8 ms·
The $1,799 MacBook Pro 13 vs. the $650 Acer Swift 3
- somerandomanon 6y agoShow me Motion 5 and FCPX for Windows and I'll gladly switch.
- mlacks 6y agoSo we all know that can't happen; whats keeping you away from the adobe suite? From my research as a begining youtuber, the biggest hurdle seems to be price
- somerandomanon 6y ago- paying the extortion every month, - speed (no real time in AE/Premiere)
- uaas 6y agoYou should try davinci resolve. It has a free version, and even runs on linux.
- somerandomanon 6y agoTried both - Resolve is slower and, most importantly, TONS less intuitive than FCPX (even than Motion 5). Also, last I checked, the free version of Resolve is non-commercial
- djsumdog 6y agoThe Acer Swift is limited to only 8GB of (non-upgrade) ram, which is a deal breaker for most developers. I also wonder about that Wi-Fi 6 chip and its Linux support. If it wasn't for those factors, I'd probably get one.
- generalpass 6y agoI wonder how much money non-upgradable RAM actually saves.
- analog31 6y agoI wonder if it's mainly an issue of finding empty space for it.
- bArray 6y agoNot much. Probably less to do with saving money and more about locking you into a specific amount of RAM. That way you spend the extra schmeckles in the first place rather than upgrading the machine yourself 2 years down the line.
- Someone1234 6y agoIt is also space. Non-upgradable ram can be put on when the circuit board is assembled, by robot. Upgradable ram has the socket installed in the same process, but then needs the ram put into the socket by low cost workers. But as I said, space is likely the biggest reason.
- nrp 6y agoIn this instance, both laptops use LPDDR4x, which doesn’t exist in stick form. DDR4 SO-DIMM sockets are a challenge to fit though, so most OEMs take the easy path and go with soldered RAM there anyway.
- analog31 6y agoThis is totally an aside, and probably shows how out of touch I am, but there must be developers who need 8+ GB, and others who don't. I was always under the impression that things like editors and compilers didn't need a lot of computing performance. So I'm curious what kinds of development demand more performance. Is it a hard wall that you hit, or more of just a progressive degradation of performance?
- mh- 6y ago
- mdgrech23 6y agoThese posts are obnoxious. People don't buy Macs b/c of their impressive tech specs - they buy them b/c of macOS.
- mlacks 6y agoI don't know why you're being downvoted; this is true for a number of reasons. 1. Used to mac only software or workflow 2. ercieved supramacy in security 3. Ios compatibility 4. etc The price/ hardware spec ratio by and large always goes to Windows boxes, but for many people the change in OS disrupts too many other areas in life to justify the discount
- saagarjha 6y agoMight want to put UNIX as one of those top level points.
- jiripospisil 6y agoI don't know either. macOS is pretty much the single reason why our team and I are staying on the Apple ship while crying over other laptops that cost half as much and yet provide superior performance.
- OJFord 6y agoOn the contrary I wish I could buy Mac hardware running Linux. (Or that would work well once I put Linux on it.)
- rayhendricks 6y agoThey also buy them for iMessage continuity between devices. Can’t have those green bubbles.
- JoeCianflone 6y agoI love these articles because the writers are so earnest and seem to be oblivious to the fact that buyers do not care.
- shockinglytrue 6y agoI wouldn't presume to speak for everyone, but in my case particularly e.g. when making the leap back to PC away from macs, I poured over maybe 100 of this kind of review before settling on a final choice If people weren't reading those articles the writers would not be incentivized to write them in the first place.
- cowmoo728 6y agoMy sister, sister in law, and elderly parent all want new laptops this year. They are somewhat tech literate but not that interested in tech or computers. They asked me for advice on what to purchase and the only thing they cared about was which apple product was cheapest but still fast enough to use the programs they needed. Other platforms never even entered into the conversation.
- risyachka 6y agoThey care, its just perfomance is only one of many factors that people consider when they buy a laptop. Screen quality, customer support, resale value, sad speed and many many others.
- PaulWaldman 6y agoThis image on Acer's Swift product page really answered the question for me. https://static.acer.com/up/Resource/Acer/Laptops/Swift_7/Overview/20190312/2019_Swift_7_lifestyle_1_1920.jpg https://static.acer.com/up/Resource/Acer/Laptops/Swift_7/Ove...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jjtheblunt 6y agoThat is hilarious.
- qzw 6y agoThose have to be (part) owners of Acer Inc. On a separate note, the Swift 3 is $49 cheaper than the Mac Pro wheels.
- zenlot 6y agoThey dislike their Acers a lot and instead prefers time spent on phone or looking away through window.
- robk 6y agoYou'd be laughed our of Teterborough if you whipped out your Acer once you get on the plane
- candiodari 6y agoOne look at the pictures and I immediately question the difference in comfort between these 2 machines. Big difference and nice benchmarks, but ... it's just not the whole story.
- vikramkr 6y agoThe macbook pro is not competing with the Acer swift. A lot fo people buy for the OS, which Acer doesn't have, and the brand/build quality, which acer doesnt have. For a lot of people, the benchmarks might be among the last thing they care about. The laptops the acer swift 3 should terrify are other 700 dollar windows laptops without the ryzen and as well as any highly premium windows laptops with customers that pay for benchmarks, where eyes might start to wander if, say, the next XPS can't beat a 650 buck acer on benchmarks.
