When comparing Acer Swift 3 SF314-51-57CP vs System76 Oryx Pro, the Slant community recommends Acer Swift 3 SF314-51-57CP for most people. In the question“What are the best laptops around $1500 for students?” Acer Swift 3 SF314-51-57CP is ranked 4th while System76 Oryx Pro 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 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.
Pro Great Linux support
All System76 laptops come with Linux out of the box. The Oryx Pro comes with either Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or Ubuntu 16.10. But that does not mean that other Linux distributions are not supported, quite the contrary. Most Linux distros should work without any major problems with the Oryx pro and most (if not all) drivers are available.
Pro Excellent choice for gaming on Linux
The Oryx Pro is probably the best laptop with Linux support out of the box that is great for gaming as well. This is mostly because of the NVIDIA graphics cards. It comes by default with the GTX 1060 but for $289 more, you can add a GTX 1070 instead. The default 8GB of RAM is good for gaming but the 16GB RAM is ideal.
Pro Amazing overall performance
The default 6th generation i7 Processor coupled with the 16GB of RAM (even better with the versions with 32GB and 64GB) make for an absolutely amazing machine. It has a dedicated SSD for the OS only which massively increases startup time and for anything else you can choose up to two SSDs or HDDs of varying sizes. The Oryx Pro is perfectly capable of doing some heavy-lifting including 4K video editing and gaming at highest settings without a hitch.
Pro Good speakers
One of the bonuses of having a larger body is that you get to use good speakers instead of some small ones stuck underneath the laptop. They are also angled toward the user and the sound is crisp and loud enough, even though it lacks some bass.
Pro Good keyboard
The keyboard is very nice, it's not amazing by any means but quite comfortable to work with. The keys are pretty thick, thicker than what you may find in laptops today and with a nice springiness to them. The keyboard also supports multicolor backlighting.
Pro Good display
Has a 1080p matte display with an optional IPS matte display version. With great colors and brightness and almost no eye strain even when it's used for extended periods.
Pro Very customizable
Before buying the System76 Oryx Pro from the System76 website, you get to customize almost every aspect of the laptop as far as specs go. The price depends on what you choose to put inside your laptop and prices vary from $1475 for the basic version to $7000 for a laptop with a 17.3" Matte IPS Display, a GTX 1070, 6th Gen i7 CPU, 64GB RAM, and two SSDs of 5TB and 4TB respectively.
Cons
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.
Con Very heavy and bulky
Weighing at 5.5lbs for the 15.6" version it's relatively heavy and it's one inch thicker than the XPS 13. But the extra space is not put to waste, considering how it has an Ethernet port, SD card slot, 2 Mini DisplayPrts, HDMI port, 2 USB 3.1 Type-C ports, 3 USB 3.0 Type-A ports and headphone and mic jacks. The GTX 1070 version also includes a headphone amplifier. However, the power brick that comes with the charger is ridiculously large at 2lbs which understandably adds to the weight of the laptop since most of the time you have to carry both with you.
Con Customer service could be much better
System76's technical support is pretty bad. When there's a problem that should be solved by them, they usually resort to sending replacement parts instead or blaming third-parties (even if those third-parties are not at fault) of something that they should be fixing.
Con No 4K option
It lacks the option to have a 4K display. While not a deal breaker, it's a shame that a laptop with a display as good as Oryx Pro's does not have a 4K option which would also be a great plus for gamers.