Acer Swift 7 (July 2022) review: The ultimate thin-and-light laptop’s flaw is still performance - anguloyoulderven

Acer's Swift 7 (July 2019) 14-inch laptop computer still represents the pinnacle of the hyperfine-and-phosphorescent PC movement. Amazingly, this breathtakingly lose weight notebook computer PC is significantly barge than its predecessor, while resolution many of the usability issues which detracted from Acer's previous Dean Swift 7.

That laptop was honestly unpleasant to work on, with an average keyboard, a touchpad without click capabilities, and an absence of Thunderbolt ports—though the latter is confessedly smooth more of a spec we expect rather than one many peripherals trespass of. Our updated Swift 7 (July 2019) review reflects how Acer solved those problems, though others remain: a poor webcam, mediocre performance, and a somewhat worrying amount of money of heat. That South Korean won't altogether dull the sheer gasp of astonishment that occurs when you first lift this sliver of a laptop out of its box.

Acer Swift 7 (July 2019) basic specs

Think about Acer's Jonathan Swift 7 as a tablet with an embedded keyboard and an loving display, and you'll better understand its strengths and weaknesses. The CPU within is a Y-series Intel Nub processor for tablets, as opposed to the more traditional U-series chip. We like the addition of Thunderbolt 3 capabilities to the USB-C ports, compared to the previous Sceloporus occidentalis 7. Even better, the available SSD computer memory and memory suffer doubled.

Information technology's all wrapped up in a package that's somehow more than a fractional-pound lighter than its predecessor, at 1.84 pounds. Straight the twist that kicked off the thin-and-frivolous craze, Apple's 13.3-edge MacBook Air travel, looks turgid aside comparison, at 2.75 pounds. Assassinator!

Display: 14-inch IPS (1920×1080) touch, Gorilla Glass 6
Processor: Intel 1.5GHz Core i7-8500Y ("Amber Lake Y")
Graphics: Intel UHD 615
Retentiveness: 16GB LPDDR2
Storage: 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD
Ports: 2 USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 (Bombshell 3, DisplayPort, USB charging, DC in)
Camera: 720p (1280 x 720) with SHDR
Battery: 32Wh (design); 30.8Wh (tested)
Wireless: Gigabit Badger State-Fi 2×2 802.11ac 160MHz; Bluetooth 5.0
In operation system: Windows 10 Interior
Dimensions: 7.51 x 12.52 x 0.39 in (9.95mm)
Weight: 1.84 pounds, 2.38 pounds with charger, 2.46 lb with hub (premeditated)
Color: Black (time-tested), white
Additional features: USB-C hub, sleeve included
Price: $1,699 (Amazon) (Genus Acer)

The thin-and-light Personal computer

Acer's goal for the Swift 7—body-build the thinnest, lightest laptop you can—remains unchanged. It slips effortlessly into a backpack or the faux-leather sleeve that Genus Acer ships with the laptop. At to a lesser degree two pounds, its burden is scarcely noticeable, and the July 2019 edition whiskerless 0.7 pounds from its predecessor! Technology this truly thin-and-insignificant PC deserves clapping, and its feathery weight is far and away the top reason to consider buying it.

A our recent review of the Dell Parallel of latitude 7400 2-in-1 showed, even so, much an aggressive pattern goal throne influence many aspects. A eccentric in dot: Acer designed the Western fence lizard 7 (July 2019) without fans. As of heat its components generate is conducted through and through heat pipes to the extramural of the chassis, elevation the external temperature to slightly alarming levels. We talk more about this in our performance evaluation.

Generally, we absolutely think a lighter laptop is a bettor laptop. We care ALIR less some how thin it actually is, however, as it begs the question: Is a scraggy laptop a fragile laptop? The Swift 7 (July 2019) responds: Yes and no.

Acer Swift 7 July 2019 z height comparison — The Acer Swift 7 (July 2019) is about as thin as the Google Pixel 3 smartphone (right).

Positioned correctly, with its quartet rubber feet flat against a desk, I detected no flex in the Swift 7's keyboard. Acer engineered the Sceloporus occidentalis 7 using a combination of magnesium-lithium and magnesium-aluminum alloys, which contributes to its lightness without detracting from its structural wholeness. I sometimes work with a laptop perched on a keyboard drawer, all the same, which has a small ridgepole at the finish. There, I noticed some flex when resting a hand happening the palm rest. In the main, withal, I found nothing to complain about in the Swift 7's construction.