- tornato7 6y agoNot only that, but not as many Mac users are gaming on their laptop, which is a strong reason to need good benchmarks. If I'm buying a laptop it's really the user experience and battery life that I care about. Any CPU heavy tasks I can do on my desktop computer or an EC2 instance. By the way, I assume this article is partly about gaming because of the preview image, but I was unable to read it on mobile thanks to all the popups.
- mping 6y agoI agree that what matters most is UX and battery life, but these are not fixed and are actually pretty malleable, otherwise the only thing that would beat a mbp could only be next year's mbp. I had a laptop with terrible battery (desktop replacement) and it was great for my use. I also have a xps13 and it's great. I also had a mbp15 and it was great too. As you guessed, I had a different use case for each. If I had to spend my money, would probably be the Acer as long as battery was ok.
- bArray 6y agoIt's not just a case of dividing performance numbers by price - obviously the Apple machine is better built. The real question is: Is it built a $1000 dollars better and built well enough to overcome the fact it's slower (in these tests)? There are some pretty legitimate reasons to come away from Apple products now in my opinion, including some very competitive hardware at lower prices. I've been quite a happy Linux user for a long time now.
- saagarjha 6y agoNot only are they better built, they also run macOS.
- tracer4201 6y agoI upgraded from a 2015 MacBook Pro to a 2019 16”. I heard there were tons of keyboard issues in the years in between. Aside from that, I stick with MacBooks because of the solid quality and macOS. I can’t work on Windows. I’ve tried again and again. I do have a windows machine for gaming, but programming and design work, the short cuts, fluidity, and general experience working in iTerm2 with multiple desktops is top notch. There’s nothing really to “fix” or make better. All my software on macOS is also top quality. I don’t know of a replacement for Omnigraffle or Omnifocus. I had a recent fun project where I needed to install Python and a bunch of Python tooling and libraries (Jupyter, matplotlib, numpy, pandas, etc). Setting PATH on Windows is one of the most bizarre things. And even then I could not get everything to work. There were weird version conflicts, and this was all trying to use the Linux Subsystem for Windows which was insanely slow. Why can’t I just update one file on my file system from a text editor to update path configuration?
- newhna 6y agoWSL2 is fast, rock-solid and outperforms a Mac with iterm2 by far. I don't know which fluidity you mean on a multi montior setup you lack on Windows. Re short-cuts Windows has more (just think of win+number or built in window management) or autohotkey which owns karabiner. MacOs is good if you need Xcode but other than that? Idk
- godzillabrennus 6y agoThis kind of bad PR will push Apple to using their own chips in future laptop form factor models. Sadly because unless there is a miracle to secure licensing IP from Intel in the process this will remove virtualization options for Windows from the platform.
- thethethethe 6y ago“X laptop which is cheaper than a MacBook benches higher” This is not news, this has always been true. People keep buying MacBooks, it’s been one of the best selling laptops for a decade. There must be some other reason why people like them.... Maybe benchmarks don’t matter to most people? Really makes you think
- Delk 6y agoOr, rather, "X laptop which is cheaper than premium laptop Y benches higher". Which also isn't news. It's trivial to find a laptop that outperforms a premium laptop at half the price. That's equally true of any non-Apple vendor that has premium business laptop models.
- philplckthun 6y agoI think instead of drawing any unnecessary conclusions about MacBooks or this particular Acer laptop, it simply shows just how much ground AMD has gained in comparison to Intel. This performance is just impressive, not just at this price point, and as far as I’m aware AMD chips are now beating Intel chips across the entire CPU lineup
- winkeyless 6y agoI wonder how many AMD equipped Macs are there in Apple’s lab and how they perform. I know there are hackintosh out there too but Apple please do some validations and let there be choices.
- Ididntdothis 6y agoHow do the displays compare? Or the trackpad? How will the Acer hold up after two years of use? Raw speed is only one factor.
- sys_64738 6y agoDoes the keyboard work?
- toast0 6y agoIf the Acer needs replacing after two years, and the Mac after five, you're still ahead, asuming a similar speced Acer is available for a similar price in the future.
- kyriakos 6y agoNot only that, you'll probably get even better performance after two years by replacing the cheaper acer.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- crystaln 6y agoGuess which computer will still be running strong in 5 years?
- roydivision 6y agoBecause performance specs are the only factor in buying a laptop.
- ryuukk_ 6y agomacbooks are built to last plastic acer products (54541515315 different models by product btw) are built to get replaced every 6 months
- Sangeppato 6y agoTwo things: First, this is not about Apple, but rather about Intel. The 10th gen chips are very expensive, but they can't compete with AMD offer and this should be pretty clear to everyone right now. Anyway, this isn't just true for the MBP: we could make the same article for pretty much every premium laptop that uses Intel instead of AMD such as the Dell XPS, the X1 Carbon, the MS Surface Laptop/Book. Secondly, what really matters in a laptop is the cooling system. Geekbench is nice to get a general idea of what a chip is capable of, but to understand how much the laptop can take advantage of it, you should run some stress tests. In this scenario, the base MBP can sustain ~25W while the higher end model goes up to ~30W. Most laptops in this category limit the chip to ~15W and sometimes they have to go even lower than that. I'm not saying that the Swift will be bad, but Geekbench doesn't really say much about that. So sure, every occasion is good to scream "Apple bad", but this really isn't surprising