Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71 review

Our review of the Acer Swift Go 14 demonstrated that it is a practical, affordable ultraportable laptop that is great for document work and study. Its configuration is sufficient for undemanding tasks, and the high-quality IPS display with good colour reproduction and 2240×1400 resolution is quite suitable for basic photo editing. The laptop has a comfortable backlit keyboard, an efficient and quiet cooling system, a high-quality webcam with 1440p resolution, and a good set of connectors. To this should be added a practical and durable metal case that looks neat. Although, of course, there are also some complaints about the laptop. Although the touchpad has good sensitivity and a pleasant surface, its dimensions are rather modest. The battery life is also not the laptop's strong point: it's not enough for a working day. And among the minor complaints, we can mention the tight hinges that do not allow you to open the laptop with one hand.

The closest competitors include the HP 240 G9. It has a similar price and configuration, but a 12th-generation Core i5 and a screen with a standard aspect ratio and lower resolution. And the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 14IRL8, which has a more powerful processor, larger storage, and an OLED display, also with a lower resolution.

6 reasons to buy Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71:

• Durable and practical metal case
• Excellent 14-inch IPS display with a resolution of 2240×1400
• Efficient cooling system
• Comfortable full-size keyboard
• High-quality webcam
• A good set of connectors

3 reasons not to buy Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71:

• You need a laptop that can run for a whole day without recharging
• Small touchpad
• Tight hinges

Quick transition:

1. What's included with the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71?
2. What about the look and feel of the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71?
3. How comfortable is the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71 to use?
4. How good is the screen of the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71?
5. What about the performance and battery life of the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71?
6. In the dry balance

What comes with the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71?

Like most of the company's laptops, the Acer Swift Go 14 is packaged in a standard mustard-coloured cardboard box with minimal printing. The package is also minimal: the laptop itself, a 65W power supply with a Type-C connector, and documentation.

What about the appearance and construction of the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71?

Acer Swift Go 14, like the rest of the line, has a neutral, versatile design. On the one hand, there are no special features, but on the other hand, this is a working tool that will suit everyone. The body is almost entirely made of fairly thick silver-coloured aluminium. Only the frame around the display is made of plastic. The metal has a matte, rough texture and does not collect fingerprints, which is very practical. The only decorative elements are a small Acer logo on the top of the lid and the same one under the display.

Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71 has a very good set of ports for an ultraportable model. On the left side, there are two Thunderbolt 4 ports , HDMI and a full-size USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port that supports charging gadgets when the laptop is switched off.

On the right side of the laptop are two LED indicators, a microSD card slot , a 3.5mm headphone jack, another full-size USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, and a Kensington Lock.

At the back there are two rather massive hinges, cooling system holes, and two small rubber feet that support the laptop in the open position.

The front edge has nothing really interesting. There is only a chamfer almost the full width of the main unit for easier opening of the laptop.

The bezel around the screen is quite thin, the layout of the elements is standard. So we have a webcam with a work indicator and two microphones in the upper part. But in this case, the webcam is worth focusing on. Acer has taken into account modern trends, remote work, study and many video calls. Therefore, the laptop has a very good webcam. It has a QHD 1440p resolution and supports TNR (Temporal Noise Reduction) technology to improve the image in low light conditions. And the microphones have Acer PurifiedVoice noise cancellation technology based on machine learning.

The bottom panel is pretty much standard. There are four rubber feet to prevent slipping on the table, plenty of cooling vents, stereo speakers and a reset button in a small hole. By removing the bottom cover, the user can replace only the SSD and wireless network adapter.

The laptop is compact and lightweight: 312.9×217.9×14.9 mm, 1.25 kg, so it's quite suitable for daily transport to and from the office. The quality of construction and materials is good.

How comfortable is the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71 to use?

The hinges of the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71 display unit are tight and do not allow you to open the laptop with one hand, which is not very convenient. You have to hold the bottom of the laptop. But the display is very securely fixed in the desired position and does not shake at all. The maximum opening angle is about 145°, which will be enough for the vast majority of laptop use cases. In the open position, the laptop rests on two rubber feet and the working surface with the keyboard is placed at a slight angle to the horizontal plane. This position creates a space under the laptop, which contributes to better flow of cold air to the cooling system.

Acer Swift Go 14 has a standard ultrabook layout without an additional digital pad. Everything is quite typical: the row of function keys has a reduced height. At the end of the row is the power button with a built-in fingerprint scanner. The scanner works quickly and accurately. Enter and Backspace are single-level, and both Shift keys are long. The navigation block is not separated from the other keys in any way. The left and right arrows have standard sizes, but the up and down arrows are halved in height, which is a bit unusual. But in general, the layout has no critical features, so ultrabook users won't have to get used to it.

The buttons have a quite comfortable, tangible and informative stroke. They are pressed quite easily but clearly. There is a white backlight with two brightness levels.

The laptop's touchpad has very good sensitivity and accuracy, but its dimensions are not very comfortable. You have to make too many movements. The coating is plastic, but very pleasant and feels like glass. The company calls it OceanGlass, and it's made of eco-friendly ABS polymer and recycled plastic from the oceans.

