Acer Swift 7 Acer’s new laptop is a golden opportunity

A leaner laptop

With its black case and gold interior, this is a dramatically slim laptop that arguably looks even more expensive than HP’S top-end Spectre Pro 13. It’s actually quite a bit cheaper, but hold on there. What you might mistake for an Intel i5 processor is an i5-7y54, which belongs to Intel’s low-power M series. That means it’s capable of running Windows 10 without grinding to a halt, but not a good choice for lots of multitasking or jobs like editing photos.

So £900 isn’t cheap, and online-retail prices seem to be going up rather than down, with Amazon asking over £1,000 for the same machine at the time of writing. That probably reflects dwindling stock, so if you do fancy it, you’ll want to jump in sooner rather than later.

One thing your £900 buys you is plenty of admiring glances. The aluminium chassis is superbly engineered, with attention to detail on the crisp lines and chamfered edges. It’s susceptible to fingerprints, but the matt finish (which continues on the gold-coloured surface around the keyboard) feels more classy than glossier rivals.

Ports are limited to two USB 3.1 Type-c sockets, both on the right-hand edge, which means you’ll need adapters for almost everything. These only reach 5Gbps for external storage (some Type-c systems support 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3). There’s a headphone jack too.

The keyboard isn’t backlit, which will disappoint anyone who often has to type in darker conditions, and we found it a bit mushy to type on. The glass trackpad was very responsive both to gestures and clicks, though.

The Full HD screen doesn’t give you the sharpness of Microsoft’s Surface Pro, for example, or laptops from the likes of Dell that offer super-high-res QHD options, but at 13.3in it looks quite decent. So this isn’t a premium screen, but creative professionals aren’t going to choose this model anyway, and we found it perfectly acceptable for most tasks.

In our video-playback test, the Swift 7’s battery lasted just over seven hours, which is decent for this class of laptop and shows a very thin case can still be practical. The 256GB SSD should be just about enough for most users, assuming you have another storage option at home for your full photo and video collection. We would have liked at least a microsd slot for a bit of extra space when needed, but maybe Acer just couldn’t bear to drill any more holes in those wafer-thin side panels.

Wafer-thin, gold trim design is stunning, while screen and battery impress

SPECIFICATIONS 1.2GHZ Intel Core i5-7y54 dual-core processor • 8GB memory • 256GB SSD • 13.3in 1920x1080pixel screen • Webcam • 802.11ac Wi-fi • Bluetooth 4.0 • 2x USB 3.1 Type-c ports • Windows 10 Home • 10x325x230mm (HXWXD • 1.13kg • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/25951