Acer Swift 5 Review: The Slim and Smart Laptop

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Acer Swift 5: At First Glance

Undoubtedly, Acer has been producing some of the best laptops we have seen over the years. They almost do not get it wrong in design and performance.

Likewise, the Acer Swift 5 isn’t any different. In 2020, Acer came up with two models of this jaw-dropping, featherweight beauty with sales prices of $899 and $999 respectively.

The sight of the Acer Swift 5 is one to behold. In fact, the 14-inch laptop weighs even lighter than the MacBookAir (13.3 inches) and Lenovo Thinkpad x1 carbon (13.5 inches).

Furthermore, the Acer Swift 5 has a base version with a Core i5-1035G1 CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and its sale price is $899. Meanwhile, the upgraded version has a core i7-1065G7.

In this review, I will be focusing on the upgraded version.

Acer Swift 5: Design, Dimension, & Weight

Have you ever imagined carrying a laptop that almost feels like you are carrying nothing?

Oh, yes!, Acer Swift 5 gives that feeling. 

This review will highlight the slight difference between the base and the upgraded model of the Acer Swift 5. However, because it’s still the same laptop, they share similar features in looks and dimensions. 

In the upgraded version of the Acer Swift 5, the feeling of carrying almost nothing is amplified, because the size is reduced from 15.5 inches to 14 inches. 

The lightweight of the second version makes it a better option if lightweight is the focal point of consideration for you. This new version has a dimension of 320.04 x 205.7 x 14.9 mm and weighs 1047.7g. 

I think Acer did a good job in the aspect of weight, as this model closely competes with the MacBook Air. While the MacBook Air weighs 1,270g, the Acer weighs just 1,047.7g. 

Despite being broader, the Acer swift 5’ upgraded version is also lighter than the Lenovo Thinkpad x1 carbon which weighs 1,130g.

Moving over to its look, Acer calls the chassis of this laptop  “advanced alloys”. The exterior covering of the Swift 5 is made of magnesium-lithium while the palm rests are made of magnesium-aluminum. 

These however do not give the laptop an expensive look and feel. The laptop feels like cheap plastic on the surface. 

This is one area Acer seems to have sacrificed quality to save some money.

However, the surface has such a smooth feel even though it feels cheap. I almost could not stop myself from rubbing my palm around it.

For branding, the “ACER” gold-colored text logo sits broadly at the center of the laptop’s lid. This logo gives the lid a slight gold shine in the dark.

Moving to the screen, Acer made the screen a bit flimsy; it can easily break. You can’t afford to be careless with it.

If you love slim bezels, you’ll love Acer Swift 5 – this 14-inch screen laptop has slim bezels. In addition to slim bezels, it has a layer of antimicrobial Corning Gorilla Glass that helps to protect the screen.

Antimicrobial Corning Gorilla Glass is a thin sheet of glass that helps keep the glass surface of the laptop clean of stains and bacteria.

In addition, this 14-inch laptop comes with a touchscreen that is smartly responsive to multi-touch. It accurately implements touch commands in the system.

Still on the display, the 14-inch touch-capable beauty is accompanied by an IPS panel that offers a 1920 x 1080 pixels display resolution. The display contents can be read from nearly any angle without so many distortions or color changes.

Proceeding to the keyboard, the keys travel inward if you push on them with any sort of effort. Rather than the common white fonts you see on most keyboards, the keys on this laptop come adorned with gold fonts that give a stylish look. 

From my typing experience, it feels good to type on — the keys are so clicky and the travel distance is moderate despite the slim chassis. Also, it has small arrow keys, but the rest of the keys are of good size and appropriately spaced out.

Considering the keyboard characteristics, I can say that the Acer Swift 5 is typing-friendly.

As a mouse replacement, Acer used a “ClickPad” in the Swift 5. There’s a super responsive touchpad placed directly beneath the keyboard area.

This touchpad surface is well suited for easy navigation of the mouse pointer. The clicks are organized reliably through mechanical pressure and touch inputs.

It is also very flat that you would almost not notice it at first glance. This is one aspect of the laptop design I admire so much.

Now moving to the ports, this laptop is endowed with two USB 3.0 Type-A ports and one Type-C USB 3.1 Gen 2 port both on the left side. 

There’s also a full-size HDMI port on the left side, allowing you to receive and transmit both video and audio signals from any source through HDMI cables.

The power connector is also located on the left side of the laptop. On the right side, there’s a slot for a lock and a headphone jack.

There is also a thunderbolt 4 port on the left side of the laptop. However, this laptop doesn’t come with a webcam. This makes it impossible to snap with.

If you’re someone who will have to engage in webcam-needed activities with your laptop, then this laptop isn’t for you.

