Acer Swift Go 14 review: Core Ultra is a game-changer for Intel

The Acer Swift Go 14 is an upper mid-tier laptop that's designed to feel premium while still being lightweight. Basically speaking, it's the entry-level laptop in the premium tier, sitting below the Swift 14, Swift X, and Swift Edge. Overall, this is a solid PC that checks the right boxes.

But that's not what makes it exciting. The real story here is that Acer's Swift Go 14 is one of very few laptops that started shipping day one when Intel announced its Core Ultra line of processors. Codenamed Meteor Lake, these new chips have a totally refreshed architecture on the Intel 4 node, way more powerful Arc graphics, and a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for boosting AI tasks. It's Intel's biggest launch in a long time.

It's pretty good too. The Acer Swift Go 14, along with other premium laptops coming in 2024, can do things that other Intel-powered laptops in this form factor haven't been able to do before.

Acer sent us the Swift Go 14 (2024) for review. It did not have any input on its content.

Acer Swift Go 14 (2024) pricing and availability

The Acer Swift Go 14 (2024) was announced and released on the same day that Intel Core Ultra was announced, December 14. It was one of very few launch devices. It's also pretty reasonably priced, starting at $799.99 for a unit with 8GB RAM and a Core Ultra 5 125H, although the unit that Acer sent me has a Core Ultra 7 155H and 16GB RAM for $999.99.

Intel Core Ultra and its AI tasks, thanks to the NPU

You're pretty much future-proofing yourself

Codenamed Meteor Lake, Core Ultra is the biggest change to Intel's laptop processor family in decades, possibly ever. One of the reasons for that is because it now comes with an on-board Neural Processing Unit, or NPU. First, NPUs have been known by other names. For Intel, it had Movidius Vision Processing Units, or VPUs, which you'd find in a Surface Laptop Studio 2. The industry has standardized around NPU.

So, what is it? It's a dedicated part of the chip that's for AI tasks. It's similar to how someone realized all those decades ago that you could make a dedicated component for graphics. The NPU is going to make a huge difference for on-device AI.

The only problem is that there isn't a lot that you can do with it yet. It looks great in a demo, but that's mostly it. And when you start asking questions in the demo, things get a little murky.

The best example of on-device AI using an NPU is Windows Studio Effects. This is something we've seen on Qualcomm-powered laptops since 2022, since Snapdragon chipsets have had an AI Engine (the DSP, which is a component of the AI Engine, has also been rebranded as an NPU) for ages.

I've also used Windows Studio Effects on a variety of Intel-powered laptops. Whenever they show up, I'm not sure why. The suite of features lets you blur your background, correct your gaze so it appears that you're looking at the camera, and reframe the shot so the field of view follows you around. On previous Intel PCs, they would let you turn on one of them, and the other switches wouldn't even gray out; they'd just stop working.

On the Acer Swift Go 14, everything works. It's great.

Now, you can ask things like, doesn't Zoom already blur my background for me? It does, but on-device does it better. This is true of all AI on Windows, in fact. AI features such as Copilot, generative fill in Adobe Photoshop, and more are usually happening in the cloud, and if not, they're happening on the GPU. Software vendors are going to have to build logic into their apps to determine whether the user has an NPU, and then offload certain tasks to it.

We're really not there yet. I tried using the denoise feature in Adobe Lightroom Classic, which seemed logical because I already love that feature. It turns out that that's not built for the NPU yet (you can tell if something is using the GPU or the NPU in the Control Panel).

With a dedicated NPU, you're future-proofed as more features get added to different experiences.

The other problem is that I don't think that Acer Swift Go 14 users are the target for a lot of this stuff. If you're using generative fill in Photoshop or any other creative features, you're probably looking at a laptop that's a little more high-end, such as a Swift Edge with its OLED display.

Still, AI capabilities are horizontal, and they have the potential to elevate all experiences.

Design, display, and keyboard

Oh right, the rest of the laptop is a thing too

Swift is Acer's brand for premium lightweight laptops, and Swift Go (formerly Swift 3) is the entry-level model. It feels like a premium metal laptop, coming in at just under three pounds. I like it a lot, especially given the starting price point of eight hundred dollars.

On the left side, you'll find dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI 2.1, and a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port. On the right side, you'll find microSD, a headphone jack, and another USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port. Overall, it's a pretty solid selection, especially with powerful options like Thunderbolt and HDMI 2.1. Thunderbolt 4 supports data transfer speeds of 40Gbps, or you can connect two 4K monitors on a single port.

