Acer Swift 5 (2020) review

Weight has been the main target of the Swift 5 sequence since 2017. In that 12 months Acer switched from making it lower-cost different to the Dell XPS 13 and MacBook Pro, to aiming for the “lightest at school” award.

The 2020 Acer Swift 5 is extraordinarily gentle at 998g. To shave off the additional 300-350g most slim and light-weight 13-inch laptops carry, Acer makes use of barely uncommon metallic alloys.

Aluminium is the highest choose for laptops like this. It appears to be like good, feels good and is robust. The Acer Swift 5 makes use of magnesium-aluminium and magnesium-lithium alloys as a substitute, in a nice darkish blue.

These are gentle and robust, however they do not have the identical instantly metallic really feel because the aluminium alloys utilized in MacBooks. Lots of people may mistake the Swift 5 for a plastic laptop computer. But really run your finger throughout the lid or keyboard encompass and you will realise that is one thing else. Something a lot nicer.

It’s largely stiff too. Pick the Acer Swift 5 up by a nook and it would not bend like a laptop computer made too skinny, or utilizing low cost plastics. There’s little flex to the keyboard too, which is the place you discover barely dodgy construct high quality essentially the most.

Any points with the Swift 5’s development are largely about notion. A laptop computer this gentle won’t appear sturdy initially. You may miss the cool really feel of aluminium too in case you are upgrading from an older aluminium laptop computer. But this factor isn’t just well-made, it is higher than among the Acers on this class of the final couple of years. The firm went via a part of creating barely too flex-y keyboards.

The real-world practicality of the Swift 5 can be off the charts. Its footprint is small, the low weight is good for portability and the connections cowl all of the fundamentals.

You get a USB-C 3.1 port for brand new peripherals, a full-size USB 3.zero and a slower USB 2.zero on your mouse. The Swift 5 additionally has a full-size HDMI, to plug in a monitor or TV with zero fuss.

It’s even fairly slim at 14.95mm. At this sort of value – not low cost however not eye-wateringly costly – you typically have to decide on between very low weight or excessive thin-ness. You get each right here.

There are not any main compromises on efficiency, although. Our Acer Swift 5 has a 10th technology Intel Core i5-1035G1 processor with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD.

This is the entry-level Swift 5 spec within the UK on the time of review, nevertheless it’s removed from entry-level {hardware}. The Swift 5 runs Windows 10 completely, wakes from sleep shortly and is all-round responsive.

We’re additionally impressed by the noise this laptop computer makes. There’s barely any of it. Write paperwork or browse web sites and it is successfully silent.

Even once we began enjoying video games on a Swift 5 it did not grow to be loud. There is a fan, in fact, and like most slim and light-weight laptop computer techniques it has a high-pitch tone. But even after 30 minutes of maxing-out efficiency, the noise stage was unusually low.

Intel’s 10th Gen processors have an element to play right here, however any laptop computer producer may break this with a poorly managed fan. The Swift 5’s is nice, not less than when it comes to noise.

Gaming is the apparent weak space of this laptop computer. Buy the Core i7 model of the Swift 5 and also you get considered one of Intel’s Iris Plus GPUs, which bridges the hole between devoted {hardware} and the bog-standard built-in stuff. But our Core i5 simply has a plain outdated Intel UHD graphics chipset. It’s not an enormous improve from that of an eighth Gen CPU laptop computer.

To get Skyrim to play comfortably, with body charges of 30fps and up, it’s good to run it at 900p decision and use the “medium” graphics setting. Use “High” at 1080p and the ensuing 16-18fps will probably be too stuttery for many.

The newer Subnautica is playable at 900p, “low” graphics. But this title loses numerous visible energy while you drop under “medium”, as numerous post-processing choices are switched off. Its underwater world abruptly turns into a lot much less atmospheric.

We additionally dipped into the distant previous with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. It runs at 1080p, draw distance maxed, racing alongside at 115-150fps. No worries there.

The Acer Swift 5 can play numerous current video games, however you’ll typically must strip again the visuals and decrease the decision. Acer’s website reveals there are variations of the Swift 5 with Nvidia MX 250 graphics {hardware}, which might enhance issues vastly. We do not get that possibility within the UK, on the time of review.

However, at this value, at this weight, we’ve few complaints. We additionally observed video games appear to load in a short time, so we examined the SSD. It’s a fantastic little performer for a mid-range laptop computer, with learn speeds of as much as 1600MB/s and writes of 890MB/s.

The Acer Swift 5 has a 54Wh battery, barely greater capability than the newest Dell XPS 13’s 51Wh. Battery measurement has not been sacrified for low weight. It’s one other reminder of the vital of the metals used within the laptop computer.

Acer says it ought to final for 12.5 hours of internet shopping. We put it via a few checks: streaming video off YouTube and utilizing it for regular work, which is a mixture of web analysis and writing.

The Swift 5 will final for round 9 hours of streaming, or round seven hours of blended gentle use, opening a small military of browser tabs. Stick to a phrase processor app, steering away from Facebook and different distractions, and the laptop computer ought to nearly final a full day of labor.