Acer Swift 3 Infinity War Iron Man Edition Hands-on, First Impressions

Just as Avengers: Infinity War hits our local cinemas, Acer has officially launched a trio of laptops inspired by the highly anticipated Marvel movie. One of those devices is the Acer Swift 3 Iron Man Edition. It’s still pretty much the same Swift 3 we’ve already seen on the market, just with a little more spice a la Tony Stark.

The Acer Swift 3 Iron Man special edition is encased in a brushed aluminum chassis with the signature Iron Man red color. There are themed designs here and there including a Marvel sticker right beside the fingerprint scanner, and the Avengers logo on the right palm rest. The lid was also given special attention as it features Iron Man’s arc reactor, though we report with a heavy heart that it doesn’t light up along with the laptop, which would’ve added a bit more flair. It is, however, protected by an acrylic sheet that adds a bit of style to the panel, although it easily attracts fingerprints and smudges.

The laptop itself is well built. It has some screen flex though not too alarming. The keyboard deck is also solid as a rock with minimal flex on all sides. The hinges too, are well-made as the display panel can even lay flat on the floor. While the Swift series is known to be one of the thinnest laptops on the market, the Swift 3 doesn’t seem to follow that trend. It’s by no means thick, although its brethren and other competitors are a bit thinner. In any case, it’s still a sturdy thin and light that can easily be carried around. Not to mention, it will attract eyes due to the flashy Iron Man design.

The Swift 3 is equipped with a 14-inch IPS FHD display. While the laptop can pride itself as generally thin and light, the bezels of the display are anything but. We felt like it would’ve been better if they reduced the overall thickness of the bezels to give way for more screen real-estate. Not to mention, it gives off the aura that you are using a thick device even though you are not. As for the display itself, we get the standard IPS quality — good color reproduction and accuracy along with excellent viewing angles.

Now, on to the keyboard and trackpad. Being a 14-inch laptop, the Swift 3 has a TKL (tenkeyless, no Numpad) keyboard layout. Travel distance is good and tactile feedback is excellent, making it quite a joy to type on. Backlighting is present and is also adjustable. We do get, however, a pretty compressed arrow key layout, which may cause wrong key presses at times.

The Swift 3 was given a clickpad, meaning you can press the entire pad to register actions. The bottom part still houses buttons for the left and right clicks, if you’re more accustomed to that kind of setup. While the keyboard was a good experience, the same cannot be said with the trackpad. It’s because of the matte-like finish that makes gliding and gestures particularly hard to do as it tends to sometimes cause friction with your fingers. Clicks are okay though, and provide enough haptic feedback.

As for I/O, we get a pretty good selection for a 14-inch device. Over to the left, we have the power input, an HDMI port, a USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-C port, two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, and a combo audio port. Over to the right, we have the Kensington lock, a USB 2.0 Type-A port, and the SD card reader.

Powering the device is Intel’s latest 8th Generation i5-8250U processor paired with an NVIDIA X150 GPU and 8GB of RAM. Performance should be okay when doing light to moderate tasks and gaming will even be possible to some degree, so is video and photo editing. We’ll be testing out the full capabilities of the laptop in the coming days, so stay tuned for our full review.

The Acer Swift 3 is a good fan service for Marvel fans. It has an excellent Iron Man design and feel, a good display, an enjoyable keyboard, and a good selection of ports. On the flip side though, it’s already showing some downsides with the thick bezels and the problematic trackpad. Either way, let’s see in the coming days if Acer’s special edition thin and light can live up to the Iron Man branding.

Acer Swift 3 Iron Man Edition specs:
Model: SF314-53G-550F
14-inch FHD IPS display @ 1920 x 1080 pixels
Intel Core i5-8250U 1.6GHz (Turbo up to 3.4GHz) processor
NVIDIA GeForce MX150 (2GB GDDR5 VRAM) GPU
8GB LPDDR3 RAM
256GB SSD
Wi-Fi 802.11ac/a/b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
Windows 10
2x USB 3.0 Type-A
1x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-C
1x USB 2.0 Type-A
1x SD card reader
1x Kensington lock
1x Combo audio port
1x HDMI
4-cell 48Whr battery
338 x 234 x 17.95 mm
1.6kg
SRP: PHP69,999USD 1,193INR 101,121EUR 1,136CNY 8,687