Acer Switch 5 Review: A Mid-Range Convertible Laptop

Acer Switch 5: At First Glance

Acer is well known for offering buyers stylish laptops at moderate prices. Thankfully, the Acer Switch 5 is one of those laptops

It is essentially a refined version of the Acer Switch Alpha 12. For this reason, the Acer Switch 5 has more appealing features than the Acer Switch Alpha 12.

When it comes to the price, it is a bit more expensive than its predecessor. At the time of publishing this article (January 2022), its selling price was $419.00.

Do the refined features in the Acer Switch 5 make it a better option than its predecessor? Please read on to satisfy your curiosity.

Acer Switch 5: Design, Dimensions and Weight

When it comes to design, Acer Switch 5 has almost the same design as its predecessor, especially from a distant glance. However, it presents a quality that is more industrial and robust enough to survive a few accidental drops.

The casing has a dark gray aluminum casing that is quite prone to smudges. Thankfully, the smudges are easy to wipe off.

The Acer Switch 5 is averagely comfortable to hold too, all credit to its blunt edges and rounded corners.

As for the hinges, they don’t squeak nor bend when used, they also hold up the lid firmly. Opening the lid reveals a 12-inch screen.

The Acer Switch 5’s screen is great in some ways but not so much in others.

Starting with the positives, the screen’s display has a QHD (Quad High Definition) resolution. This feature makes it significantly sharper than the screens on its competitors with more inferior display resolution.

Also, icons look nicely sharp and the increased resolution is a bonus when using the stylus pen to paint digitally. However, what is less impressive about the screen is its maximum brightness, which is at 211.96 nits.

I expected the screen brightness to at least stretch to 400 nits.

It is also important to note that the Acer Switch 5 is a convertible laptop. This means that the screen can be detached and used in tablet form.

To make it more usable in tablet form, the laptop features a stylus pen. The stylus pen is a device with a round rubber tip that moves smoothly across touchscreen surfaces.

A stylus pen is an accessory that is used to operate a touchscreen phone or tablet. For artists, it serves as a digital drawing and sketching pen.

Moving to the Acer Switch 5’s keyboard area. As usual, Acer tries to make its keyboard satisfying though, it is not very different from that of its predecessor.

Notwithstanding, the keys are well-spaced and backlit, making it great for typing in dark environments. The keys also have a decent response and feedback, even when pressed from the sides.

In the aspect of usability, the keyboard is good but not great.

Still, on the keyboard area, the Switch 5’s physical power button is located next to the delete key. The power button serves as a fingerprint sensor as well and works alright with Windows Hello.

Furthermore, the keyboard is attached magnetically to the tablet and only works while linked to it. This is because the keyboard is powered by the slate itself.

Hence, for moments you don’t need the keyboard, you can simply detach it. You can also fold the keyboard backward to use the Switch 5 in tablet mode.

Also, the keyboard can be set up in dual positions – either completely flat on the desk or a bit raised. Hence, you can set the keyboard to any convenient typing position of your choice.

Moving on to the clickpad, it is quite small and made from plastic. The clickpad has palm detection abilities and the multi-touch function works well enough.

However, there are no dedicated left and right keys for right and left clicks. This makes it easy to send the cursor flying across the screen.

Proceeding to the connectivity, Acer Switch 5 does not offer a good number of ports. Along the Switch 5’s sides, you will find a single USB 3.0, USB 3.1 Type-C ports, and one headphone/microphone combo jack.

Unfortunately, the laptop does not have a dedicated display port or an HDMI port for connecting an external monitor. Although it is possible to connect an external monitor through the USB Type-C port, a dedicated port would have been better.

Now, let us talk about the dimension of the Acer Switch 5. It has a dimension of 292.9 x 201.8 x 15.9 mm (W x D x H).

The dimension makes the Acer Switch 5 portable enough to carry about.

However, when compared to the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (13 Inches), the Acer Switch 5 is less portable than the Microsoft Surface Pro 4. Specifically, the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 measures 292 x 201 x 8.45 mm (W x D x H).

