ACER SWIFT 3 SF314-59

$1,359 acer.com

Another super-thin and very lightweight laptop, Acer’s Swift 3 is more affordable than some and is a solid, powerful choice. Though its speakers aren’t great (you’ll want to use headphones for watching a movie or, you know, just get on with some work), that’s about its biggest flaw. It looks good – the aluminium chassis owes a thing or two to the Apple Macbook Air – and it has an understated, elegant design. The display can’t match the resolution of some rivals but it’s highly usable and the extra real estate – it has a 14-inch screen – is welcome. The camera is good enough for Zoom calls and performance across the board is strong. Battery life is good at around eight hours in our tests. Running Windows 10, this is a good-value, good-performance machine.