Review about Acer Swift Edge in 2023. A high-end laptop designed to strike a compromise between portability and screen size is the Acer Swift Edge. Despite having a screen that is 16 inches larger than most ultraportable laptops, it weighs less than 1.2 kg.
Because conventional laptop design can’t fully support these specifications, Acer has to hunt for any chance to reduce weight by a few grams.
Review about Acer Swift Edge in 2023:
The end result: The Swift Edge from Acer is a potent laptop that will perform well for business travelers. However, a few flaws in the construction and design mean that the Swift Edge falls short of the LG Gram series, which first made this type of laptop popular.
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Design & Build:
- Super-light magnesium aluminum alloy frame
- Relatively poor panel rigidity
- Sober, plain-looking design
Considering that it features a 16-inch screen, the Swift Edge is remarkably lightweight. For a 13-inch laptop, much alone one this large, 1.17kg would be regarded as light.
The LG Gram 16, the laptop that the Swift Edge is unmistakably aiming at, is the one that Acer uses a lot of the same strategies and concessions to achieve this goal. It might also hope to convince some users to switch from a MacBook Air.
The magnesium alloy body panels of the Acer Swift Edge are quite thin based on how the Edge feels. This laptop flexes slightly throughout, even at the base of the keyboard, where it begins to affect us.
Hence, shedding this much weight entails giving up something. Do they merit it? Yes, if you travel frequently. Not so much if the Acer Swift Edge will spend 90% of its time on your desk at home or at work.
Although we aren’t concerned about the Edge’s durability, we don’t like the typing’s hollowness. Competitors who aren’t the result of an obsession with weight loss don’t show it either.
Similarly unassuming in appearance is the Acer Swift Edge laptop. The screen’s front layer is also plastic because glass would be too heavy, and it has a raised plastic screen bezel. Here, portability is emphasized, and the Edge fits in carry-on luggage at 13mm thick.
Keyboard and touchpad:
- The shallow keyboard feels a little vague
- The plastic touchpad is a disappointment
- Basic 2-level white key backlight
Because the keystroke force resonates around the frame, typing on the Swift Edge has a certain “hollowness” to it. The motion is quick and light, not heavy and solid like a desktop keyboard, and the keys are also shallow.
Obviously, a laptop keyboard cannot compare to a desktop keyboard, but here, the typing experience is at best passable. At least two levels of the backlight are present.
More bizarre items can be found in the touchpad. Given the price of the Acer Swift Edge, it seems strange that this pad is made of plastic. A smooth glass pad is typically what you can anticipate once you reach about $1000 or £1000.
Although the touchpad surface of the Acer Swift Edge feels fine, it does have a slight plastic squeak that textured glass does not have. Depending on where you push on the pad, click depth changes quite a bit. Even though that’s typical for a mechanical clicker, it stands out more on the Swift Edge.
The fingerprint sensor that is incorporated into the power button is a plus. This entails that you can access Windows without inputting a password or PIN. It also consistently functions.
Screen:
- High color depth
- 4K resolution looks sharp
- Glossy plastic surface
The Acer Swift Edge boasts a premium display, however, you might not notice it right away because of the plastic exterior. Contemporary eyes are accustomed to viewing displays made of reflective glass, which the Edge lacks.
Our colorimeter, however, swiftly made the situation’s reality clear. Given that the Acer Swift Edge has an OLED panel, which means emissive pixels, the contrast is as fantastic as to be expected. The Edge has excellent color depth, and significantly, Acer didn’t offer it an absurdly saturated default presentation.
The Samsung Galaxy Book 360 3 offers options that match more closely to standards like sRGB, DCI P3, and Adobe RGB, but sadly there are no baked-in color profiles.
Being a DIsplayHDR500 screen, according to Acer, it should be able to produce 500 nits of brightness. Nevertheless, we were only able to extract 400 nits from it; HDR material may have access to higher brightness levels. While it is bright enough to be used outdoors, it is less visible in low light than an anti-reflective matt one since it is glossy and shiny.
But there are a few tiny, constrained components. Only about 130 degrees of backward tilt is possible, and the screen is not a touchscreen. With this laptop, you also won’t be able to utilize any form of the stylus. Also, the screen only refreshes at 60 hertz, not at a fast pace.
Performance:
- Good performance
- Fan noise gets distracting under load
- Better for gaming than current Intel rivals
The AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB SSD are all included in the acer swift edge. It’s a great specification with room for serious work, video editing, and other things.
A better graphics chipset gives its AMD processor a significant advantage over the Intel Core i7-1360p, a competitor. Although it has greater power available, the graphics hardware used here uses technology comparable to that of the Steam Deck.
As a result, you can play a tonne of games with decent visuals, just not at the screen’s native 4K resolution. Our tests reveal that it uses only 24 to 25 watts of power, less than the maximum TDP of 28 watts, but the Asus ZenBook S13 OLED uses the same maximum power continuously, indicating that this is typical for laptops.
The Acer Swift Edge experiences the same problem as many other ultra-thin notebooks when under stress: an audible, high-pitched whir of the cooling fan. The character is somewhat similar to that of a small jet plane, even though the noise level is never that loud. Nonetheless, when doing light tasks, it is essentially silent.
Battery life and features:
- Worse-than-claimed battery life
- Decent 1080p webcam
The LG Gram line shows that extremely little weight does not always equate to extremely short battery life. Additionally, the Swift Edge, which uses an AMD Ryzen processor, has some of the necessary components for excellent endurance. Acer claims 10.5 hours of battery life, which is often longer than an Intel equivalent.
But we were let down by the reality. It didn’t quite manage a full day of work away from the mains during our office-work test, lasting seven hours and 40 minutes. Nevertheless, you’ll be reaching for the charger even sooner if you have poor browser tab manners and leave stacks of them open or want to do something more difficult than drafting documents and making the occasional Zoom call.
A mixed bag exists elsewhere. The webcam gave us a wonderful surprise. Although the camera’s pinhole lens appears to be quite small, it is actually a 1080p camera that is rather capable.
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However, the speakers aren’t very good. Although clarity and projection are adequate and there is no bass present, the Edge lacks the skills necessary to produce high-quality audio.
With the exception of any type of memory card reader, the Acer provides practically all the connectivity you’d require when traveling. There are two USB-C connections, however, they are 10Gbps USB 3.2 connectors, which are less fast than the Thunderbolt kind you might anticipate from a laptop with an Intel CPU at this price point. A full-size HDMI output is provided, which is a blessing for those moments when you only need to rapidly connect a TV or monitor.
Price and Availability:
There are no more models available for the £1499/$1499 Acer Swift Edge, at least in the UK.
You receive a 1TB SSD, 16GB of Memory, and an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U CPU. Given that the standard specifications for ultrabooks are still 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD, they make it a better deal than it may have first appeared to be.
To put it into perspective, the Apple MacBook Pro 16 costs twice as much and has specifications that are as similar as possible.
Specs:
- Model tested
- OS: Windows 11 Home
- Display: 16in 3480 x 2400 60Hz OLED
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 6800U
- Memory: 16GB onboard
- Graphics: AMD Radeon
- Storage: 1TB PCIe NVMe M.s SSD
- Webcam: 1080p
- Connectivity: 2 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, HDMI 2.1. 2x USB-A 3.2
- Networking: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
- Battery capacity: 54Wh
- Charger: 65W
- Dimensions: 356.7 x 242.3 x 13.95mm
- Weight: 1.17kg
- Warranty:1yr RTB