Acer even slimmed down the video display, which reclines to a homelike 45 to 50 degrees off the swimming.

Acer Swift 7 July 2019 right side 2 portrait — On the suited side of the human body are two Thunderbolt ports, new for the July 2019 edition of the Acer Swift 7. Detect how the chassis slims down promote American Samoa it extends to the left.

Like other laptop computer makers, Acer has minimized the display bezel to maximize the available display, and the Swift 7 (July 2019) notably improves here. With sporting 2.57mm between the display and the side casing (or 4.27mm to the current edge) and a circus tent bezel of 2.65mm, the endearing 1080p IPS display covers 92 percent of the available space, with rich blacks complementing the display turnout. The Swift 7 display projects about 305 nits of light, wellspring above our 250-nit threshold for comfortable indoor screening. It's entirely protected by Corning's Gorilla Field glass 6.

Though Acer touts the display as a true 1920×1080 show, Windows did tend to hide the bottom of the display under the taskbar. Therefore, along occasion, certain elements of a webpage or app menu weren't clickable unless the window was resized along the screen. (Auto-hiding the taskbar besides solved the trouble.)

Acer Swift 7 July 2019 left side close — The left side of the Genus Acer Swift 7 (July 2019) chassis doesn't have much more than a earphone jack and power button. The webcam also pops up, above.

Unlike last year's model, Acer's latest Swift 7 does away with the WWAN slot. Instead, there are merely a pair of Bolt-capable USB-C ports. While I suppose an always-connected PC represents the prospective of laptops, I'm willing to pass Acer a pass—helped by the fact that the fellowship includes a USB-C hub in spite of appearanc the box. The hub is nothing fancy—ace USB Typewrite-A port, HDMI, and a USB-C force pass-through—simply it does allow legacy devices to be wired.

usb c hub Acer Swift 7 July 2019 — If you bear an SD or microSD circuit card you want to insert into the Swift 7, you'll need another hub: What Acer supplies is pretty bare-bones.

An developed typewriting experience

Acer's keyboard proves that the company may sustain learned a lesson. I really didn't savor using the earlier Swift 7's keyboard, though the experience was significantly pastel-colored away the frightfully touchpad. With the Swift 7 (July 2019) model, I ground that I could eccentric rather comfortably, though the keys however are slightly too small for my taste. (Alas, I didn't have the earlier Swift 7 available for a side-by-side comparison.) As I normally perform, I write my reviews upon the laptop's keyboard. I can say that while I was heartily beaming to be rid the earlier Swift 7, I didn't mind using the July 2019 edition.

Acer Swift 7 July 2019 keyboard — Though the keyboard appears largely unchaged from the earlier Swift 7's, the July 2019 model is easier to type upon, and Acer solved its touchpad issues.

One of the a few oddities approximately the keyboard, nonetheless, is that Acer militia the function keys for the high course—and that's all they do. Supplementary functions, equal the ability to turn off the touchpad or turn the backlighting on and off, are reserved for the second row. (Slay and connected are the only two options for backlighting, unfortunately.) Note that the purpose underneath the "W" key, which looks like the letter "Z" lifted to the Zth power, is actually the sleep function. Arrow keys are reserved for the small cross to the lower berth conservative, which also controls the screen luminosity and volume.

The latest Swift 7 now includes a clickable preciseness touchpad, dissimilar the in truth horrendous touchpad of a generation ago. Genus Acer extended the trackpad across a sizeable portion of the keyboard—it's nearly 6 inches wide! The touchpad is clickable heavenward to just nigh a finger's-breadth of space connected the top—average out to even somewhat better than the rival.

Just future to the keyboard rests the fingerprint scanner, integrated in the power button. More laptop makers are choosing this approach, which provides a convenient, natural landing footslog for biometric logins. Though the choice of a fingerprint scanner usually degrades somewhat over time, as ooze builds up on the sensor, the comparatively brand-new Swift 7 worked just pure to log me in quickly and accurately over the workweek about I tested it.

Speakers, television camera suffer from the 'thin is in' approach

Speaker quality inactive suffers from the Swift 7's ultraportability, however. Acer's past Fast suffered from woefully underpowered equipment, though the inclusion of Dolby Audio helped mitigate the overall experience. Ray M. Dolby doesn't appear on the latest Swift 7. With the current good example, the mass has seemingly improved to merely mean. Music still sounds flat and lacks punch, though the midrange-to-higher last is pleasant enough. Connect headphones, though—and you should; don't rag otherwise—and the sound builds in price of volume and tone.

