Trusted Reviews is supported by its audience. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission.Learn more.
Acer Swift X 16 OLED (2024) Review
An ideal alternative to pricier rivals but with a few shortcomings
In This Article
Verdict
Fast, with a very good OLED screen and a price that undercuts the big creative names, the Acer is an ideal alternative – but be aware of its shortcomings too.
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
As the name suggests, the Acer Swift X 16 OLED (SFX16-61G) tries to excel in two areas: speed and display, and with a high-end AMD CPU and OLED panel, it initially impresses but it takes more than that to convince creatives and power users in 2024, especially when the laptop has several strong rivals.
TheHuawei MateBook D16 2024deploys a high-end Intel Core i9-13900H processor for a three-figure price, and theAcer Swift Go 16hovers around $1000/£1000 for a Core i7 model.
In contrast, the Acer Swift X 16 OLED costs $1,599/£1,499, with prices frequently dipping to $1,199/£1,199 in sales. Even at the discounted price, this notebook needs to impress.
Design and keyboard
This is one area where form doesn’t really match function. There’s undoubtedly impressive tech inside the Swift, but you wouldn’t know that from the outside.
It’s not ugly, and the build quality is excellent, but it also doesn’t do much to stand out. The aluminium body looks like a hundred other laptops, with its tapered edging, small screen bezels and dotted speaker grille.
If you want a subtle machine, the Acer ticks the box, but the design does nothing to excite, and while the Swift is not bulky or heavy, its 17.9mm body and 1.9kg weight mean it’s a bit bigger than its rivals.
Connectivity is reasonable. On the left side, there are two USB-C 4 ports and a headphone jack, and on the right you’ll find two full-size USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, an HDMI output and a microSD slot. Internally there’sWi-Fi 6Eand Bluetooth 5.2.
Half-way down the left-hand side, there’s a power connector. While that positioning is irritating, it does mean you don’t have to charge using one of the USB-C ports.
There are some other negatives: AMD internals mean no Thunderbolt, and while the power button includes a fingerprint reader there’s no biometric option on the 1080p webcam. The speakers are fine but a bit quiet and tinny, and only suitable for casual situations.
The Acer Swift does have Thunderbolt and is equal elsewhere, but one of thoseUSB-C portsis needed for charging. The Huawei falls behind with only one USB-C port, a slower USB 2.0 connection and no card slot.
The keyboard has a numberpad, white backlight and sizeable keys. It’s quiet, consistent and comfortable, too. With that said, its typing action is soft and a bit spongy, so anyone who yearns for the crisper typing of a Dell XPS or Apple MacBook won’t be sated.
The trackpad meanwhile is vast, accurate and supports gestures, so no issues there.
Screen
If the design fades into the background, then the display does the opposite. The 3200 x 1600 resolution means pin-sharp imagery, the 16in width ensures plenty of space, and that 16:10 aspect ratio adds vertical real estate.
That’s not all. The 120Hz refresh rate guarantees smooth movement in apps and games, and the OLED technology underneath means perfect black levels and contrast.
On paper then, that’s great and in practice it’s good – but that’s it.
The panel’s brightness level of 406 nits is acceptable for most situations, but sunlight could prove tricky, and while HDR raises that level to 572 nits, that’s not impressive for HDR.
The OLED renders 100% of the sRGB gamut at 170% volume and produces 98.9% of the DCI-P3 colour space and 95.1% of the Adobe RGB space. Those figures are good and combine with the OLED screen to create bold, bright colours.
However, that 95.1% figure in the Adobe RGB space isn’t quite good enough to sate the most demanding creatives, who need perfect Adobe reproduction, and the Delta E of 3.12 is suitable for everyday creative workloads but not entirely accurate enough for high-end professional workloads. There are also no options to switch to alternative colour profiles.
This is not a bad screen at all – it’s bold and punchy and has excellent contrast and colours. It’s great for most creative workloads and miles better than the panels inside either rival but while it’s easily good enough for most creative situations, it doesn’t quite have the brightness or accuracy to handle every colour-based task you could throw at it.
Performance
Creative work needs ample horsepower, and the Swift doesn’t disappoint. The AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS processor has eight multi-threaded cores that top out at 5.1GHz and it sits alongside 16GB of dual-channel memory and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD.
Most interestingly, there’s also an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 laptop GPU running at its full power allocation of 100W. It may be the entry-level core in this range, but it’ll outpace any integrated chip.