How good is the screen of the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71?

The Acer Swift Go 14 is available in a large number of configurations, with OLED displays being the most expensive. But a more affordable configuration with an IPS display has arrived in the gg editorial office. The diagonal is 14 inches and the resolution is 2240×1400. It's quite exotic, but the picture looks really clear. The aspect ratio is 16:10, which has been increasingly used in laptops lately. It is really more convenient for working with documents and surfing the web than the standard 16:9. The screen has a matte anti-reflective coating. The refresh rate is standard, 60 Hz.

The screen is of high quality, has a very nice picture with natural colours and maximum viewing angles. The brightness level is sufficient for comfortable work in the vast majority of conditions. Hardware measurements showed that the maximum brightness is 284.416 cd/m², the black field brightness is 0.267 cd/m², and the static contrast is 1065:1. These are very good figures for an affordable model. But the picture quality was the most pleasing: the display has a very close colour gamut to sRGB, and all indicators (including colour temperature) almost match the reference values:

What about the performance and battery life of the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71?

The Acer Swift Go 14 came to us with an energy-efficient 13th-generation Raptor Lake processor, although updated configurations with Intel Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) will soon be available. Our configuration uses the Intel Core i5-1335Umodel.This is a 10-core processor with 2 productive cores with a frequency of up to 4.6 GHz and 8 energy-efficient cores with a frequency of up to 3.4 GHz. It supports multi-threaded computing with up to 12 threads. The standard TDP level is 15W, with a possible short-term increase to 55W. Thegraphics accelerator is an integrated Intel Iris Xe 80EU solution that includes 80 executive units, with a maximum frequency of 1.25 GHz. There is 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, it is soldered on the board, and it is not possible to increase the volume. Thelaptop is equipped with a Wi-Fi 6Ewireless adapter that supports IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax and 2x2 MU-MIMO technology. There is Bluetooth 5.2 for connecting peripherals.

Synthetic performance tests of Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71

The Acer Swift Go 14 is designed primarily for document work, education and video calls. And for these tasks, the performance is quite sufficient. Therefore, in synthetic tests, the results are appropriate, rather low. This is especially true of the graphics component.

Cooling and stability of the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71

The cooling system includes two TwinAir fans and two copper heat pipes. Cold air is drawn in through the bottom of the laptop and through the keyboard. A stress test in AIDA64 showed that in maximum performance mode, there may be a short-term performance drop at first, and after the cooling system adapts to the prolonged load, the temperature of the components remains on average around 75° and the system operates stably. At the same time, the cooling system is quiet, and the laptop body hardly gets hot.

Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71 storage device

The drive is a Western Digital PC SN740 M.2 2280 SSD with a 512 GB PCIe 4.0×4 interface.

It turned out to be quite fast. The data reading speed reaches 5000 MB/s, and the writing speed is almost 4000 MB/s.

Games on the Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71

The laptop is not designed for gaming. But if you want to, you can play not the latest games with a perfectly acceptable frame rate.

• Spec Ops Thne Line. Medium settings, native resolution. 30-40 FPS.
• Tomb Raider 2013. Medium settings, native resolution. 50-60 FPS.

Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71 battery life

Acer Swift Go 14 is powered by a three-cell 50 Wh battery. Acer promises up to 8 hours of operation. In real conditions, in an office scenario (browser, document work, basic image processing) at 50% brightness, the laptop lasts a little over 6 hours, which is not the best indicator for an ultraportable laptop. However, it's worth remembering that this is not a flagship, but an affordable model. A full charge from the bundled power supply takes just under 2 hours.

Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71 audio system

The Acer Swift Go 14 speaker system includes two standard small speakers. There is support for DTS virtual surround sound. The volume and sound quality are quite good for an ultraportable model. You can watch a film quite comfortably. Although for music, low frequencies are still a little lacking.

Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71 software

Among the useful proprietary software, it is worth mentioning Acer Purified Voice Console, which is responsible for adjusting the noise cancellation of microphones. Acer Quick Access - quick basic settings: Wi-Fi network, blue filter, system performance mode, USB charging when the power is off. And Acer Care Centre: system updates and checks, Recovery, etc.

To sum up. Four things you need to know about Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71.

• The Acer Swift Go 14 SFG14-71 is an ultraportable laptop with a durable and practical metal chassis.
• It is equipped with a high-quality 14-inch 2240x1400 IPS screen.
• The performance is sufficient for working with documents and browsing, but the laptop is not suitable for heavy tasks such as video processing, 3D graphics or gaming.
• It has an efficient cooling system.

For those who want to know more:

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• ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 OLED (UX6404) review: compact laptop with Intel Core i9 and GeForce RTX 4060
• Last to leave the office: ASUS ExpertBook B9 OLED review with 9-hour battery life
• Lenovo Legion Pro 7 review: powerful gaming laptop with Intel Core i9 and RTX 4090
• Huawei MateBook D 16 review: a metal laptop for work, study and video conferencing