Acer has just revealed the newest member of its Swift laptop line: the Acer Swift 3x, a 14-inch laptop with a powerful new Intel 11th Gen processor and Iris Xe Max discrete graphics.
Acer is looking to target the creative professional market with the improved performance in the Swift 3x. The company is also looking to claim a significant boost to battery life at up to 17.5 hours, making it an enticing and affordable option starting at $899.
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The Acer Swift 3x
The Acer Swift 3x is slightly beefed up in many respects from the Swift 3, coming in a little heavier at 3 pounds versus the 2.7 pounds of both Swift 3 models. Presumably, some of this is extra weight is attributable to the new Intel Iris Xe Max discrete graphics that is paired with the Intel 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPU.
Some of the added bulk could also be extra battery. It bodes well for the Acer Swift 3x it it actually manages to hit its claimed battery life of 17.5 hours compared to the 11 hours and 9 minutes we got for the Acer Swift 3 (2020, AMD) or the 7 hours and 31 minutes for the Acer Swift 3 (2020).
The Acer Swift 3x features a 14-inch, FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS display with a bezel light, but not bezel-free 84% screen-to-body ratio. Acer indicates that it should be capable of 72% of the NTSC color gamut. That would be an improvement over both Acer Swift 3 variants, but still a fairly average result. Brightness will be something that we'll be on the lookout for though, as dim displays were a concern for our reviewer on both Swift 3 models this year.
Support for Wi-Fi 6 is a nice addition to future-proof your connectivity with the Acer Swift 3x if you have or plan to upgrade to a Wi-Fi 6 router. Ports are reasonably solid with two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, a single Thunderbolt 4 port, HDMI 2.0, a power adapter port and a 3.5mm combo headphone/mic jack.
The Acer Swift 3x will be shipping in December starting at $899.
