Acer Swift Edge 16

Trade in Acer Swift Edge 16

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Weighing in at 4.8 pounds, the 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro is hardly considered heavy by most standards. However, the Acer Swift Edge 16 ($1,499.99 as tested, with the potential to reach up to $1,599.99) offers the same screen size while tipping the scales at just 2.6 pounds. This makes the Edge a true ultraportable, astonishingly lighter than laptops sporting screens even 3 inches smaller. While not the most budget-friendly slimline option, its impressive OLED display adds considerable value when compared to rivals like the MacBook Pro or the Dell XPS 15 OLED. This is particularly pronounced considering Acer’s frequent notebook retail discounts, such as the current $999 offer at Costco.

Regrettably, the Swift Edge’s performance doesn’t quite meet expectations, and its keyboard leaves much to be desired. Despite these drawbacks, its sleek OLED display and competitive pricing position it as a viable contender against heavyweight competitors in the productivity and content creation laptop market.

Swift Edge 16 Configurations and Other Features

Purchasing an Acer Swift Edge 16 simplifies the decision-making process, as the laptop primarily offers a single configuration. This package comprises an OLED screen, an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor (CPU), 16GB of LPDDR5 memory (RAM), and a 1TB solid-state drive, all available for $1,499.99. An alternate model featuring a slightly swifter Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U is also listed on the Acer website, priced at an additional $100.

While its design may appear unassuming, the Acer Swift Edge 16’s slim profile makes a noteworthy impression. The laptop’s dimensions measure 0.55 by 14 by 9.5 inches (HWD), and though it’s not the slimmest contender, it remains competitive thanks to the narrow bezels surrounding the screen. Given its svelte build, durability becomes a valid concern. Constructed from magnesium alloy, the chassis contributes structural robustness to the laptop’s base. Despite a slight degree of flex in the keyboard deck (albeit less than what’s observed in larger LG Gram ultralights), the overall structure maintains a satisfactory level of sturdiness. It’s worth noting that the delicate display panel or lid is susceptible to flexing and necessitates cautious handling.

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Packed with pixels (3,840 by 2,400), the 16:10 aspect ratio display is worth protecting. The high pixel count makes for a robust density that all but ensures clarity for even the finest details. The OLED panel carries a DisplayHDR True Black 500 rating, promising peak brightness of more than 500 nits and the pitch blacks and vivid colors of OLED technology. Gamers will be disappointed that the screen’s refresh rate is capped at 60Hz (they’ll be more disappointed by the AMD Radeon integrated graphics), but it’s still a looker.

Beyond the display, the Swift Edge is more or less back to basics. The keyboard is ordinary verging on poor, with the inconsistent wobble and almost domed keycaps I encountered on the budget-priced Acer Aspire 3. This makes typing consistency an issue. The cursor arrow keys, which double as Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down, are packed tightly together. And the power button (which moonlights as a fingerprint reader) is in the top right corner where your fingers expect to find the Delete key—a switcheroo that can make for unfortunate errors. There’s two-level white backlighting, but it’s not especially pleasing to look at.

Acer provides a 1080p webcam whose images appear reasonably crisp in well-lit rooms, though it doesn’t compare with dedicated webcams or smartphones. The camera doesn’t offer face recognition for Windows Hello sign-ins, but the fingerprint sensor works quickly.

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The Acer Swift Edge 16 features a modest pair of speakers located at the bottom, flanking each side of the laptop. You may notice a grille positioned above the keyboard, resembling a potential speaker housing; however, it’s more likely intended for airflow purposes.

Unlike the broader spectrum of ports typically found in 16-inch laptops, the Swift Edge 16 takes a more streamlined approach. While offering more ports compared to devices like the MacBook Air, it provides fewer options than mainstream notebooks or mobile workstations. Specifically, it is equipped with two USB 3.2 Type-A ports (one on each side) and two USB4 Type-C ports on the left. One point of consideration is that since the AC adapter utilizes a USB-C connector, it’s somewhat disappointing that Acer didn’t incorporate these ports on both sides of the laptop. Additionally, it’s noteworthy that the USB4 ports failed to recognize an external Thunderbolt 3 drive when connected.