In terms of color availability, this Acer piece of work comes in two colors, Mist Green and Safari Gold. Both colors look super adorable.

After carefully analyzing its design, dimension, and weight, I will give the Acer Swift 5 an eight in this review section.

Acer Swift 5: Processor (CPU) Performance

For the processor, the Swift 5 features the Intel Core i7-1165G7. The Intel Core i7-1165G7 is a quad-core processor designed for sleeker laptops. 

You might be wondering what a quad-core processor is, right?

A quad-core processor is a chip with four independent processor units called cores, which receive and execute processing instructions. These instructions include branch, add, and move data.

Also, each independent core in a quad-core processor can process multiple instructions at the same time, increasing the overall speed for the programs that you can run on the laptop. 

In short, the more cores a processor has the more tasks you can run at the same time.

The four cores run at a 2.80 GHz base frequency speed and a maximum frequency of up to 4.70 GHz. The maximum frequency is also known as the boost frequency.

This laptop’s CPU is a pretty decent CPU for lightweight and thin laptops. Little wonder why it is featured in the Acer Swift 5.

Although it is not as fast as the higher-wattage competition, the core i7 will, however, have no trouble being used for video editing. It can also be used for a bit of gaming.

Compared to its competitor, the Dell Inspiron 17 7000 2-in-1, the Acer Swift 5 performs better in speed and it is a better choice for a bit of gaming. It is important to note that both laptops feature the same type of processor.

Using the Cinebench R15 rating as a benchmark, the Acer Swift 5 had 230 points in its single-core performance, while the multicore performance rating had 1027 points.

On the same benchmark, the Dell Inspiron 17 7000 2-in-1 had a score of just 173 points in the single-core and a score of 659 points in the multicore aspect. Clearly, Acer Swift 5 performs better than Dell Inspiron 17 7000 2-in-1.

However, Acer Swift 5 underperformed the HP Pavilion 15 Laptop. Interestingly, when both laptops were used to access the internet, I noticed that the HP Pavilion 15 offered a better speed, loaded graphics faster, and allowed the opening of more tabs.

Even though the HP Pavilion 15 performed better in a real-life test, in the Cinebench R15 single-core test, it benchmark test, it performed worse than the Acer Swift 5. However, in the multi-core test, the HP laptop achieved a higher score than the Acer.

In the single-core Cinebench R15 benchmark test, HP Pavilion 15 scored 176 points while in the multicore test, it scored 1418 points.

After carefully analyzing its processor performance, I will give Acer Swift 5 a rating of nine in this review section.

Acer Swift 5: Memory (RAM) Performance

The Acer Swift 5 comes equipped with a 16GB LPDDR4X memory.

To further explain, while the 16GB denotes the memory size, LPDDR4X denotes the memory type.

LPDDR4X means Low Power Double Data Rate and it is designed specifically for mobile devices. An LPDDR based laptop is known to be slightly more power-efficient and offers more speed than its counterparts. 

Sadly, LPDDR4x laptops cannot be upgraded. This is because the memory is soldered on the motherboard. 

This might be bad news for people who want a system with upgradeable memory. Also, the LPDDR4X comes with one memory slot.

However, Acer did a good job by equipping the Acer Swift 5 with such a massive memory size and efficient memory type. The memory capacity on the Acer Swift 5 makes the laptop a good choice in terms of efficiency.

When I tried logging in to www.itechguides.com, the website had already opened before I could say “Jack”. Phew! Such smartness.

This is why I called Acer Swift 5 the “Slim and Smart Laptop” at the title of this post. The Acer Swift 5 is so slim, yet, it performs like a heavyweight.

Furthermore, I could open up to 25 tabs with the Acer Swift 5. Five out of the 25 tabs were all playing some YouTube videos.

Also, I accessed my mail, logged into several websites, and social media platforms. All these ran concurrently without any distortions.

I also decided to run a benchmark memory test using the PCMark 10 and the Acer Swift 5 had 4894 points.

The PCMark 10 is a standard memory performance benchmark test that accesses the performance of a laptop’s memory. This benchmark test simply depicts that the higher the score, the better the performance.

Using the same benchmark test, Dell Inspiron 17 7000 2-in-1 had 4056 points. Meanwhile, the HP Pavillion 15 had 5814 points in its overall score.

Hence, because of the memory performance stated above, I will rate Acer Swift 5 eight in this review section. 

Acer Swift 5: Storage Options & Performance

The Acer Swift 5s’ storage capacity is another money-worthy aspect of this laptop. Interestingly, it comes with an SSD storage of up to 1TB.

SSD means solid-state drive. SSDs store data in an integrated circuit – to learn more about SSD, read our article Solid State Drive (SSD) Explained.

