The latest Acer Swift 3 has a surprise for you. Concealed within its unassuming and borderline generic aluminum body is Ryzen 7 4700U, an 8-core CPU based on AMD’s new 7nm Ryzen 4000 with Radeon graphics.

As a budget box, you don’t get Symmetrical Multi Threading (AMD’s version of Hyper-Threading) but that hardly seems to matter. This $650, 14-inch, 2.6-pound laptop is so fast, it actually can compete with larger, pricier gaming and content-creation laptops in CPU tasks. Keep reading to find out more about this unlikely screamer of a PC.

SPECS

The Acer Swift 3’s configuration (Model SF314-42-R9YN) mostly jibes with its affordable price (currently $650 from Amazon.com). For instance, the 8GB of RAM is the minimum you’d want in a Windows 10 system for loading up a bunch of apps and browser tabs. The 14-inch display’s maximum brightness of