Acer Swift 5

Acer’s high-spec laptop fails to live up to high expectations

Intel gives each of its processors a number, and the meanings of those numbers are fairly straightforward. Its Core range is divided into i3, i5 and i7 classes, which you can think of as decent, good and fast. After that comes the generation number (currently 8). Then things get slightly murkier, with three further digits that are, well, better if they’re higher. And finally comes either nothing or a letter. There are about a dozen of these letters, and they each have a distinct meaning, but why they picked that particular letter is anyone’s guess.

All right, Q for quad-core makes sense. But don’t get too cocky, because while some quad-core chips have a Q, others don’t. They might have a K instead, meaning they’re unlocked for overclocking. Fair enough, we can sort of see where the K comes from – but why don’t they get a Q as well?

Then there are processors made for all-in-one desktop PCS – that’s the T series. T stands for ‘lifestyle’, obviously. For top-end professional systems, X chips are ‘extremely’ fast – get it? And for tablets and convertibles, Y processors are extremely slow.

That’s clear, then. Inside this new and surprisingly light version of the 14in Acer Swift 5 is an i7-8550u. It has a U on the end because it’s an ultra-low-power processor. Unlike all previous U chips, it’s quad-core, and in fact this is a very powerful processor indeed, at least by portable standards.

At least, it ought to be. When we ran our usual tests, however, we got scores significantly lower than other laptops with the same specification. Why? The Swift 5 isn’t the thinnest laptop around, so it’s not that the components are crammed into too small a space. But its magnesium-lithium alloy skin is incredibly thin, and we suspect that means it can’t dissipate heat as well as most metal chassis.

There are fans inside to help, but they’re small and weak. Open up something like a Macbook Pro, and more room is taken up by the cooling system than the actual computer. Not here.

Something’s got to give, and what we saw when we worked the Swift 5 hard was the Intel chip’s core temperature rocketing up to over 90°C, at which point its performance was automatically throttled to prevent damage. To be honest, if you don’t often run highly demanding tasks – it’s only stuff like rendering 4K video effects that’ll really stretch the i7 – that may not be a problem. This is still a capable all-round Windows 10 system, with a generous 512GB SSD.

As for the rest of the machine, it’s good but not great. Before we even got it out of the box, that thin skin had proved inadequate to protect our review unit, which arrived slightly warped out of shape. It worked fine, but felt more like a plastic case than an aluminium unibody, and the backlit keyboard responded less than reliably to our typing. The big, smooth touchpad was fine. The Full HD screen covered a creditable 91 per cent of SRGB colours, but with limited accuracy and low maximum brightness.

Unlike slimmer models, the Swift 5 has a full set of proper ports, albeit none faster than USB 3.0, and even a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello unlocking, though we found it only worked about half the time. There’s no SD or microsd card slot, and at just under six hours in our video-playback test, battery life is unimpressive.

SPECIFICATIONS

Light and portable, but it struggles with demanding tasks and isn’t robust

1.8GHZ Intel Core i5-8550u quad-core processor • 8GB memory • 512GB SSD • 14in 1920x1080-pixel screen • Webcam • 802.11ac Wi-fi • 2x USB 3.0 ports • USB Type-c port • HDMI port • Windows 10 Home • 14.9x329x228mm (HXWXD) • 0.97kg

• One-year warranty www.snipca.com/29347 VERDICT Already discounted from £1,100, this offers a good spec on paper but doesn’t quite live up to expectations

★★★ ★★

ALTERNATIVE HP Envyy 13 £1,100 Smaller but sturdier,dier,, this doubles the memorymoryry and adds MX150 graphicsphicics to the i7 processor