Acer Swift 5 review: A sleek and modern ultra-portable marred by a bad touchpad. | Techy Kings

Today’s Best Deals: Acer Swift 5 (2022)

$1,499.99

Can a whiny touchpad ruin an otherwise well-rounded laptop? That’s a big question for the Acer Swift 5, a 14-inch ultraportable with a sleek design and classy hi-res display powered by modern components. Unfortunately, the touchpad falls short with a terrible click mechanism that ruins the deal.

That said, touchpad aside, the Swift 5 has a lot going for it. A 14-inch screen with a 16:10 aspect ratio is housed in a thick all-metal enclosure and weighs less than three pounds. Inside, the system has a 12th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a spacious 1TB SSD. The laptop delivers the strong performance and long battery life business executives need, along with the ultimate style and portability they want. But that touchpad.

Details

Our Acer Swift 5 test system (model SF514-56T-797T) retails for $1,499.99 direct from Acer and features the following specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-1260P
• Memory: 16 GB
• Graphics: Intel Iris Xe
• Storage: 1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD
• Display: 14-inch, 2560×1600 IPS touch
• Webcam: 1080p
• Connectivity: 2 x USB-C with Thunderbolt 4, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, HDMI 2.1, combo audio jack.
• Network: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
• Biometrics: Fingerprint reader
• Battery capacity: 59.5 watt-hours
• Dimensions: 12.2 x 8.4 x 0.59 inches
• Measured weight: 2.8 pounds (laptop), 0.4 pounds (AC adapter)
• Price: $1,499.99

Long display, terrible touchpad

Along with the move to a 12th-gen Intel Core processor, this updated Swift 5 model gets a bigger 14-inch display. It’s still a 14-inch panel like previous models, but trades the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio for a 16:10 screen. This may not seem like a big deal, but it makes the 14-inch display look bigger because you have more space from top to bottom. The longer display means you can read more lines of a web page or document, or see more rows in an Excel sheet without scrolling.

IDG / Matthew Elliott.

With the new aspect ratio comes a jump in resolution. Previous versions offered standard Full HD resolution, but this new Swift 5 has a resolution of 2560×1600 which results in an incredibly sharp picture. It is also very bright. Acer rates the panel at 425 nits, and my test showed just over 500 nits brighter than that. Although the Swift 5 isn’t a 2-in-1 convertible, the display does feature touch support, which you’ll appreciate after using the touchpad.

Okay, let’s talk about the touchpad. For starters, it feels a little overwhelming. Considering the laptop’s compact design, Acer couldn’t make it too big, but there’s still room above the touchpad and a bit below it to expand its size. The biggest drawback, however, is the click mechanism. It’s awful. The touchpad surface is loose. But it’s not so loose that it’s unlikely to be seen in others on our review section. No, the surface is smooth when clicked because you have to press with a false click to get to the real click. It’s a terrible experience. A simple click feels like a chore, the deep journey made by a false touch before arriving at a real click. You’ll find using the touchscreen or an external mouse to be better input options than the kludgy touchpad.

IDG / Matthew Elliott.

No such problems with the keyboard. The keys are hard and cramped, and there are no short keys. The up and down arrow keys are half height, but that’s not unusual. The rest of the keys are full-sized and right where you’d expect them to be. I immediately felt comfortable typing on the Swift 5, but the gold lettering doesn’t offer the best contrast with the dark gray keys. The dual-stage backlight helps somewhat in dark conditions, but the glare on the display keys washes out the lettering, making it difficult to see which key is which.

Acer sells two-color versions of the Swift 5. The laptop comes in what the company calls Mist Green or Steam Blue. We received the green color, but it looks more dark gray than anything else. You will see a hint of green only in certain light. The bezels, Acer logos and the aforementioned key symbols are gold. I wish the keystrokes were white for better contrast, I like the gold accents elsewhere. The color contrast looks great as does the finish contrast. The green/grey surfaces have a matte finish while the gold accents are more shiny. It adds up to a sharp-looking laptop and stands out from the gray-and-chrome package without looking garish.

IDG / Matthew Elliott.

The aluminum chassis feels solid. There is no flex in the lid or the keyboard and only a small amount of flex on the bottom panel. The Swift 5 feels robust enough to handle the rigors of everyday business travel.

The Swift 5 weighs 2.8 pounds, which makes it very portable but far from the portability of a lightweight 14-inch. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 also has a 14-inch 16:10 screen and weighs almost half a pound at 2.4 pounds. And the older Swift 5’s older 14-inch 16:9 display weighs just 2.3 pounds.