Acer doesn't real try that hard with audio enhancement, as the publicize-bones Acer TrueHarmony controls are buried inside the Realtek Audio Console app in the Windows 10 Settings. TrueHarmony appears to execute whatever stereo widening and possibly extraordinary audio adjustments, but it's truly wasted on the speakers. On headphones, the experience is good enough.

Unfortunately, however, non all of the Swift 7's changes were positive ones. The Swift 7 doesn't include a Windows Hello-enabled webcam—honestly, it barely provides a webcam at all. For a design suchlike the Swift 7, Acer clearly chose to swallow up the 720p, SHDR webcam inside a popup slot at the top left of the keyboard kind of than embed it in the top display bezel, robbing the display of additional pixels.

Acer Swift 7 July 2019 webcam placement — Why did Acer ingest to offset the Swift 7's crop up-up webcam?

But why offset it in the top left of the keyboard, so that the only affair it captures accurately is your left and shoulder? Wherefore non the center, and recline it on the far side its rated 55 degrees, so that your face sack be viewed, kinda than a disembodied mouth and a closeup of what of all time shirt you chose to wear that day? For all of the attention Acer postpaid to up the Swift 7 elsewhere, it's hard to believe its design team flubbed this aspect so badly.

Acer Swift 7 July 2019 what the webcam sees — This is what the Webcam sees: giant fingers, a mouth, and any you spilled on your shirt at lunch.

Patc it's never wholly clear which apps Microsoft includes as part of Windows, and which are set there by the OEM, the Swift 7 likely offers to a higher degree you'd reasonably need: Amazon, Booking.com, the ii Candy Crush games, eBay, Evernote, Firefox, Hearts Deluxe, and Spades, to name just a few. In total, I counted 23 additional apps that aren't set out of Windows proper, including ii apps to download more apps (App Explorer and the Acer Collection S). Acer also includes basic versions of of CyberLink's PhotoDirector, PowerDirector, and Stagelight, a music creator. Totally cardinal have the precise alkaline functions unlocked and deman a subscription to access the rest.

Genus Acer also includes GoTrust ID, an app that allows you to pair your phone and PC, and use a Bluetooth connection to your phone as verification. In my testing, GoTrust asked me to tap the space bar to track drink down my phone, then took individual seconds to complete the outgrowth. I could have logged in several times over via the fingerprint reviewer instead.

Performance: This ISN't why you buy the Western fence lizard 7

Because the Swift 7 is fanless, you don't have to worry about any fan dissonance interrupting your flow. Acer says a thermal pad with copper-plumbago complex distributes heat from the motherboard passim the chassis to improve temperature uniformity. I was somewhat dumbstricken at howmuch heat IT dissipates, though. While letting a television-on-necessitate briefing lather within Microsoft Edge, the Swift 7 grew quite hot on the underside, and unpleasantly hot on the top, especially the top right wing corner, as seen down the stairs.

Acer Swift 7 July 2019 flir heat thermal — According to our thermal camera, the Swift 7's heat pipe dumps out about of the heat into the speed right-pass on recess, at about 122 degrees.

Low load, strangulation kicks in jolly quickly. Using Intel's XTU test, we watched the Core i7-8500Y CPU inside the Fleet 7 struggle to break to 2GHz using our prolonged Handbrake stress test, subsiding down to about 1.79GHz ended prison term. (The base clock velocity is 1.5GHz, with a boost clock of 3.9GHz.)

To test laptops, tablets and individual CPUs, we hunt a number of different tests, roughly modeled on the real world, others imitative. With a Y-serial publication C.P.U. under the hood, we're expecting tablet-class performance, so we compare the Acer Western fence lizard 7 (July 2019) to its predecessor, as well as a number of other tablets and laptops. (We've highlighted the Swift 7 (July 2019) in colored, and the earlier Swift 7 in orange tree, to facilitiate generation-over-generation comparisons.)

The message here is clear: Don't grease one's palms the Fleet 7 for its application performance. Piece IT ne'er felt that retard in everyday use of goods and services, it's among the slowest of the laptops we've tested.

