enough history. I had been lusting after this Acer unit for quite a number of months so, when the Asus went south and Amazon dropped the price on the Acer, I ordered it. It arrived in two days (as promised). Came with a zippered case (which I haven’t even opened yet).Forgot that it had a touchscreen; I’ll never use it as the screen doesn’t fold back into tablet mode so it’s essentially worthless to me; they could have left it out and sold it for less. I guess everybody wants an iPad wannabe, eh?The screen itself, however, is sharp and clear and very bright. I tend to keep it at 50% brightness as I computer indoors. The 1920×1200 resolution is perfect. I keep it at 125% magnification and can read the small lettering just fine with my glasses.The keyboard has plenty of key travel (unlike MacBooks) and the touchpad, which I don’t think is a Synaptics, operates well. It’s not oversized (as Macs tend to be) but feels right to me. Tapping, two-finger scrolling, three- and four-finger swipes are supported (as is a traditional “click” if you press).Performance: Very speedy; feels as fast if not faster than the Asus Zenbook I returned. If I could install Windows 10, I might do that only because Win11 gets in my way with its incessant nagging and suggesting and whining. Maybe when I figure out how to turn off all the annoyances, I’ll be happier with Win11.General Design: One of the things I’ve liked about Acer non-gaming laptops/notebooks is their “vanilla” design ethos. Keep it simple and clean. The case of this Swift is a lovely somewhat squared-off “chiseled” look in the same sense as an Ioniq 5. I think the manufacturing execution is not quite Apple quality–the case port edges are a little sharper than Apple would permit–but everything plugs in the way it should. The keyboard is recessed below the palm rest a bit so your greasy fingers won’t end up leaving marks on the screen when you close the lid. Speaking of the keyboard, it’s nice and large with well-spaced keys and adequate backlighting.Battery life: Ran it for about 6+ hours with lots of web use. I think I had about 50% left. No complaints.As I think about it, the Acer reminds me most of my 13″ 2012 MacBook Pro although it’s a larger screen, higher resolution, incredibly faster, and about 1.25 lbs lighter. 😀 That Mac was, IMHO, the pinnacle of Mac laptop design. I think Acer has done a great job with this unit.I’ll report back in a few months regarding any QC issues that, hopefully, won’t pop up.

Solid Laptop with a Secret
I’m going to college soon and I needed a laptop, so I settled on this one after looking at a bunch of reviews. So far, it’s proven itself to be pretty powerful with a high end CPU, and I also find the backlit keyboard to be a big help when it’s dark.I can’t comment on battery life since I haven’t used it that much, but after calibrating the battery it usually estimates itself at 9+ hours at max charge, though I have it on a lower performance setting. Will come back to update after I toil in academia.Anyways, you’ve probably already seen the pictures connected to this review so the secret is out, but apparently this laptop has a secret 2nd M.2 Slot hidden next to the fans. Just disconnect the ribbon cable and peel the black tape away, and there it is. Perfectly functional too. I installed a 1TB Crucial P3 Plus with a thermal pad so the ribbon cable doesn’t heat up, and after a restart I managed to initialize the new SSD and now have another TB of space in this thing.It’s a little strange that they decided to hide away this slot and not say a word about it even though doing so would make it an even more appealing product, I only know of this because I stumbled upon a disassembly video of the laptop in question and someone brought it up in the comments.Anyways, the only reason I’m giving this laptop a 4 star review despite all of my praises is the fact that the 16 gigs of RAM are soldered to the laptop. While it’s a perfectly functional amount there’s almost no reason manufacturers should be soldering RAM apart from guaranteeing that laptops like these become obsolete even faster.EDIT 2/16/2024:I’m well into my second semester now, so I figured I’d come back to write an update as promised.Honestly, I’m not super impressed with this laptop’s performance despite the high end CPU. My classes tend to require the use of various Adobe programs such as Photoshop and InDesign, and sometimes the laptop will just slow to a crawl or threaten to just crash when I’m saving my work. I have experimented with going out of power efficiency mode but I don’t think it’s had much of an effect.On the bright side, the battery is able to last for a whole day (some days I go from 9:00 to 6:40) and then some, though I do take the chance to charge it whenever I’m near an outlet. Even then, the thing will charge pretty dang fast (60% to 100% in half an hour). Unfortunately the provided charger ended up breaking my last semester so I had to invest in a third party 65W brick.It’s also pretty dang light too at about 2.75 pounds (1.25kg), and I do really like the all metal sleek build. The double thunderbolt USB-C ports is a cool idea, though I haven’t ever really needed to use both, and my SD card reader doesn’t fit the other slot if I’m charging. MicroSD is cool too, but my DSLR uses SD cards so that’s another feature not utilized.I’m still pretty bummed out about how limited this thing’s performance is by the soldered ram, and I’ve also come to realize I don’t actually use much of the 1TB I added when I upgraded it. Worse yet, I’m not much of a visuals guy and I always keep this thing on night light mode so I’m likely not doing the display justice. Though I do find the touchscreen to be helpful at times.As I’m writing this review it’s on sale for $599, and I paid $690 initially. Would I recommend this laptop? I mean, the battery life is great, it’s lightweight and all metal, and does have some cool features like thunderbolt ports, microSD, and a good display. If all of that sounds appealing and you won’t be doing anything crazy like intensive gaming, right now it seems like a good deal. As for me, I’ll probably give this to my sister and continue my search for my one true laptop.Also, the provided case’s zipper ended up breaking off at some point.