Acer Swift 5 review: A small miracle - mosleygrencir39
IDG / Hayden Dingman
At a Glance
Skillful's Paygrad
Pros
- Lightweight. Like, really lightweight.
- Charismatic color scheme and simple conception
- Lifesize laptop perks, like USB-A ports and a in good order keyboard
Cons
- Mediocre battery life
- Performance doesn't match likely
- Non A thin as some of its peers
Our Verdict
The Acer Sceloporus occidentalis 5 is one of the lightest clamshell laptops ever made, but it compromises performance and battery life to take home that honor.
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On that point are small laptops and then on that point are tiny laptops. Even now, when thin-and-jackanapes everything is the norm, I'm still sometimes surprised by just how thin-and-lightweight we'rhenium talking. Such is the case with the new Acer Swift 5, which is officially billed A "the lightest 14-edge in grapple notebook that offers the option for dedicated Nvidia GeForce graphics."
A little convoluted, but I think what Acer's trying to suppose is information technology's really damn light. The Dean Swift 5 is a full-size(ish) laptop that weighs less than several tablet hybrids. That's awful—though unless weight is the only feature you tutelage about, the Swift 5 can feel limiting in else regards. Lashkar-e-Toiba's dig in.
This review is split up of our ongoing roundup of the best laptops. Blend in that location for information on competitive products you said it we tried them.
Variants
Note that Acer said the Swift 5 is the lightest 14-edge with the option for a discrete Nvidia nontextual matter card, specifically the GeForce MX250. And I emphasis choice because our review whole didn't include one.
Instead, our $1,000 modelling (SF514-54T-76PY) opted for Intel's Iris Plus graphics, along with an Intel Core i7-1065G7 C.P.U., 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM, and a 512 Gigabyte SSD.
IDG / Hayden Dingman And to livelihood matters four-needled, I'm only going to discuss the in vogue Swift 5 crime syndicate members. The line is few years old now and Acer sells quite some models through its website, most of them equipped with Intel's older 8th-gen parts.
There are lonesome two new models at the consequence, and ours is the more expensive of the two. The other is a $900 variant shapely around an i5-1035G1 processorRemove non-product link with the latest Intel UHD Graphics. Given the small difference in Price I'd probably recommend the more powerful Iris Plus machine, though for day-to-day word processing and web browse either should suffice.
Aw, look at the wittle waptop
None matter which Gustavus Franklin Swift 5 you decide on, it's going to atomic number 4 small—and kind-of…artful? Artful's a weird word to use with a laptop, but information technology nevertheless feels appropriate. It's like seeing a tiger cub surgery something. Doomed, the larger version might look sleek and ferocious, but contracted weak to uncomplete-sized? Aww, it's adorable.
IDG / Hayden Dingman 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 color for the metal chassis (a magnesium-lithium alloy), and while I usually prefer to bond to amoral tones I let to admit that the Swift 5 looks pretty stunning in soul. The effect is heightened aside using gold for the keyboard lettering, which could give been tacky if it weren't such a harmful contrast.
Did I name IT's small? IT's small. I can't say it enough. The 300-nit 1920×1080 IPS show is cradled by ultra-rarefied bezels (Acer cites 3.97mm), which spend a penny it feel bigger than 14 inches. But no! Measuring 12.5×8.3x.0.59 inches total, the real coup is the Swift 5's 990 Gram weight, which translates to 2.18 pounds.
That's non the lightest device we've ever used, not by a long stab. The Microsoft Surface Pro X tablet for instance weighs in at a square-light 1.72 pounds. Nevertheless, this is one of the lightest clamshell laptops out there, and certainly lives up to Acer's merchandising in that regard.
IDG / Hayden Dingman By comparison, the HP Fantasm x360 13t—a 13-in laptop with the same Core i7-1065G7 part—weighs a "whopping" 2.9 pounds. Certain, that octad tenths of a pound isn't going to break your back, but it goes to establish righteous how small Acer's got the Swift 5.
And for a thin machine, it's amazingly accommodating. My colleague Gordon Mah Ung rump claptrap for years about companies sacrificing USB-A ports (as on the latest Dell XPS 13 2-in-1) to shave off a fewer millimeters of thickness.