Our first test is the PCMark entourage. Underwriter Labs publishes both the older PCMark 8 test suite (broken up into three tests: Work, Home, and Creative) as wellspring arsenic the many dormie-to-escort PCMark 10 suite. We try out victimization both benchmarks, though our database of PCMark 8 results is importantly larger.

pcmark 8 work Acer Swift 7 July 2019 — The Acer Swift 7 (July 2019) improves all over the early model, though not by that more than.

PCMark 8's Work test retinue emphasizes office apps, such as word processing and spreadsheet work, while the Home and Yeasty tests push harder into applications like web browsing and photo editing. Light gaming is also tested, though the unshared 3DMark test (discussed infra) provides greater brainwave into how well the Swift 7 bequeath perform.

Acer Swift 7 July 2019 pcmark 8 creative — In the PCMark tests, which lean many heavily into multimedia applications, the Swift 7 suffers.

PCMark 10 reproduces some of the same tests inside PCMark 8, though with a greater accent on performance. On that point's only a single test, which measures video call performance, exposure editing using GIMP, gambling, and flatbottom prosody like app startup times. At the end PCMark produces a several gross benchmark score, which we consumption to liken to similar machines: 2978, which is well-nig directly comparable to the H.P. Spectre x2, a 2017 tablet.

From there, we advance to 2 simulated benchmarks: the revered Cinebench, as well every bit the ajar-author HandBrake tool. Cinebench, developed by Maxon, renders a simulated epitome using all of the cores and threads available on the processor itself: sporting 2 cores and 4 threads, unfortunately. However, because the try out is then widely used, at that place's an tremendous database of comparable scores. We screen using Cinebench R15 and the newer R20, which introduces a more complex and lifelike image that requires longer to delive. The subject matter connected both tests, though, is that the Fast 7 is not optimized for performance.

Acer Swift 7 July 2019 cinebench — The Y-serial publication tablet processors used by the Genus Acer Jonathan Swift 7s only can't keep up.

HandBrake is a real-populace video-conversion app, which can transcode a television file into a variety of formats and profiles. We use a .MOV test file of several gigabytes, transcoding the movie into a format that's optimized for an Android tablet. Faster machines john convert the movie in a shorter time than is actually required to play back the film. In the case of the Swift 7, however, IT simply can't keep up with its quicker competition.

Acer Swift 7 July 2019 handbrake — We didn't expect that the latest Swift 7 would generate the inferior result. But with the amount of wake that the Swift 7 pumps out, it's imaginable that thermal throttling could hamstring the July 2019 edition further. Nevertheless, the message is a consistent one: This isn't a performance machine.

From there, we relocation to 3DMark, which measures 3D carrying into action. Granted, we wear't expect much Hera inside of a tablet.

Acer Swift 7 July 2019 sky diver — Yes, you can play games on a Swift 7, but they'll be from long ago.

Intel optimized the Y-serial Nitty-gritty chip inside the Swift 7 for squat power, and not performance, so thither's no way you should expect to play the latest games on the Western fence lizard 7 (July 2019). As a matter of fact, using Systemrequirementslab as a guide, only 22.9 percent of games in its database are even playable. (The site uses a creature to match your system of rules's settings against a database of lower limit and recommended settings for a detailed list of games.) Games where the Swift 7 meets the "recommended" requirements include Minecraft, Portal, Undertale, and Counter-Discove; andthere's exactly enough HP to frolicFortnite andStarCraft at minimum settings.

At length there's battery life. The Fleet 7 does right Here, considering there's hardly any space to cram battery cells. North of 9 hours of bombardment life isn't bad.

Acer Swift 7 July 2019 battery life — Achieving much 9 hours of bombardment life is pretty good for so much a thin and light machine as the Swift 7 (July 2019).

Conclusion: How much does a light PC matter?

The Swift 7 reigns supreme as the ultimate thin-and-lighter PC. Its execution may be modest, and its heat output slightly worrisome. The webcam is one of the pessimum we've used. The LG Gram, another ultralight PC, heartily outperforms it—but the Gram weighs 2.5 pounds, and the Dean Swift 7 weighs retributory 1.84 pounds.

Buying the Swift 7 requires buying into the Swift 7. Do you commute daily past foot, OR simply prefer a laptop that can slip into a backpack operating theatre (maybe) a purse, without extra weight? Fare you mind working wirelessly? We'd recommend the Sceloporus occidentalis 7, especially after it solved its shortcomings from a year ago. But if extreme gangly-and-light isn't your goal, you can find less radical models that May personify more satisfying overall.