The screen and keyboard on the Swift Go 14 (2024) are pretty average, although Acer has definitely stepped up its keyboard game over the last couple of years. The display is 14-inch 16:10, which is pretty standard, and the resolution on the model that the company sent me is 1920x1200. There's a 2.8K OLED model out there, but I haven't seen it.

From my testing, this panel supports 99% sRGB, 70%, NTSC, 75% Adobe RGB, and 75% P3, which is fine for a mid-tier display. That's why the AI applications I discussed above are so interesting. This is not a laptop that you should get for editing photos and videos; the screen just isn't good enough. If you want to utilize those AI features in Photoshop and Lightroom Classic, you should probably get something else.

But Intel has much bigger plans for AI PCs than image and video creation. It has to. If you look at the scope of products that are going to get Core Ultra this year, it's pretty broad. But I digress.

Brightness maxed out at 415.6 nits, which is fine considering that Acer is promising 400, and contrast ratio maxed out at 1570:1.

The webcam is solid, which is always a plus in the age of working from home. It comes in at 1440p, which gives you a little bit of extra room for the camera to reframe as you move around. We talked about that in the AI section though, as that's all about Windows Studio Effects.

The Acer Swift Go 14 (2024) is a very good laptop. It feels premium, and the screen is fine as long as your work flow doesn't require detailed color accuracy. Presumably, the OLED panel would do better, but I don't vouch for things I haven't tested.

Performance

Did I mention that Core Ultra has boosted up Intel Arc graphics too?

Like I said above, Intel Core Ultra is a massive change to the architecture. It's made on the Intel 4 node, it comes with a dedicated NPU, and it has powerful Arc graphics. Note that Arc graphics are exclusive to the H-series processors, so when U-series units arrive in 2024, there won't be as much of a focus on gaming.

Listen, you're never going to buy a laptop for gaming if it doesn't have dedicated graphics. That's just not realistic. Like Intel's pitches for using integrated graphics for gaming in the past, you should think of this as a work computer that you can comfortably game on. Remember, we've heard this before with 11th-gen and Iris Xe in 2020...and then Intel didn't make a single change to its integrated graphics until now.

With the Acer Swift 14, it's the first time I felt confident in integrated graphics to play the games I install.

I played a variety of games, such as Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2, Forza Horizon 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and Cuphead. The recommended graphics for Forza Horizon 5 were set to high; normally, integrated graphics maxes out at medium. The frame rate mostly stayed around 40, boosting up to 45 and 50 at times. Game play felt smooth at all times.

I can confidently say that I feel good about running games on the Acer Swift Go 14, meaning that if I'm about to try something new, there's little doubt about whether it will run properly. That's my endorsement.

CPU performance is great too, as you can imagine. I do imagine that most people will be using the Acer Swift Go 14 as a work from home laptop. Let's look at some benchmarks.

Note that there's no Cinebench 2024 score for the XPS 15 or the Yoga 9i because it wasn't out when I reviewed those.

There's some good and some bad here. Overall test scores are excellent. The H-series now includes 28W chips that would have previously been called P-series, so the Swift 14 is running at a lower wattage than the XPS 15, and still pulling a comparable PCMark 10 score. In straight-up CPU tests like Geekbench and Cinebench, Core Ultra scores lowest on single-core, which is a little disappointing. Something similar happened when Intel moved to 10nm with Ice Lake, so I bet there will be some big refinements with Lunar Lake (the next generation of Core Ultra).

Battery life was pretty good, but like is so often the case with Intel chips, it was inconsistent. The best I got was seven hours and 39 minutes, which is really good. The worst was three hours and 23 minutes, and that had a lot to do with taking a Google Meet call in the middle of it. And let me tell you, the fans scream on this thing. When you're chewing through the battery on this thing, it's going to tell you.

Should you buy the Acer Swift Go 14?

You should buy the Acer Swift Go 14 (2024) if:

• You're looking to upgrade your work PC
• You want something that can actually do more than your last PC did, rather than just do the same things better
• You're looking for value

You should NOT buy the Acer Swift Go 14 (2024) if:

• Your work flow requires color accuracy
• You need consistently great battery life

Here's the deal. Intel's Core Ultra processors are great. They unlock new potential for your experience. However, you have to remember that Core Ultra isn't exclusive to the Acer Swift Go 14. This product was just one of few launch devices. At CES, you'll see even more laptops with similar capabilities.

What makes the Swift Go 14 special is that it's essentially a mid-ranger, giving you those capabilities at a more reasonable price point. If your use case is the type that would have you spending more money on a PC, you should get a better laptop. If you're looking to get something great for eight hundred dollars, this is the product for you.