When comparing Lenovo Legion Y520 vs Acer Swift 3 SF315-51-518S, the Slant community recommends Acer Swift 3 SF315-51-518S for most people. In the question“What are the best laptops around $1000?” Acer Swift 3 SF315-51-518S is ranked 2nd while Lenovo Legion Y520 is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Acer Swift 3 SF315-51-518S is:
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.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Best performance for the price
One of the most important considerations to make when choosing a gaming laptop is the graphics card. The Legion Y520 uses a GTX 1050Ti GPU which is the best GPU as far as price-to-performance ratio goes. Having a slightly cheaper GPU would decrease gaming performance by quite a large margin, and using a more powerful GPU would increase the price by at least $200 with relatively small performance increases. With the 1050Ti, the Legion Y520 hits that sweet spot just about right.
Pro The chassis can withstand some abuse
The Legion Y250 has a great build quality and the chassis is very sturdy and can survive a few years of being tossed around in a backpack.
Pro The keyboard manages to stay cooler than most gaming laptops
The keyboard and especially the WASD keys stay relatively cool even when playing demanding games that increase the inside temperature of the laptop to a high degree.
After 30 minutes of playing The Witcher 3, the WASD keys measure a comfortable 30 °C. This is quite low compared to other gaming laptops, budget or no which reach at least 37 °C where it starts to become quite uncomfortable to keep playing.
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.
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 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.
Cons
Con Images displayed on the screen are not very colorful
The 1080p IPS display manages to reproduce only 65% of the RGB color gamut which is a little low for gaming laptops and for laptops in this price range.
Con Cannot be kept on the lap while gaming
The underside of the laptop gets very hot when playing games, after 30 minutes of The Witcher 3, the underside reached a temperature of 55 °C which is very uncomfortable and almost impossible to endure for a relatively long time.
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.