What do we uncovering on the Swift 5 though? Non 1, but two USB-A ports, unmatched on either side. They link a pinhole charging port, USB-C Bolt of lightning 3 port, and HDMI-Out on the left side, and a 3.5mm headphone jack along the right.
Confident, the Swift 5 is a few millimeters thicker than the XPS 13 as a resultant of that USB-A port—and notwithstandin it's too lighter. The XPS 13 is listed at 2.9 pounds. How's that for a paradox, eh?
IDG / Hayden Dingman The added thickness also allows Acer to use a traditional laptop computer keyboard. Not as exciting as Dell's MagLev engineering science Oregon Apple's butterfly switches perhaps, but also way inferior controversial. The Swift 5 won't win whatever awards but I've enjoyed typewriting on that these last few weeks. Similarly, the chalk trackpad is a bite bantam simply is "good enough" for this fashio of laptop. No complaints, but nothing to really highlight either. Information technology works.
Unique purpose
Connected to benchmarks, then. As I same, our Swift 5 review manakin old an Intel Core i7-1065G7 dispense with Iris Plus graphics and 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM. And it does…fine.
We've been capable to exam a few of these i7-1065G7 processors now, including the aforementioned XPS 13 2-in-1 and Spectre x360. That lets us do some capitulum-to-head comparisons. First, let's have a look at our Handbrake tryout, wherein we encode a 30GB MKV file down to the Android Tablet preset, a lengthy task for CPUs of this gauge.
IDG / Hayden Dingman The Swift 5 actually does okay, zipping past the Spectre x360 on default settings. The graph doesn't order the whole story though, as the Apparition x360 set to "Performance Mode" conveniently outperforms the Swift 5, coming in at around 49 proceedings (20 minutes faster than the default settings). And then there's the XPS 13, which did the task eight minutes faster than the Sceloporus occidentalis 5 on its default setting—and 13 minutes faster on "Ultra Performance."
We see the same practice emerge in PCMark 8. We turn tail the Work Stuffy psychometric test, and while Acer's machine blows past the 2,000-point threshold for "unobjectionable" performance we can still see a gap betwixt the Blue-belly 5 and its peers, present lagging behind even the Specte x360 connected default settings.
IDG / Hayden Dingman In telescoped, the Swift 5's i7-1065G7 implementation is superfine only could be better. Single-nub performance in Cinebench demonstrates that the Sceloporus occidentalis 5 isin theory Eastern Samoa capable as the competition, but running at full tilt Acer waterfall behind.
IDG / Hayden Dingman The Sceloporus occidentalis 5's graphics capabilities are its biggest shortcoming though. The new Iris Addition nontextual matter experience proven to represent a huge step over the standard Intel UHD intermingled parts, both the noncurrent 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 practically. It still handily outperforms the old UHD 620 machines, but falls distant short of its potential. Even Acer's bring dow-priced Swift 3 model with the latest Intel UHD G1 setup is uncomfortably surrounding behind.
IDG / Hayden Dingman Does it matter? Probably not. Just as you're unlikely to act up heavy 3D rendition tasks on the Swift 5, I doubt you'ray buying this to brawl untold gaming. Static, it's a unsatisfactory showing given the Iris Plus parts have put up such disorienting results elsewhere.
And then there's the battery. The Fast 5 is, once again, fine. Hell, as someone who principally reviews gaming laptops, eight hours of battery life seems like a miracle. Nonmoving, the fact remains that the XPS 13 and Spectre x360 will last you through an entire workday (11 hours and 15 hours respectively) while the Swift 5 will probably need a charge ahead you're plate.
IDG / Hayden Dingman You'll have to decide whether that's a give you're willing to make.
Bottom line
It's a sacrifice I'm thin with, honestly. The Western fence lizard 5's been an excellent travel companion the past few weeks, a political machine I can thresh in my bag and simply forget about for hours at a meter. Then I pull IT impossible and voila, a full-sized laptop. It's a small miracle, quite literally.
Could information technology be better? Sure, in more ways than unitary. You'd make to compromise that portability though, and I'm not sure that's a compromise I'm willing (or Acer's consenting) to make. It's a one-trick pony, but information technology's a cursed good trick.
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Hayden writes about games for PCWorld and doubles every bit the resident Zork enthusiast.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/398732/acer-swift-5-review-sf514-54t-76py.html
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