Zoom calls and video conferencing have become a big part of work life, and laptop webcams are getting better as a result. You can count the Swift 5 among laptops following this trend, trading in the old standard 720p camera for a 1080p camera. Swift 5’s webcam makes you look sharp for video conferencing audiences. The image it produces is free of noise while displaying accurate colors and skin tones. One downside to a webcam? It lacks privacy shutter.

Unfortunately, the Swift 5 doesn’t make any gains in audio output. It contains standard stereo speakers that typically produce small laptop sound. The speakers can be a little fuller if they’re fired up, but on the Swift 5 they’re fired down, which doesn’t help their sound.

IDG / Matthew Elliott.

IDG / Matthew Elliott.

With both USB Type-C and -A ports and an HDMI port, the Swift 5 doesn’t require you to travel with an adapter. It has a pair of USB-C ports and a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports. Type-A ports are distributed, one on each side, allowing you to plug your mouse into your preferred side. The USB-C ports are both on the left side, which isn’t always the best side if the nearest power outlet is on your right. On the plus side, both USB-C ports support Thunderbolt 4 for fast 40Gbps data transfers and DisplayPort connectivity.

Acer Swift 5 performance

Our Acer Swift 5 test system featured an Intel Core i7-1260P processor, 16GB of RAM, integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics, and a 1TB SSD. The Core i7-1260P is a member of Intel’s Alder Lake-P series of 28-watt mobile chips. The Core i7-1260P features Intel’s new hybrid architecture with performance and efficiency cores. It has four performance cores, eight efficiency cores and a total of 16 processing threads.

To understand the XPS 15 9520’s performance, we compared the benchmark results, including the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 with the Swift 5, which has the same Core i7-1260P chip. Two laptops, the Acer Swift 3X and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9, offer 11th-gen Core i7 chips, while the other pair in the Dell Inspiron 14 7000 and Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon feature AMD Ryzen 7 5000-series CPUs. All depend on integrated graphics.

Our first benchmark is PCMark 10, which measures performance for everyday computing tasks including office productivity tasks, web browsing and video chats. AMD-based laptops have had the edge on PCMark for the past year or so, but Intel’s new generation of Core processors have closed the gap. The AMD-based Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon tops this group, but the Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 and Acer Swift 5 are nipping at its heels, and they also edge out the AMD-based Dell Inspiron 14 7000. A pair of 11th-gen Core i7-based laptops finished at the back of the pack.

IDG / Matthew Elliott.

Our Handbrake benchmark tests how well the laptop can handle long CPU-intensive loads—in this case, converting a 30GB MKV file to a format suitable for Android tablets with a free video encoding utility. The Swift 5 took top honors in our HandBrake test, with AMD-based systems trailing behind and two 11th-gen Intel laptops bringing up the rear.

IDG / Matthew Elliott.

Next is Cinebench, another CPU-intensive test but one that renders a complex 2D scene in less time. The Swift 5 proved to be a good marathon runner, finishing first in both the multi-threaded and single-threaded tests.

IDG / Matthew Elliott.

IDG / Matthew Elliott.

None of the laptops here are likely to be confused with gaming laptops, but it’s noteworthy that the Swift 5 and Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 topped the charts. Intel marks its move with integrated GPUs with its 12th generation Core processors, further widening the gap between Intel’s Iris Xe graphics and AMD’s integrated Radeon graphics.

IDG / Matthew Elliott.

To test the laptop’s battery life, we use a 4K video using the Windows 11 Movies & TV app, with the laptop set to airplane mode and headphones plugged in, and set the screen brightness to a relatively bright 250 nits to 260 nits. Good brightness for watching a movie with the lights on in the office. The Swift 5 ran for 13 hours in the test, which is impressive in itself and even more so when you factor in the high-resolution display, which consumes more battery resources than a Full HD display.

IDG / Matthew Elliott.

The touchpad is strongly recommended

Between its sleek and robust all-in-one design, wide 14-inch display and sub-three-pound weight, strong 12th-gen Core i7-leading performance and long battery life, the Acer Swift 5 is not without its charms. This is one laptop, however, that you should get your hands on before you buy. The touchpad is small and has one of the worst click patterns this reviewer has encountered. Maybe the fake-click-before-you-get-to-the-real-click response doesn’t bother you as much as it bothered me, but the terrible touchpad keeps me from offering a strong recommendation. Instead, I suggest you check it out before you buy. Because if you love (or hate) the trackpad, chances are you’ll love the Swift 5.