Laptops get hot, and when laptops get hot, they get loud. It’s always been this way, and it probably always will be. Chipmakers and manufacturers can crow all they want about new power-sipping CPUs and thermal management tricks, but somehow, laptops always seem to get toastier and toastier.

Acer’s Swift X 14 is a case in point. This new machine is loaded up with all the latest trimmings while keeping the chassis compact. That includes an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU, 32 GB of RAM, a 1-terabyte solid-state drive, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics processor. A very bright 14.5-inch display (non-touch) nets you 2,880 x 1,800 pixels of resolution.

Portability and performance are what the Swift X is aiming for—it’s in the name, after all—and, to some degree, it delivers. Nothing about the Swift X is record-breaking, but general and business application performance is on par with other Core Ultra 7 systems, and graphics performance is some of the best I’ve seen among 14-inch systems.

You won’t set any frame rate records with the Swift X, but modern titles are fully playable, and other graphics work like video rendering is up to three times faster than you’ll experience on a system with integrated graphics. AI-focused tasks are reasonably speedy too—though I couldn’t get the system to properly run a Stable Diffusion test that it probably shouldn’t have stuttered on. Bottom line: Performance here is solid, but it won’t come close to making your head spin.

What will spin your head is the heat the Swift X puts out, which hits 109 degrees Fahrenheit in the strip above the keyboard at peak times. This heat causes the Swift’s fan to run pretty much all the time when the computer is in use. Downloading software, installing a Windows update, booting up—the Swift more or less gets hot once you touch the keyboard. And that fan is loud, one of the noisiest I’ve encountered since I started measuring fan decibel levels. (On the plus side, the speakers are at least louder than the fan.)

Acer tries its best to mitigate this problem by giving you its AcerSense app (complete with custom “a” key on the top row of the keyboard), where you can switch from discrete to integrated graphics, set certain screen settings like adaptive brightness and color profile selection, run system diagnostics, and most importantly throttle performance as needed. Four performance levels are available, terminating at “Silent” on the low end. You’d think that would throttle the CPU to the point where the fan wouldn’t run at all, but that’s not the case. Even in Silent mode, the fan runs regularly—albeit at a somewhat slower pace. The Silent machine also took about a 40 percent hit on graphics performance and 25 percent when running general apps.

The Swift X is a power-hungry beast, and while it charges through one of its USB-C ports, you’ll need to use the 100-watt charger included with the device. It’ll trickle-charge with a generic, lower-wattage adapter, but it’ll never reach full capacity, even if it’s powered down.

Don’t get me wrong, the laptop has plenty of positive qualities. Ports are ample for a machine of this size, including two USB-A and two USB-C ports (again, one is used for charging), a full-size HDMI port, and a microSD card slot. The keyboard is fine if unremarkable, gently inset into the chassis, and the touchpad is spacious without being obnoxiously oversized. And the understated dark metallic gray design is both professional and modern.

It’s not the smallest of machines—weighing 3.4 pounds and measuring 25 millimeters thick at its widest point—but those numbers aren’t outrageous for a laptop that wedges discrete graphics into a 14.5-inch package.

But to what end? Overall stability isn’t ideal, as I encountered weird visual hiccups like flickering images during my week with the system. Battery life at just over seven and a half hours isn’t egregious but is worse than many competing laptops. And while performance is good across the board, there are plenty of devices on the market that handily outpace this system, including Acer’s own Nitro 17. Sure, that’s a considerably bigger laptop, but it’s got 50 percent better graphics performance while also being $450 cheaper.

While the Swift X 14 has some positive aspects, it’s a little difficult to determine who exactly it’s for—presumably the casual gamer or graphic designer who’s always on the go and thus has to pack light. That could be a possibility, but the Swift just doesn’t perform well enough to justify its luxe $1,700 price tag, and the bruisingly loud fan and heat problems do nothing to further that case.