Acer Swift 5
Price: £1,149 (inc VAT) from fave.co/2ICq013
There are tiny laptops and then there are tiny laptops. Even now, when thin-and-lightweight everything is the norm, I’m still sometimes surprised by just how thin-and-lightweight we’re talking. Such is the case with the new Acer Swift 5, which is officially billed as: “The lightest 14in clamshell notebook that offers the option for dedicated Nvidia GeForce graphics.”
A bit convoluted, but I think what Acer is trying to say is it’s really damn light. The Swift 5 is a full-size(ish) laptop that weighs less than some tablet hybrids. That’s impressive – though unless weight is the only feature you care about, the Swift 5 can feel limiting in other regards. Let’s dig in.
Design
No matter which Swift 5 you decide on, it’s going to be small – and kind-of... cute? Cute’s a weird word to use with a laptop, but it nevertheless feels appropriate. It’s like seeing a tiger cub or something. Sure, the larger version might look sleek and ferocious, but shrunk down to half-size? It’s adorable.
Which is not to imply the Swift 5 isn’t sleek-looking. It is, once you get past the size. Acer’s settled on a blue steel colour for the metal chassis (a magnesium-lithium alloy), and while I usually prefer to stick to neutral tones I have to admit that the Swift 5 looks pretty stunning in person. The effect is heightened by using gold for the keyboard lettering, which could have been tacky if it weren’t such a subtle contrast.
Did I mention it’s small? It’s small. I can’t say it enough. The 300-nit 1,920x1,080 IPS display is cradled by ultra-thin bezels (Acer cites 3.97mm), which make it feel bigger than 14 inches. But no. Measuring 318.7x210.5x14.95mm total, the real coup is the Swift 5’s 990g weight.
That’s not the lightest device we’ve ever used, not by a long shot. The Microsoft Surface Pro X tablet for instance weighs in at a feather-light 774g. Nevertheless, this is one of the lightest clamshell laptops out there, and certainly lives up to Acer’s marketing in that regard.
By comparison, the HP Spectre x360 13t – a 13in laptop with the same Core i7-1065G7 part – weighs a ‘whopping’ 1.3kg. Sure, that 990g isn’t going to break your back, but it goes to show just how small Acer’s got the Swift 5.
And for a thin machine, it’s surprisingly accommodating. My colleague Gordon Mah Ung can rant for days about companies sacrificing USB-A ports (as on the latest Dell XPS 13 2-in-1) to shave off a few millimetres of thickness.
What do we find on the Swift 5 though? Not one, but two USB-A ports, one on either side. They join a pinhole charging port, USB-C Thunderbolt 3 port and
HDMI-Out on the left side, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the right.
Sure, the Swift 5 is a few millimetres thicker than the XPS 13 as a result of that USB-A port – and yet it’s also lighter. The XPS 13 is listed at 1.33kg. How’s that for a paradox, eh?
The added thickness also allows Acer to use a traditional laptop keyboard. Not as exciting as Dell’s MagLev technology or Apple’s butterfly switches perhaps, but also way less controversial. The Swift 5 won’t win any awards but I’ve enjoyed typing on it these past few weeks. Similarly, the glass trackpad is a bit small but is ‘good enough’ for this style of laptop. No complaints, but nothing to really highlight either. It works.
Performance
On to benchmarks, then. As I said, our Swift 5 review model used an Intel Core i7-1065G7 part with Iris Plus graphics and 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM. And it does fine.
We’ve been able to test a few of these i7-1065G7 processors now, including the aforementioned XPS 13 2-in-1 and Spectre x360. That lets us do some headto-head comparisons. First, let’s take a look at our HandBrake test, wherein we encode a 30GB MKV file down to the Android Tablet preset, a lengthy task for CPUs of this calibre.
The Swift 5 actually does okay, zipping past the Spectre x360 on default settings. The graph doesn’t tell the whole story though, as the Spectre x360 set to ‘Performance Mode’ handily outperforms the Swift
5, coming in at around 49 minutes (20 minutes faster than the default settings). And then there’s the XPS 13, which did the task eight minutes faster than the Swift 5 on its default setting – and 13 minutes faster on ‘Ultra Performance’.
We see the same pattern emerge in PCMark 8. We run the Work Conventional test, and while Acer’s machine blows past the 2,000-point threshold for ‘acceptable’ performance we can still see a gap between the Swift 5 and its peers, here lagging behind even the Spectre x360 on default settings.
In short, the Swift 5’s i7-1065G7 implementation is fine but could be better. Single-core performance in Cinebench demonstrates that the Swift 5 is theoretically as capable as the competition, but running at full tilt Acer falls behind.
The Swift 5’s graphics capabilities are its biggest shortcoming, though. The new Iris Plus graphics have proven to be a huge step over the standard Intel UHD integrated parts, both the old UHD 620 and the new UHD G1. The XPS 13 2-in-1 and Spectre x360 proved surprisingly powerful when we ran them through 3DMark’s Sky Diver benchmark.
But the Swift 5? Not so much. It still handily outperforms the old UHD 620 machines, but falls far short of its potential. Even Acer’s lower-priced Swift 3 model with the latest Intel UHD G1 setup is uncomfortably close behind. Does it matter? Probably not. Just as you’re unlikely to do heavy 3D rendering tasks on the Swift 5, I doubt you’re buying this to do much gaming. Still, it’s disappointing given the Iris Plus parts have put up such stunning results elsewhere.
And then there’s the battery. The Swift 5 is, once again, fine. Hell, as someone who primarily reviews gaming laptops, eight hours of battery life seems like a miracle. Still, the fact remains that the XPS 13 and Spectre x360 will last you through an entire workday (11- and 15 hours respectively) while the Swift 5 will probably need a charge before you’re home. You’ll have to decide whether that’s a sacrifice you’re willing to make.
Verdict
It’s a sacrifice I’m fine with, honestly. The Swift 5’s been an excellent travelling companion the past few weeks, a machine I can toss in my bag and simply forget about for hours at a time. Then I pull it out and voilà, a full-sized laptop. It’s a small miracle, quite literally.
Could it be better? Sure, in more ways than one. You’d have to compromise that portability though, and I’m not sure that’s a compromise I’m willing (or Acer’s willing) to make. It’s a one-trick pony, but it’s a damn good trick. Hayden Dingman
Specifications
• 14in (1,920x1,080) CineCrystal IPS display • Windows 10 Home (64-bit)
• Quad-core Intel Core i7-1065G7 Processor • Nvidia GeForce MX250 GPU
• 8GB DDR4
• 512GB SSD
• 1x USB 2.0
• 1x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A port
• 1x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port
• Wi-Fi 802.11/ac
• Bluetooth 5.0
• Fingerprint reader
• 318.7x210.5x14.95mm • 990g