Moving over to the weight of the Acer Switch 5, it weighs 1,270 g. In comparison, the Acer Switch 5 is lighter than the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (13 Inches) which weighs 1,288 g.

In conclusion, I think Acer did a good job on the design of the Acer Switch 5. Hence, it deserves an eight out of ten in this design review section.

Acer Switch 5: Processor (CPU) Performance

When it comes to processors, the Acer Switch 5 comes with a dual-core Intel Core i5-7200U processor. Furthermore, this processor has a base frequency of 2.50 GHz, a boost frequency of 3.10 GHz, and 3 MB cache memory.

Equipped with the dual-core Intel i5-7200U, this Acer notebook is adequate for basic computing tasks like word processing and web browsing. It also has the ability to execute heavy computing tasks and multitask.

Matter of fact, this laptop can work smoothly with twenty-five Chrome tabs opened. To be precise, these Chrome tabs may include video streaming on YouTube and other processor-intensive tasks.

With that being said, it is fair to say that the Acer Switch 5 is a decently powerful laptop. This is an impressive feat considering that the Acer Switch 5 is a low-budget laptop.

That being said, I’ll now discuss the Cinebench R15 benchmark test result for the Acer Switch 5. Cinebench R15 is a benchmark test that determines the processing performance of a laptop.

Consequently, a higher score on the Cinebench R15 benchmark test indicates a better performance of the laptop’s CPU. Thus, from the Cinebench R15 test result, the Acer Switch 5 scored 143 points.

This score is not bad for a laptop with an Intel i5-7200U processor. Moreover, when compared to the Microsoft Surface Pro 4, the Acer Switch 5 performed better.

However, that is not so surprising considering that the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 uses a 6th generation Intel Core i5-6300U processor. Meanwhile, the Acer Switch 5 uses a 7th generation Core i5-7200U processor.

To be more specific, the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 scored 141 points according to the Cinebench R15 test result.

Putting these into consideration, I will be rating the Acer Switch 5 a seven out of ten in this processor review section.

Acer Switch 5: (RAM) Performance

The Acer Switch 5 features an 8 GB LPDDR3 SDRAM on its single memory slot. Meanwhile, the 8 GB RAM is the maximum memory the laptop allows.

Hence, you cannot upgrade the memory of this laptop to more than 8 GB. However, an 8 GB RAM is not a terrible memory specification for an inexpensive laptop such as the Acer Switch 5

Thankfully, with 8 GB RAM, the Acer Switch 5 should be competent in handling day-to-day computing tasks, and moderate multitasking.

Delving into its multitasking abilities, this Acer notebook can open lots of applications concurrently. For example, the laptop should be able to open at least 20 chrome browser tabs.

Speaking of the opened browser tabs, you might have apps like Paint Tool, Spotify, and Google Docs running smoothly.

To further verify the laptop’s memory performance, I will now share the benchmark performance test results. Specifically, the benchmark test I will use for this purpose is PCMark10.

PCMark10 is a tool that tests the RAM performance of a laptop under office-related workload.

Furthermore, a high score on this benchmark test means a better performance. From the benchmark test results, the Acer Switch 5 scored 3,556 points.

This score beats the score achieved by the Microsoft Surface Pro 4. Specifically, the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 scored 2,936 points on the benchmark test.

Finally, in this memory review section, I will be rating the Acer Switch 5 a seven out of ten. The reason for this rating is due to the better memory performance of the Acer Switch 5 than its competitor.

Acer Switch 5: Storage Options and Performance

In terms of storage, the Acer Switch 5 comes with an SSD storage drive with a 256 GB storage capacity. Large storage users may find 256 GB of storage space too small for saving their documents, videos, songs, and games.

Interestingly, the laptop features an SD card reader for storage expansion. With an SD card, you will be able to save more files on the laptop.

Delving into the storage performance, I found out that with the Acer Switch 5, you can enjoy speedy data transfers. For example, it took the laptop 10 seconds to duplicate 4.97GB of multimedia files at a transfer rate of 494.1 megabytes per second (MBps).