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The Acer Swift Edge 16 offers additional connectivity options, featuring an HDMI monitor port located on the left side, while a 3.5mm audio jack is conveniently positioned on the right side. Notably, the laptop lacks an SD or microSD card slot, which could be a consideration for users requiring memory card compatibility. On the wireless front, the laptop showcases robust connectivity capabilities, incorporating Bluetooth 5.2 alongside Wi-Fi 6E, which collectively ensure reliable and high-speed wireless links.

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Using the Swift Edge 16

The keyboard on the Acer Swift Edge 16 offers a slightly mixed experience due to its shaky keys and domed keycaps. As a result, achieving the same level of typing comfort as with other laptop keyboards proved challenging for me. In the Monkeytype typing test, my usual typing speed of breaking 100 words per minute (wpm) was not achieved; instead, I managed 96 wpm with 96% accuracy. Text editing tasks are hindered by the small, offset Delete key and the tightly packed arrow keys. Of particular concern is the diminutive left Control key—my pinky finger often pressed it only halfway, resulting in missed keystrokes. While the Swift Edge remains usable, its performance is comparatively slower than other devices in its category.

The touchpad doesn’t stand out significantly either. Its size is modest, not comparable to the expansive pad featured in Samsung’s Galaxy Book3 Pro 360. Although I encountered no issues related to unusual behavior or weak palm rejection, the touchpad’s performance is, at best, average.

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Acer’s flagship feature is undoubtedly the display, captivating audiences with its impressive performance. The expansive 16:10 panel offers a splendid 4K visual experience, elevating various content types—be it HDR videos or extensive documents and spreadsheets—with ample screen real estate. The Swift Edge’s display is especially suited for productivity tasks and immersive video consumption. However, it’s worth noting that gamers won’t find an advantage in terms of the refresh rate, which remains at the standard level.

While the OLED screen undoubtedly offers high quality, it’s recommended to complement the experience with a good pair of headphones, as the laptop’s built-in speakers fall short in comparison. These speakers lack the ability to deliver powerful or loud audio and exhibit a pronounced bias towards the midrange frequencies. Unfortunately, the audio reproduction fails to adequately capture the high-end frequencies and lacks noticeable bass, leaving room for improvement in this aspect of the laptop’s performance.

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Acer is renowned for its propensity to include a surplus of preloaded apps and shortcuts, a trend that extends to offerings such as Amazon, Booking.com, Forge of Empires, and Instagram. However, it’s worth noting that such preinstalled applications are becoming increasingly prevalent across various Windows 11 PCs. In this context, the Swift Edge 16 stands as a relatively more favorable example on the bloatware spectrum. Its inclusion of only a handful of proprietary utilities places it in the category of laptops with comparatively lighter preloaded software.

Testing the Acer Swift Edge 16: A Thin-and-Light That’s Light on Power

Designed to cater to the upper echelon of the laptop market, the Swift Edge 16 finds its competition among premium contenders. In our benchmark evaluations, we’ve placed it in comparison with the high-end Dell XPS 15 OLED. The Dell model features a 12th Generation Intel Core i7-12700H CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti discrete graphics processor (GPU). The Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360, also under review, is equipped with a new 13th Gen Intel Core i7-1360P chip. Additionally, we’ve included two more budget-friendly options that align with Acer’s competitive pricing strategy: the HP Pavilion Plus 14, an enticing value proposition with the same CPU as the Dell XPS 15, and the Lenovo Slim 7i Carbon, boasting an Intel Core i7-1260P. It’s important to note that all of these systems share the commonality of featuring 16GB of RAM.

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Productivity Tests

To establish a comprehensive foundation for assessing real-world productivity performance, our evaluation encompasses a range of benchmarks designed to simulate various productivity workflows. UL’s PCMark 10 plays a central role in gauging a computer’s proficiency in handling everyday office-centric tasks. This includes evaluating capabilities in word processing, spreadsheet manipulation, web browsing, and videoconferencing scenarios. The PCMark 10’s Full System Drive test is employed to measure boot drive load times and throughput, offering insights into a laptop’s overall operational efficiency.

Furthermore, we delve into CPU-focused benchmarks to gauge a device’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 employs the Cinema 4D engine to render intricate scenes, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro by Primate Labs mimics popular applications, ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. The open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 allows us to evaluate video processing by converting a 12-minute 4K video clip to 1080p resolution, where shorter processing times indicate better performance.

