Acer Swift 3 Laptop Review: Affordable And Accelerated With Optane
Acer Swift 3: Battery Life, Acoustics and Thermals
Battery Life - How We Test:
Our custom HotHardware video loop test takes a 1080p HD video with a 16Kbps bit rate and loops it repeatedly, with 1 minute break intervals in between. A timer log file increments minutes of up-time every minute -- along with the grand total -- before system shutdown is stored in the log. This is a lighter-duty test that is still a bit more strenuous than many office productivity tasks, but it's not nearly as taxing as the load Battery Eater puts on a system.
Oveall, the Acer Swift 3 had decent, but limited battery life. In our real-world testing the Swift 3 had good, but not great staying power. In total our system had an up time of 6.3 hours in this strenuous test. Not quite the 12 hours promised, but this test leaves the display lit up for the entire duration and only takes 1 minutes breaks between video loops. With lighter-duty office work, you'll get much longer battery life.
Battery Eater had similar results, with the Acer Swift 3 once again putting up middle of the road performance. Still, we were able to get a solid 2.5 hours of screen time while the system was being taxed.
As for the machine's acoustics, its fans ramped up during our testing, but they never got to the point where they were loud or bothersome. Most of the time there was just a slight hum coming from the fans and even during long periods of heavy testing fan noise was never obnoxious and processor core temps were managed well.
