When comparing Microsoft Surface Pro 4 vs Acer Swift 3 SF314-51-57CP, the Slant community recommends Acer Swift 3 SF314-51-57CP for most people. In the question“What are the best laptops for programmers who travel/digital nomads?” Acer Swift 3 SF314-51-57CP is ranked 4th while Microsoft Surface Pro 4 is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Acer Swift 3 SF314-51-57CP is:
The Swift 3 performs quite well for the price and laptop class it belongs to. Everyday tasks are handled without problem, multitasking is not a problem neither, and it can also play some lightweight games (DoTA, LoL, Team Fortress 2) at decent framerates as well as some more demanding software such as Photoshop and Matlab without overheating the hardware or lagging.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Great pen support
The (included) Surface Pen has a very interesting set of features - it allows for 1024 points of pressure, has an eraser on top, and when you click the eraser it will open Cortana (Microsoft's new voice assistant). It's magnetized, so it will stick to the left side of the Surface. The Surface achieves all of this via its new N-trig technology (replacing the Wacom technology found in older generation models). There's also palm rejection technology, so whenever the pen tip it close to the screen is will ignore all finger or palm touches.
Pro Laptop-level specs
The Surface Pro 4 comes in configurations from core M up to a core i7. RAM starts at 4GB, and goes to 16GB. Storage caps out at 256GB of SSD storage, which should be enough for most users. These are all specs that can be found in most laptops - even beating out some budget-midrange desktop options.
Pro Good expandability options
The Surface has a USB 3.0 port that can be used for a mouse to be plugged in, or you can plug in a USB hub or Microsoft's own Surface Dock, which has 4 USB 3.0 ports, audio output, Gigabit Ethernet, and two HD video ports. The Surface Dock allows for as much expandability (or more) as most laptops out there. There's also a SD card slot if you need more storage (current SD card sizes range up to 200GB, although this won't be as fast as the internal SSD speeds).
Pro Good performance for the price
The Swift 3 performs quite well for the price and laptop class it belongs to. Everyday tasks are handled without problem, multitasking is not a problem neither, and it can also play some lightweight games (DoTA, LoL, Team Fortress 2) at decent framerates as well as some more demanding software such as Photoshop and Matlab without overheating the hardware or lagging.
Pro Great trackpad
The trackpad is a bit larger than average and feels great to the touch, albeit a bit rougher than most trackpads out there. It performs really well with standard swipes, taps, and gestures and has no stuttering or jumpiness.
Pro Great build quality
For an entry model, the Acer Swift 3 has great build quality. The chassis is solid and there's absolutely no bending in either the chassis or the hood. The outer case is built from aluminum and the inner chassis is made of plastic.
Pro Upgradeable storage
Unfortunately the CPU and RAM are soldered on the motherboard so they can't be upgraded, however the storage is not and can be easily swapped and upgraded if one needs to do so.
Pro Portable
The Swift 3 is a pretty light and compact laptop. It weight around 3.35 lbs and is 0.7″ thick. The screen size is 14" which is well within the small category as far as laptop screens go.
Pro Decent keyboard
The keys have a slightly concave shape and a soft finishing which makes them feel great to touch and they also provide pretty good feedback.
Pro Good battery life
The Swift 3 can get a good 10 hours of use (sometimes even more) with simple tasks such as web browsing or watching videos. This is true for both the models with i3 and i5 CPUs.
Cons
Con Expensive
You can find a computer with similar specs for about half the price of the Surface Pro 4. You are paying a premium for the high-end build quality, for the engineering required to manufacture a fully portable computer, as well as for the high resolution touchscreen.
Con Lack of touch-focused apps
Windows has traditionally been a mouse-and-keyboard operating system. Finally, third party apps are starting to become more touch friendly, although it's a long, slow process. The Windows Store still lacks many big titles, which means the only option is to download the regular Windows version of most apps, which are rarely touch-friendly.
Con Comes with some bloatware
The Swift 3 comes with some bloatware out of the box which may influence performance.
Con Fairly noisy
The Acer Swift 3 has two small fans which sit on the CPU and GPU. Unfortunately they are rather agressive and start spinning even at low temperatures. Even something as simple as opening a browser will prompt both fans to start spinning quite fast. If you also keep in mind that both these fans have a fairly high pitched hum, then it's soon clear that this laptop is not the quietest on the market.