What is the Acer Swift 5?
Ultrabooks often come with a price tag that is on the wrong side of £ 1000. Those thin shells cost a premium, although they make up for it by offering elegant performance and a lightweight finish that will not break your back. Only one recent example is the excellent Huawei MateBook X Pro.
Fortunately, the Acer Swift 5 is a bit cheaper. You still get a solid set of specifications, all tucked inside a 970g chassis that is really impressively thin and lightweight. Great news for anyone on the road all day.
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Acer Swift 5 – Design and build
While certain laptops like Asus ZenBook UX410 are sold as thin and light machines, the Swift 5 embarrasses many of they. That magnesium alloy chassis is impressively thin, staying below 15 mm at its thickest point. However, the highlight is definitely that weight less than 1 kg. Frankly, it seems that Acer forgot to put those computer bits inside the frame; It feels like you're grabbing an empty shell.
As a result, it is definitely worth considering this laptop if you are looking for a portable companion. Frankly, if you kept this device sitting on a desk in your house all day, it would be a total waste.
Despite its thin and light finish, the Swift still feels quite solid. My abundant punctures and grips did not reveal any problem of bending, while the thin lid provides ample protection for the screen below.
Connectivity, too, is strong. Two USB 3.0 ports are backed by a USB 3.1 Type-C port, which features super-fast transfer speeds. There is also HDMI to connect the Swift 5 to a projector, TV or some other external screen.
Rounding out the hardware features is a thin fingerprint sensor. This is placed just below the keyboard, on the right edge. I discovered that I accurately recognized my digit each time I tapped to unlock the Swift 5, unless my hands were wet or dirty. The unlock action is fast, so you will not wait for the laptop to come alive.
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Acer Swift 5 – Keyboard and touch screen [19659002] This may be a small 14-inch laptop, but the Acer keyboard still has a good size and design.
As usual now, the Swift 5 has a chiclet board with isolated keys. These keys are perfectly spaced, so tactile typists can begin immediately to destroy trials and emails at a satisfactory speed, with minimal errors. The trip is not particularly deep, but the feedback levels are good. There is also some impressive flex, so you do not get any fluffy action towards the center of the board.
My only proper nightmare with this keyboard is a slightly insensitive space key. If you touch this to the left and right edges, your hit will occasionally not register. After a period of adjustment I managed to hit the bar closer to the center each time, but it is still an unexpected irritant.
In addition, the cursor keys are quite flat at the bottom – right corner. And with the Page Up and Page Down keys interspersed there as well, I sometimes found myself pressing the wrong buttons and accidentally omitting all of my document. If you are graced with an evil temper like me, you may want to avoid working at your local coffee shop, or bite your tongue to avoid an outburst of expletives.
Still, those other complaints, this keyboard is definitely a satisfying unit in which to work on that romantic werewolf romance on your trip. It also has backlight, although it seems that you only have two settings: off and on.
The Swift 5 also has a decent enough touchpad, which extends almost the entire width of the palm rest. There are integrated mouse buttons, although I prefer to touch the sensitive surface instead. Multi-touch gestures are supported.
Acer Swift 5 – Screen
That 14-inch IPS screen doubles almost all the way to an angle of 180 degrees, offering a perfect view no matter what position you're in. caught. Keep in mind the respectable viewing angles and maximum safe visibility and brightness is certainly not a problem.
Although it's a bit strange to congratulate a company for its hinge design, Acer has triumphed once again. The Swift 5 hinge (which carries the logo of the laptop) keeps the screen well fixed in place, without feeling rigid.
The images are perfectly sharp, thanks to Full HD resolution. The photo editing was very easy and the images kept clear when I relaxed with a movie too.
Color realism is commendable, given the midrange specifications. In our visualization tests, we found that Swift 5 covered 99% of the sRGB range and 79% of the Adobe RGB range. Good news for budding photographers who can not afford a high-end machine.
Acer Swift 5 – Audio
At the bottom of the Swift 5 you'll find a pair of stereo speakers, located to the left and right edges. These are not bad for portable speakers, although the fact that they point to your desk or pants means that your audio is muffled.
This setup is still good for just watching a quick episode of something while working in the kitchen. However, if you want to relax with some tunes while you work, I would definitely recommend connecting a suitable headphones or an external speaker.
Acer Swift 5 – Performance
Filling within the Swift 5 is a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-8250U processor, backed by 8GB of DDR3 SDRAM. I recently reviewed the Acer Spin 5 laptop, which had quite identical specifications. Therefore, it is not surprising to see similar performance on this machine.
Everyday applications, such as office suites, multimedia streamers and web browsers, work without problems, even when they are in motion simultaneously. Apart from the occasional antics related to Windows, I never had any problem for the full test time. In addition, the Swift stays cool and silent at all times.
I also saw almost the same results as the Spin 5 in our benchmarking tests. PCMark 8 yielded a score of 3084, which surpasses many other mid-range machines from other manufacturers. For example, the Asus ZenBook UX430UA achieved 2767, while the Lenovo IdeaPad 720S produced 2426.
Geekbench offered equally predictable scores. The result of a single core of Swift 5 was 4591, while the result of multiple cores was 13680.
Unfortunately, Intel's integrated UHD Graphics 620 GPU is used to render images, rather than a dedicated dedicated solution . I discovered that I could still edit photos and play with older games (or pretty basic titles, like point and click on adventures), without snorting or blocking. However, anyone who wants to enjoy more recent titles will find a slide show presentation style experience. Instead, you'll want to find a laptop with dedicated graphics.
The 256GB solid state drive offers read speeds of 560.4MB / s, which is almost standard for laptops at this price point. However, write speeds of 257.6MB / s are a bit more disappointing.
Acer Swift 5 – Battery Life
Although the slim Swift frame does not offer much room for a battery to reside, you will get respectable performance from each charge.
With mixed use (mainly browser-based work while transmitting music and occasional editing), I generally got at least five to six hours of productivity before the battery warnings soared. And in the standard Trusted Reviews test, which involves a mix of video playback and web browsing, Swift 5 lasted just over seven hours in total.
Should I buy the Acer Swift 5? ?
Portability is undoubtedly the highlight of Acer's latest Swift. The thin and light finish makes it a perfect laptop to wear all day, while the rest of the machine makes few compromises.
Leaving aside a couple of issues related to the keyboard, I have few complaints about daily usability. The Swift 5 offers smooth performance and stays cool and quiet, although anyone behind a gaming device should look the other way.
Verdict
If you're looking for a highly portable laptop that does not skimp on performance, the Swift 5 is a solid choice that will not completely break the bank.