I am excited about the storage option of Acer Swift 5 because SSD storage is a highly efficient storage type. With its generous 1TB storage size, you need not worry about running out of space in this laptop.

No matter how excited I am about the storage type and size, my job is to provide you with information about the storage performance of the laptop.

To do this, I performed a file transfer test with Acer Swift 5 to determine the 1 TB SSD file transfer rate. The Acer Swift 5 had a transfer rate of 1,141 MBps in my 5GB file transfer test. 

If you’re wondering what a file transfer test is, it is simply copying the 5 GB file from one folder to another. Then, monitor how long it took to complete the copy.

Comparatively, Apple tops the chart for the class with the MacBook Air having a transfer rate of 2,897.8 MBps. Meanwhile, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon performed lower at 997.9 MBps.

Furthermore, I also carried out a benchmark test using the Crystaldiskmark. The CrystalDisMark test assesses the performance and speed of a laptop’s storage drive.

According to the CrystalDiskMark test, the Acer Swift 5 had a sequential read speed of 1137 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 1054 MB/s.

In comparison, the Lenovo ThinkPad L14 had 1019MB/s sequential write speed and 2014 MB/s sequential read speed on the same benchmark. Also, ASUS Zenbook 14 had a 1264 MB/s sequential write speed and 1484MB/s sequential read speed.

If you’re wondering about the scores in the CrystalDiskMark benchmark test, the higher the rating, the better the performance of the laptop.

In conclusion, all things considered, in this storage review section, I’ll rate the Acer Swift 5 eight for its good storage option and performance.

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Acer Swift 5: Graphics Card Performance

The graphics processor on the Acer Swift 5 is one thing to love about the laptop. To be more precise, this laptop offers Integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics.

The word “Integrated” denotes that the GPU is directly attached to the motherboard.

Sadly, Acer Swift 5’s graphics card doesn’t feature a dedicated VRAM. This means that the laptop’s GPU does not have its “dedicated” video memory.

The implication of not having a dedicated VRAM is that the laptop’s GPU shares the system memory with the CPU. Furthermore, this also means that the laptop cannot perform graphics-intensive tasks like gaming or video editing.

However, the Intel Iris Xe Graphics is just decent for a laptop like Acer Swift 5.

As I already mentioned, the Intel Iris Xe in the Swift 5 cannot play high-demanding games at high settings. However, it is adequately capable of playing games with less demanding graphics. 

If you are so keen on gaming at high settings, you aren’t going to find this thin and light laptop so interesting.

When used to play Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, the Acer Swift 5 managed only 33 frames per second with 1080p, medium setting. It barely crossed our standard 30-fps playability threshold. 

Its performance result was closely behind the MacBook Air’s 37 fps, but far beyond the ThinkPad X1 Carbon’s 8 fps. The biggest positive to take away from this test was that the Acer Swift 5 surpassed the 28 fps category average.

To further determine the GPU performance of this laptop, I conducted a benchmark test on the Acer Swift 5 using the 3DMark.

On the 3DMARK benchmark, the Acer Swift 5 scored 4775 points, surpassing the Lenovo Thinkpad 14 which scored 2285 points.

Although the Acer Swift 5’s score was below the MSI prestige 14’s 5848 points, its performance is considerably good.

Hence, I rate the Acer Swift 5 seven out of ten in this graphics performance review.

Acer Swift 5: Battery Life & Performance

If the incredibly lightweight of Acer Swift 5 got you excited, then its battery life will deserve a resounding applause. The Acer Swift 5 comes with a 4-cell Lithium Polymer (Li-Polymer).

Depending on your usage, the Acer Swift 5 could last for at least one and possibly two days on a single charge. It lasted 13 hours and 37 minutes in our standard battery test, which involves continuous web surfing using Wi-Fi at 140 nits of brightness.

This puts it above the Surface Laptop 3 13-inch which lasted for 9 hours and 17 minutes. However, Acer Swift 5 came behind the new MacBook Air M1, 2020 which lasted for 14 hours and 41 minutes.

I also carried out a YouTube video playback test to further test the battery life of Acer Swift 5. It lasted for 11 hours & 48 minutes.

I must say that the battery life of this laptop is commendable.

Hence, I give the Acer Swift 5 an eight in this battery life performance review section.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

On a final note, the Acer Swift 5 pretty much offers everything a good laptop should offer. It has an incredible build quality and an awesome battery life that makes it a good choice for business people.

Without a doubt, Acer Swift 5 is definitely the right fit for day-to-day internet activities. As a business person who desires a lightweight laptop to carry about, the Acer Swift 5 will serve just well.

Also if you’re looking to get an affordable laptop for playing low graphically demanding games, then this laptop is for you.

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