Acer Swift 5

Is Acer trying to pull a quick one with its new professional ultrabook?

The Swift 5 is one of the few offerings here that range an Intel Core i5 model as well as the more powerful i7-1065G7 variation, so you can get one for as little as $1,799. For that you’ll get the i5-1035G1, 8GB of RAM and a tiny 256GB SSD, which is just enough to be able to work from if you have everything in the cloud. If you can afford the $2,399 model you’ll get that faster processor, 16GB of RAM and a serviceable 512GB of PCIe SSD storage, which is a more well-rounded configuration.

Like Asus’s ExpertBook, the Swift 5 is trying to be as light as possible at just 990g, although while the former manages to keep everything feeling premium in the process, the lack of resistance on the Swift 5’s thin plastic keyboard and trackpad can feel a little flimsy and loose for a premium ultrabook. That said, it was perfectly workable, and without another laptop to compare next to it you probably wouldn’t notice the difference that much. The 1080p IPS screen doesn’t look particularly enticing next to the other devices here, but it is enough to still look nice and is capable of decent media playback.

Performance was between three and seven percent above the average quad-core CPU on PCMark 8 and 10 benchmarks, but was between three and fifteen percent behind on raw CPU and media encoding tests. It was also forty percent behind the average GPU performance, only beating the Spectre x360 and the ExpertBook, but it did have decent battery life, lasting seven hours and 32 minutes in 1080p movie playback.

A long-lasting and lightweight professional ultrabook that’s powerful enough for those on a tight budget.