Our assessment extends to content creation and multimedia capabilities through Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Photoshop. This benchmark utilizes Adobe’s Creative Cloud version 22 of its renowned image editor, executing an array of tasks including image manipulation, application of filters, and the use of GPU-accelerated features. In totality, this diverse array of benchmarks offers a comprehensive perspective on the laptop’s performance across various usage scenarios.

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In the context of our assessment at PCMag, a PCMark 10 score of 4,000 points is indicative of a laptop’s proficiency in handling routine office tasks—an achievement that all five laptops, including the Acer Swift Edge 16, managed to attain. Positioned in the middle of the pack, the Acer demonstrated competence in this regard.

In the subsequent benchmarks, the Swift Edge 16 exhibited a performance that, while never drastically trailing, consistently placed it behind its counterparts. This performance disparity could be attributed to the limited performance headroom of its AMD Ryzen 7 CPU. The Ryzen CPU’s operation often necessitated the cooling fan to engage, a factor that potentially influenced its comparative performance. In contrast, the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360, which underwent testing alongside the Edge, displayed a more restrained utilization of its fans.

Graphics Tests

To check a laptop’s graphics performance, we run a pair of DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, the relatively low-intensity Night Raid and more demanding Time Spy. We also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.

In a pleasantly surprising turn, the Swift Edge 16 showcased a commendable graphics performance, with its AMD Radeon integrated graphics surpassing its Intel Iris Xe counterparts. This achievement even extended to outperforming the 13th Gen Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 in certain instances, despite the latter experiencing errors in one benchmark.

However, it’s crucial to maintain a perspective on these results. While the Swift Edge’s integrated graphics showcased impressive capabilities, it’s essential to acknowledge the limitations of integrated graphics platforms compared to dedicated gaming-worthy GPUs. For instance, the Dell’s GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, a dedicated GPU capable of gaming, significantly outperformed its rivals in various benchmarks. It’s noteworthy that the Dell’s advantage can be attributed to its powerful GPU, yet the Acer Swift Edge 16 still remains a considerably lighter alternative to the Dell XPS 15, underscoring a trade-off between performance and portability.

Battery and Display Tests

Conducting a laptop battery assessment involves the playback of a locally stored 720p video (specifically, the open-source Blender film Tears of Steel) while maintaining the system’s display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. Prior to the test, it is ensured that the battery is fully charged, and both Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting are deactivated.

Additionally, the evaluation employs the utilization of a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor along with its accompanying Windows software. This combination serves to quantify the extent of color saturation exhibited by a laptop screen—specifically, the percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes that the display is capable of rendering. Furthermore, measurements are taken for the display’s brightness at both 50% and 100%, expressed in nits (candelas per square meter).

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Despite the Swift Edge 16’s somewhat underwhelming performance, it managed to regain some esteem through its battery endurance, boasting an impressive 11-hour runtime that outperformed both the Pavilion Plus 14 and the Slim 7i Carbon. Interestingly, the Lenovo’s screen was notably dimmer at 50% brightness compared to the Acer’s, yet it still delivered superior battery life. Notably, a 16-inch laptop equipped with a high-resolution OLED display enduring such extended usage is noteworthy. However, the Samsung stole the spotlight by lasting nearly 17 hours, even with an equivalently vibrant OLED screen. The Dell also held its own, defying the common notion that dedicated GPUs often compromise laptop battery longevity.

Regarding display quality, the Lenovo’s IPS panel unsurprisingly fell behind the captivating OLED screens featured in other devices. The HP laptop earned commendation for offering the most comprehensive color coverage at an affordable price point. Notably, all machines exhibited satisfactory brightness levels; the remarkable contrast inherent to OLED panels allowed us to accept slightly less than the preferred 400 nits for IPS screens.

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Verdict: A Real Lightweight

The Acer Swift Edge 16 stands out as an impressively slim and lightweight device; however, it doesn’t achieve perfection. Its performance falls into the middle range, and the keyboard, touchpad, and speakers are notably disappointing considering the cost. Nonetheless, the laptop excels in terms of its screen quality and lightweight design. If prioritizing portability is a primary concern, the laptop might offer reasonable value, especially if purchased at a price below the listed amount. Nevertheless, the market features several other laptops that effectively compete in terms of pricing, performance, and comparable display features. Notably, the HP Pavilion Plus 14 and the Dell XPS 15 OLED stand out in this regard. Due to these factors, the Acer falls short of being awarded Editors’ Choice recognition.

Source: PCMag