Review of Acer Swift 5 (late 2020): putting ‘ultra’ in ‘ultraportable’

If you need a laptop that is not only lightweight, but one of the lightest, you are looking for the 14-inch Acer Swift 5. At just 2.31 pounds, it is one of those devices that mess up your mind. When I pick it up, I feel like I must be holding a hollow chassis. When I put it in my backpack, I spend the day worrying if I might have left it at home.

Of course, there are lighter laptops out there – Asus’ B9450 Expertbook, LG’s Gram 13, Acer’s Swift 7, Samsung’s Galaxy Book S and Dynabook’s Portege X30L-G weigh a little less – but some of these models are significantly more expensive than than the Swift 5 or a reduction in performance. If you are looking for a real processor for an average consumer audience, the Swift 5 is the lightest you can find.

The model I tested, priced at $ 1,299.99, is a solid versatile model, without much to criticize and without much fanfare. Its outstanding feature is the weight and performance per kilo it offers. Obviously, for many students, remote workers and frequent travelers, this could be a deciding factor.

Design Acer Swift 5

The first thing you will notice when looking at this Swift 5 is its unusual color. Our unit is a dark blue-green hue called “green haze”, a new hue for the Swift line. Acer says that the goal is to convey a “peaceful and balanced lifestyle”; although i’m not sure to see this, i appreciate it being a little different from the endless black and gray laptops you’ll see out there.

The exclusive finish also includes a new “silver ion antimicrobial agent”, which, according to Acer, will help to kill remaining bacteria. I’m not sure how many people are getting sick with their laptops to begin with, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt.

The display’s bezels have decreased compared to last year’s Swift 5 design, giving the screen a more modern look. In particular, a large bottom frame that used to contain a flashy Acer logo has disappeared. (This logo is now at the top of the keyboard.) Last year’s model had a screen-to-body ratio of 86.4%, while this year’s clocks were at 90%. The screen is also brighter than its predecessor (321 nits as tested, compared to 300 nits last year) with great colors and contrast, although its 16: 9 aspect ratio is somewhat limited.

Swift also offers good connectivity for such a thin device (it is only 0.59 inches thick). You get a USB 3.2 Gen 2 (compatible with Thunderbolt 4, DisplayPort and charging), two USB 3.2 Gen 1, an HDMI 2.0, a combo audio connector and AC port from Acer. It would be nice to have an SD slot or a second USB-C, but that is a note to pass.

Elsewhere, the Swift 5 offers a smooth and precise touchpad, as well as a solid keyboard with comfortable keys. I reached my standard typing speeds and didn’t make a single mistake in my usual typing test, which has never happened to me before. For authentication, there is a reliable and fast fingerprint reader below the arrow keys.

The only real downside to the Swift’s thin and light construction is that it looks a little fragile. There is some flexibility on the screen and some very noticeable flexibility on the keyboard. I wouldn’t say that everything seems cheap – the construction is clearly an improvement over the affordable price, like the Swift 3 – but it will look and look like plastic alongside more expensive ultraportables like the Dell XPS 13.

Acer Swift 5 performance

The biggest news about this new Swift 5 is its new Tiger Lake processor, the quad-core Core i7-1165G7. With this chip, come several new features, including Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 6 and integrated graphics Iris Xe.

Swift is also certified by Evo, Intel’s verification program for Tiger Lake systems. To earn an Evo badge, a laptop must provide a variety of benefits, such as a one-second wake-up time, nine hours of battery life with real-world use and reliable performance. Not every Evo-certified system I tested hit those marks in my tests, but the Swift 5 certainly came close.

In addition to the processor, the $ 1,299.99 system includes 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage. There is also a basic $ 999.99 model available, including a Core i5-1135G7 (also with Xe graphics), 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. Any of these models is a good buy, but people who don’t need Swift to do anything graphically intensive will likely be fine with the $ 999 setup. Analysis has shown that the Core i5-1135G7 often matches and sometimes outperforms the Core i7-1165G7 on CPU-intensive tasks. Some other excellent laptops with similar portability benefits are also priced between $ 999 and $ 1,299, making the $ 1,299 model a little more difficult to sell. The 2.49-pound, 0.54-inch Asus ZenBook 14 with equivalent specifications costs just $ 1,099.

You are not compromising the power of this format. The Swift 5 is the fastest Tiger Lake laptop I’ve reviewed so far (in addition to a high-frequency reference design), although it is not on par with some recent AMD Ryzen products. I certainly never noticed any slowness or error in my day-to-day work. And while this is not a laptop you would buy for gaming, the Iris Xe graphics are good enough to run something lighter.

The bottom of the chassis heated up during an intense day of Chrome’s multitasking, downloading and updating, photo editing, Zoom calls, Spotify streaming and Netflix viewing, but it was never uncomfortable to touch. I often listened to the fans while the Swift was in Performance mode, as well as a very occasional hum of the coil, but switching to silent mode eliminated both. (You can easily switch between the cooling profiles with Fn + F.)

And the battery life was a pleasant surprise. I had an average of eight hours and five minutes of continuous multitasking (about 200 nits of brightness) in this version – a big step from the six hours I took out of Swift 5. last year. Battery life has also improved significantly after I got rid of some programs that came loaded on this machine, including ExpressVPN, Amazon (which is attached to the taskbar) and Norton. It only takes a few minutes to discard all of these programs, but considering that this laptop costs more than $ 1,000, it is still frustrating that Acer is carrying it with cheap trash.

The last thing I will discuss is video conferencing software, as it is an important feature for many mobile professionals. The results here are mixed. The good news is that Swift 5 now supports AI and Wi-Fi 6 enhanced background noise suppression. These are difficult to test, but I made several Zoom calls on Swift 5 and no one had trouble hearing me.

In less good news, the 720p webcam is quite grainy. (It’s not good enough to support Windows Hello.) The dual stereo speakers also offer one of the weakest sounds I’ve ever heard from a laptop – the bass in the music was pretty weak. Swift comes loaded with DTS audio processing, which allows you to switch between preset profiles for music, movies and games, and adjust the equalizer settings yourself. There is no specific profile for videoconferencing.

Inside its slim and light exterior, the 2021 Acer Swift 5 is an end-to-end mid-range laptop. There are commitments, but there are no disasters. Most aspects of it (the keyboard, touchpad, screen, connectivity, battery life) are good. Others (the webcam, the audio, the bloatware) are disheartening, but helpful.

If these factors are what you care about the most, you can get similar quality for less money on the Acer Swift 3 or Aspire 5, Asus’ ZenBook 14, HP Envy x360 13 and many other more affordable machines. If you are paying a premium for this configuration of the Swift 5, you are paying for the exceptionally light construction. The portable chassis – and the power that Acer has incorporated into this portable chassis – is where the Swift 5 is at the top of its class.