In comparison, the MacBook Air beats the Acer Switch 5 by duplicating the same files at 1,302 MBps.

To further establish the storage ability of the Acer Switch 5, I will include a Crystaldiskmark benchmark result. Just to be clear, the Crystaldiskmark 3.0 is a tool that tests the read and writes speed of a device.

Meanwhile, a higher read or write speed from the Crystaldiskmark benchmark translates to better performance.

If you’re wondering, the read speed of a computer storage drive means how fast it takes to open a file for example. On the other hand, an example of a write speed is how long it takes to save a file.

From the benchmark test, Acer Switch 5 had a read speed of 1,066 MBps and a write speed of 592.6 MBps. In comparison, it offers a better read speed but a lower write speed than the Microsoft Surface Pro 4.

Speaking of which, the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 has a read and write speed of 723 and 853 MBps respectively.

In conclusion, Acer Switch 5 offers a good speed delivery and storage space, it also competes well with other laptops in its category. Therefore, I rate it an 8 for its storage performance.

Acer Switch 5: Graphics Card Performance

The GPU that is featured in the Acer Switch 5 is an Intel HD Graphics 620. This graphic card functions at a boosted GPU frequency of 1000 MHz.

Also, the graphics card is an integrated graphics card. What that means is that the graphics card is embedded in the CPU.

As a result, the graphics card does not have a dedicated VRAM. Therefore, in order to process graphics tasks, it shares the laptop’s 8 GB memory with the CPU.

The lack of a dedicated GPU implies that beyond lightweight gaming like Minecraft or Steam indie titles, Acer Switch 5 will struggle to play high-end games. In addition to its inability to play high-end games, the laptop may not be able to perform graphics-intensive tasks like photo editing.

This is because the integrated graphics card is designed to efficiently handle only lightweight graphics tasks.

To further access the graphics performance if this laptop, I will proceed to include the result from the 3DMark11 benchmark test.

Wondering what 3DMark11 benchmark test is?

It is a tool that determines the graphics performance of a GPU. In this benchmark test, the higher the score, the better the graphics performance of the computer.

According to the benchmark test result, Acer Switch 5 made 1,613 points. In comparison, Acer Switch 5 score is above that of the Lenovo Ideapad Miix 720 which made 1,416 points.

In conclusion, the Acer Switch 5 is just enough for low graphics demanding games. Hence, I will rate the laptop a seven out of ten in this GPU review section.

Acer Switch 5: Battery Life and Performance

When it comes to the battery, a 2-cell Lithium Polymer 4870 mAh battery powers the Acer Switch 5. Acer has stated that this battery can last up to 10 hours 30 minutes.

However, to verify Acer’s claim, I carried out thorough research about the battery. It is also important to mention that the longevity of the laptop’s battery will depend on its usage.

To be clear, the battery test involves looping a 4K resolution video till the laptop’ battery drains completely. For the battery rundown test, the screen brightness was at a medium setting.

Consequently, the Acer Switch 5 was able to last for 8 hours. This battery life may not be mind-blowing but it’s enough to get through the day’s work or watch three movies.

Although the laptop’s battery life does not last up to the 10 hours that Acer claimed, it still does better than most notebooks. For example, the Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 720 lasted only 7 hours and 2 minutes based on the same battery rundown test.

However, the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 outperforms the Acer Switch 5. The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 lasted for 10 hours 17 minutes on the same battery run-down test.

For the charge time, it takes the Acer Switch 5 up to 3 hours to charge from empty battery to full battery.

After considering the Acer Switch 5’s battery life from the battery test, I will rate it an eight out of ten in this battery review section.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

If you’re in search of a semi-affordable Windows 10 convertible that won’t break the bank, the Acer Switch 5 is a considerable choice. Although it is not the most stylish laptop in the market, the Acer Switch 5 ticks other boxes right.

Speaking of which, it is functional and a great performer. Some aspects where it passes are its good processor and sufficient storage capacity.

However, it has a slightly dim screen and cannot play highly demanding games. Nevertheless, when you buy the Acer Switch 5, you will be getting value for your money.

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