Acer Swift 3 SF 315-41 Specifications, Tests and Review. Acer’s Swift 3 range occupies the middle of its lineup, including the Swift 1, 3, 5, and 7 models. The Swift 3 range is available in both 14- and 15.6-inch versions, and it is equipped with AMD and Intel processors with Vega graphics and optional NVIDIA GPUs. The 15.6-inch SF315-41-R6J9, which has the top-tier AMD Ryzen mobile CPUs in the Ryzen 7 2700U, will be the subject of this review.
ACER SWIFT 3 SF315-41 LAPTOP REVIEW
The Acer Swift 3 SF315-41 is a respectable laptop for business use that blends a stylish design with strong performance. Although Acer has since produced updated laptops in its series with 12th Gen CPUs and stylish designs, it’s still a fantastic option for the business and college.
| Acer Swift 3 15 | |||||
| SF315-41-R8PP | SF315-41-R6J9 Model Tested | SF315-51G-51CE | |||
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 2500U Quad-Core, Eight-Thread 2.0-3.6 GHz 15W TDP | AMD Ryzen 7 2700U Quad-Core, Eight-Thread 2.2-3.8 GHz 15W TDP | Intel Core i5-8250U Quad-Core, Eight-Thread 1.6-3.4 GHz 15W TDP | ||
| GPU | Radeon Vega 8 Compute Units Up to 1100MHz | Radeon Vega 10 Compute Units Up to 1300MHz | NVIDIA GeForce MX150 2 GB GDDR5 | ||
| RAM | 8 GB DDR4 | 8 GB DDR4 | 8 GB DDR4 (Standard) 16 GB DDR4 (Optional) | ||
| Storage | 256 GB SATA SSD | 512 GB SATA SSD | 256 GB SSD | ||
| Display | 15.6″ 1920×1080 IPS | ||||
| Networking | 802.11ac Qualcomm QCA6174A 2×2:2 MU-MIMO Bluetooth 4.2 | ||||
| I/O | 2 x USB 3.0 1 x USB 2.0 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C HDMI SD Card Reader | ||||
| Battery | 48Wh, 45W AC Adapter | ||||
| Dimensions | 370 x 255 x 19.05 mm 14.59 x 10.04 x 0.74 inches | ||||
| Weight | 2.2 Kg 4.85 lbs | 2.2 Kg 4.85 lbs | 2.1 Kg 4.63 lbs | ||
| Pricing (MSRP) | $749.99 | $949.99 | $799.99 | ||
Design And Build
Although the Acer Swift 3 is larger than its 14-inch predecessor, the primary feature of both devices is their all-aluminum bodies. When it comes out of the package, the base, keyboard surround, and screen cover are all constructed of metal and look fantastic. When you open it, you’ll see a brushed metal deck, a fingerprint reader, a conventional island-style keyboard, and a 15.6-inch display with 1920 x 1080 resolution. Although appearances might be misleading, the silver hinge appears robust and effectively supports the screen.
The Acer Swift 3’s 4.6 pounds lightweight profile, which makes it 0.7 inches slimmer and lighter than its rivals, must be another advantage. The Lenovo Flex 5 weighs little more than 4.4 pounds and is 0.8 inches thick, whereas the Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-57D4 weighs 5.2 pounds and is 1.2 inches thick.
(Image credit: Amazon)
Display, Keyboard, And Touchpad
The screen’s glass front panel, which shows you when you try to boost brightness, and the unbalanced colors are less than ideal. For example, in the trailer for The Hunt, the green trees in the tropical jungles have leaves that have an odd hue and a yellow tinge, making it first difficult to spot the predators in the forest. Although it is less than Aspire’s 158 percent and Flex’s 133 percent sRGB color gamut, the screen nevertheless produces colors that are tolerable at 177 nits and 78 percent coverage.
The island-style keyboard has a nice layout and a cozy feel. It isn’t as sparkly as its competitors with only 1.2 mm of travel, but the metal deck keeps it robust. Over 104 words per minute is definitely doable, which is not too awful. With a size of 4.2 by 3.0 inches, the touchpad is roomy and has good gesture recognition, including the ability to access Cortana with finger touches. The vocals aren’t quite balanced, but the speakers are pleasant and loud enough to fill a small space.
Ports And Storage
Despite having a thin appearance, the Swift 3 has nearly all of the ports you could need. A headphone jack, two USB 3.0 ports (one with power-off charging), an HDMI output, a USB Type-C port (which does not support charging), and other connectors are located on the left side. The right side features a Kensington lock slot, a USB 2.0 port, and an SD card slot.
Although it lacks an Ethernet connector, dual-band 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 allow for wireless connections. A fingerprint reader and a front-facing webcam are two more. The system has a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD) for storage, which is comparable to most other systems in this class, including the ASUS ZenBook UX330UA-AH54, however the Acer Swift 7 has twice that amount of RAM. though it comes with a 7th Gen CPU and a 13-inch screen.
Performance
There are two distinct configurations for the Acer Swift 3. The Acer Swift 3 SF315-41G that we are reviewing has the only AMD Ryzen 7 2700U CPU, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD in the lineup; all other models utilize Intel’s seventh-generation processors. The increased processing performance and power efficiency of the Ryzen 7 variant should satisfy a large number of customers, making the upgrade worthwhile.
In actuality, the Ryzen 7 2700U is more than sufficient for the ordinary multitasker. It will not even hint at slowing down when you open over 15 Chrome tabs, two streaming 1080p videos, and other background operations.
The system has higher copy rates, something that most of its predecessors can’t readily match, because of its PCIe SSD.
Although the AMD Radeon RX 540 graphics card might not be enough for contemporary games at high settings, you can still play them at low settings. You might be able to play certain poor-quality games here. For example, simple games like Dirt 3 only offer 61 frames per second (fps), far less than the average of 95 fps. However, even laptops with dedicated GPUs are never able to reach the base score. For midrange gaming, you might want to look into the Asus TUF Dash 15 (2022), which comes with a dedicated GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card. lightweight gameplay thanks to its Nvidia GTX 1050 graphics card.
Battery Life
According to Acer, the Swift 3 has a battery life of up to 10 hours. The amount you’re getting, if we can avoid using industry jargon, is little more than seven hours of uninterrupted Wi-Fi web browsing. While the industry average of 6 hours is still superior, the Apple MacBook Air M2 offers more than 18 hours of battery life on a single charge.
Buy for Acer Swift 3 sf315-41 Series 15.6″ LCD Panel LED Screen Display