In Geekbench 6’s single- and multi-core runs it scored 2,478 and 12,177 points: the former is better than any rival, and the latter is about 33% better than the alternative Acer and Asus machines I’ve mentioned. The Core i9-13900H in the Huawei is faster, but not by much.
The AMD chip inside the Swift beats the Huawei’s Intel CPU in PC Mark 10 by about 8%, and the Ryzen processor is a little faster in both Cinebench R23 runs.
It’s a great start, and the GPU doesn’t falter: its Time Spy score of 7657 is twice as quick as any Intel integrated chip. The SSD’s read and write speeds of 6,581MB/s and 4,348MB/s are great for keeping pace with tough apps.
The Acer will blitz through any everyday workloads without complaint, it’ll handle photo- and video-editing, and you can do design and encoding work alongside some esports or light gaming. While fan noise is present if you push the internals, it’s never too loud.
The only negative here is the underside, which gets too hot through prolonged, demanding usage, and the only reason to look elsewhere is if the Intel CPU in the Huawei laptop is a better option for the specific apps you need to run.
If you’re buying in the US then you’re in luck: the Acer’s $1,599 price actually includes a Ryzen 9 7940HS processor with a slight speed boost.
Software
The AcerSense app collates Windows’ own power, performance, and update options, and there are a couple of other Acer apps that handle documents, registrations, and audio.
Elsewhere, the taskbar includes pre-installed shortcuts for Booking.com and Dropbox, and McAfee antivirus comes installed and pops up every so often with annoying windows.
Scroll down the app list and you’ll find additions like Evernote, ExpressVPN and games like Forge of Empires.
The Swift’s software loadout is not bad or intrusive, but there’s nothing of particular interest to creatives.
Battery
In an everyday media playback test with the panel at half brightness, the Acer lasted for eight hours and 33 minutes, but in a PC Mark 10 work test, with the brightness at maximum, the Swift only managed three hours and 28 minutes – a significant drop.
That media figure is about level with the Acer and Asus, but hours short of the Huawei’s twelve-hour lifespan. While the Acer Swift regained a solid 37% of its battery with a thirty-minute charge, you’re only going to get a full day of work from this notebook if you’re sparing with the internals.
If you want to push the hardware with challenging creative work, you’ll be lucky to make it to lunchtime. If you want a full day of creative working with a discreet GPU without plugging in, you’ll have to spend more on a creative powerhouse from the likes of Apple.
Latest deals
Should you buy it?
Buy if you want a powerful OLED on a budget
The Acer’s price is decent considering those internals, and it’s decent in other departments too – just be aware of the Swift’s shortfalls.
Don’t buy if you need all-day creative ability
The colours aren’t quite good enough for the most challenging workloads, and the battery won’t last a full working day in most situations.
Final Thoughts
Any company trying to churn out a high-end creative laptop for $1,599/£1,499 has its work cut out in a world of similar rivals such as theHuawei MateBook D16 (2024)and theMacBook Air M3, but Acer has done well here.
Internally, the AMD processor and Nvidia GPU do a fantastic job of serving up creative power – there’s enough for virtually any task. The Acer is relatively quiet and has decent connectivity. The OLED panel is bright, bold, broad and good enough for most creative workloads, it’s that word though – most.
While the OLED panel here is good, if you spend more you’ll get something with greater Adobe ability, different colour profiles and extra brightness and pop.
Elsewhere, the Acer has a comfortable keyboard but underwhelming design and mediocre battery life, but these problems all require a far bigger budget to solve, and the Acer is a far better creative tool than any of its cheaper rivals.
If you’re happy giving up all-day battery life, Adobe-level quality and high-end design, the Acer Swift X 16 OLED is a great creative choice that doesn’t break the bank.
How we test
Every laptop we review goes through a series of uniform checks designed to gauge key factors, including build quality, performance, screen quality and battery life.
These include formal synthetic benchmarks and scripted tests, plus a series of real-world checks, such as how well it runs popular apps.
Used as our main laptop for two weeks during testing.
We test the performance via both benchmark tests and real-world use.
We test the screen with a colorimeter and real-world use.
We test the battery with a benchmark test and real-world use.
You might like…
FAQs
No, the Acer Swift X 16 OLED (2024) does not have a touchscreen.
Yes! The Acer adheres to VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 inside the Acer Swift X 16 OLED (2024) has 6GB of dedicated memory.
Trusted Reviews test data
Full specs
Mike has worked as a technology journalist for more than a decade, writing for most of the UK’s most well-known websites and magazines. During his time writing about technology he’s developed obsessio…
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Why trust our journalism?
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
