Acer Swift 14 AI review: Ultraportable and versatile with a dash of AI

The Acer Swift 14 AI is the latest addition to Acer's well-known Swift line. With the new Copilot+ PC designation, it offers a pinch of futureproofing through enhanced compatibility with AI-driven productivity tools.

If you're wondering what a Copilot+ PC is, it's Microsoft's rubberstamp for machines equipped with an NPU (neural processing unit) sporting at least 40 TOPS of computing power, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage, enabling it to handle a broad range of AI-enhanced features, especially upcoming ones like Recall.

AI PCs aren't entirely new — last year's models dabbled in the concept but with less oomph, with NPUs hovering around 10 TOPS.

NPU: what it actually does

But aren't AI applications like ChatGPT and Copilot still largely a cloud-based affair? So why even bother with an NPU onboard?

Here's one way to look at it — think of it less as ChatGPT-on-a-chip and more like Apple's Neural Engine. Remember how FaceID not only nailed real-time facial recognition but also kept your biometric data on the device?

That's more in line with what NPUs are best at — 'small' tasks with moderately complex real-time processing, with the advantage of keeping key information on on-device.

And while the Swift 14 AI can have a role to play in the generative AI sandbox — for example, DaVinci Resolve is confirmed to use Qualcomm's Snapdragon X for 4.7x speed improvement for Magic Mask (automatically isolate and track people or things for target colour grading and effects) — its more immediate applications enhance productivity tools and peripherals like the webcam and microphone.

But it's just a matter of time before more features from third-party software developers hit the mainstream.

Beyond AI hype

Slapping 'AI' onto anything these days feels like a marketing trope. But to harp on this 'misdemeanour' here would be to undersell what the Swift 14 AI is: a well-rounded, ultraportable laptop.

Think of it as the PC world's response to the Apple MacBook. Look no further if you've been waiting for a PC laptop with a MacBook-esque battery life.

This new Swift range from Acer features modular and task-oriented processors (somewhat like ARM SoCs) by Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD. In this case, we're looking at an Intel variant.

Performance-wise, it's also comparable to a typical MacBook. I've easily clocked up 10-12 hours of mixed-use with some to spare: web browsing, videos, music, etc., that encapsulates most users' patterns. As a MacBook user, this does feel like another apple (pardon the pun) that fell from the same tree.

Portability at its core

The Swift 14 AI is not a high-performance substitute for those who need heavy lifting from their machine — and often, you won't be looking at an ultraportable to begin with.

Intel's Series 2 Ultra processors perform more in line with U-class CPUs and are adequate for Office 365, web research, and light creative work. And with 32GB of RAM, the experience is pretty smooth for the most part.

While not the lightest or slimmest, the Swift 14 AI strikes a commendable balance. And unlike most ultraportables, it doesn't force you to live the dongle life.

This laptop offers a decent selection of ports (2x USB-C Thunderbolt 4, 2x USB-A v3.1, 1x HDMI 2.1), so you don't have to choose between charging your laptop and connecting a high-speed external storage unit unless you absolutely have to work with a cornucopia of accessories. Also, with both Thunderbolt and HDMI ports onboard, it's very unlikely you will face issues in connecting to a projector, monitor or TV.

Display, audio, and the everyday experience

Acer's OLED display delivers rich colours and up to 90Hz refresh rates. It is great for video enthusiasts, though the 400-nit panel struggles under bright sunlight.

Given our rotisserie-style weather, I highly doubt anyone will consider this a downside.  The speakers are clear, though they lack bass, but the dopamine rush from Netflix binges should be enough to get you through.

What to expect from NPU features

This is where things get both interesting — and murky. At its core, the NPU complements peripherals. Think biometric security, real-time noise cancellation, and enhanced video output. Acer's PurifiedView and PurifiedVoice refine webcam and microphone output - good, though not a match for a proper mirrorless camera or studio mic.

Microsoft bakes Copilot into everything — including Office 365 — and you might think it feels unnecessary. However, this approach makes it possible to enable features like Recall, which (for now, at least) is only possible with an onboard NPU.

Imagine BBC Sherlock's 'Mind Palace but in a GUI: it captures snapshots of your screen and lets you retrieve contextual data through Copilot. The processing happens locally, preserving your privacy. The catch?

Recall isn't live yet unless you have the Qualcomm version and developer account, so whether it's a game-changer remains to be seen; the reality is that it's no different from uploading a photo into ChatGPT or Copilot and then asking what's in the picture. So, the likelihood is that it works, but its success hangs on how well-integrated the experience is.

However, Microsoft's features aren't quite ready yet. On top of Recall, the generative AI features of Microsoft Paint, such as CoCreator (applies generative AI onto sketches with additional prompts from the user), will only come to users in the months ahead.

You also need to factor in some leeway for them to iron out the remaining minor niggles; for example, real-time translation, available now, isn't as consistent as it should be and can sometimes be slow.

Acer's AI-powered additions are ok

Acer probably understood that it's still early days for AI and added some AI-assisted features on top of the aforementioned PurifiedView and PurifiedVoice enhancements.

For those who work with a secondary external monitor,  the Multi-Screen Assistance is probably its coolest feature: Your mouse cursor will teleport to the display you are looking at automatically, so you don't have to keep swiping it back and forth from one screen to the next.

You can also long-press a window and shift your gaze to move it to the other screen. I'm glad to report that it is pretty responsive, though with one caveat — your screens must be lined up side by side.  It doesn't work as well if you position your monitor behind and above your laptop.

The rest of the AI-enabled features are as follows:

• User Sensing: Your laptop goes into standby when you walk away and logs in automatically when your face reappears in front of the screen.
• AlterView and VisionArt: Novelties that some people might appreciate. AlterView turns 2D wallpapers into 3D effects while VisionArt creates AI-generated wallpaper according to a fixed schedule, using location and chosen themes as input parameters.
• LiveArt: Not a fan because of its unintuitive interface, but it's a free tool that lets you remove backgrounds, add filters, and convert images to stickers.
• Acer Assist: Effectively an offline GPT tool to summarise documents and the like. Its value comes from the fact that you don't need an internet connection, so it's useful if you are frightened to death about uploading a sensitive document to the cloud. It seems to work with long documents (I tried an 800-page one); however, the catch is that it is not as advanced as regular GPTs in context, so you need to provide basic and precise instructions to get the most out of it. It is slow compared to ChatGPT, Copilot, etc, emphasising how much processing power is needed to deliver a snappy response.

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This article was first published in Potions.sg.