Acer Swift 5 2019 Review: A Light-weight Machine With High-Performance Standards

Published on December 17, 2019
acer swift 5
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If you need an easily portable computer that is in £1000 range without skimping on performance, you should surely include the Acer Swift 5 in your list.

It’s still one of the strongest ultrabooks around with Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, upgraded hardware, and more energy than ever before. It’s definitely worth considering if your budget is less than £ 1,000.

Design

This up-to-date notebook was definitely designed for a life on the road just like the swifts of the past and the bigger Swift 7. The slim frame is built of a super light metal alloy and weights just under a kilogram of the whole kit. I am convinced that Acer unintentionally forgets to hang certain pieces inside each time I grab the Swift 5. So if you put it in a backpack and carry it all day long, you won’t even notice the extra weight.

Something so small you might consider to be worryingly fragile. But instead of some fragile precious machine, the new Swift is still a tough little laptop to handle carefully. Even if poked, twisted, or particularly hard, no part of this chassis is weak.

The size of this laptop renders connectivity incredibly powerful. You get not only a USB 3.0 and 3.1 socket on board but Acer has a good Thunderbolt 3 port as well, which you cannot find all too often around this price point. This can be used for attaching external displays or if you need a more typical alternative, you also have an HDMI connection.   Ethernet option is not available, but frankly, it would be quite selfish, in addition to everything else.

Acer has once more introduced a Windows Hello authentication service fingerprint sensor. A scanner sliver is mounted under the keyboard on the right side. I found it worked a lot, given its dinky size. Rarely did I click my finger more than once for the Swift 5 to open, and the PINs and passwords were a convenient option.

A 1MP camera, concealed in the small top mirror, completes the design features. It captures a relatively grainful picture as you certainly would anticipate while skyping with kin, while it’s definitely not a fan of low-lying conditions.

Display

I’m certainly a fan of the 14-inch IPS display of Swift, which fills the inner lid almost completely. Unfortunately this screen doesn’t go back to a 180-degree angle anymore, although I couldn’t resist the ease of commuting, whether it was lying on a couch or being trapped on a commuter train.

In contrast, the rigid, but not too strong hinges help to stabilize Acer’s display as you poker it and hit it. And you will poke it as you get total reaction like the old one. There is help for multi touch gestures however they appear to work selectively. For eg, when you beaver in Docs, a pinch of the monitor will not zoom in the Chrome browser, while the Acer swift 5 touchpad is doing the same thing. Nevertheless, it often works perfectly well on other websites.

For this new model, the performance of the graphics did not really improve. The full HD quality makes pictures and videos look perfectly smooth. You would almost have to face the screen to spot any pixelation and frankly I would not suggest that you do it.

My display tests showed a median luminosity level at less than 300 nits, which is perfect for most conditions. I had no difficulty seeing what I did on my trip, aided by a nearly total lack of sunlight at any stage.

The representation of colors, along with the 78% Adobe RGB set, is also a star, with 100% of the sRGB spectrum faithfully depicted lively pictures have a little pop, but you can anticipate realistic visuals in their entirety.

Under the laptop, on the far left and on the far right banks, two stereo speakers are installed. The fact, if you tilt the Swift 5 on your lap, that they aim at your desk or pants will inevitably make your sound a little bit silly. You will have trouble listening in a ludicrous setting on top of the sound. However, they undoubtedly do the job to watch a bit of YouTube or Netflix on your lunch break.

Keyboard

A broad chiclet keyboard embellishes the frame of the Swift 5 and offers a pleasant typing experience. The only complaint I have is that the buttons down and up are crammed together with the little arrow keys, rendering them really challenging to reach with no attention being paid.

Return to action, the backlight can be turned quickly with the F8 key between deactivation, low and high power.

Performance

The Intel Core chipset i5-1035G1 provides performance, one of the 10th generation still-fresh mid-range systems. Supported by 8 GB of RAM, Swift 5 can easily perform everyday tasks, even grunting for more demanding applications.

The updated Swift 5 earned the following in the Trusted Reviews benchmarking.

PCMark 10 gave it 3514 points while in Geekbench 4 Single Core test, it got 5112 points.

On the other hand, in Geekbench 4 Multi Core test it got 15163 points and Cinebench 20 is 1122 points.

If you really have issues with performance, you can also get Acer Swift 5 models with the better Intel Core i7-1065G7 cpu, but the cost would go over £ 1000.

There is also the ability to help media editing and replay with a NVidia GeForce MX250 graphics card, although do not plan to blaze the most current games on the top info or to edit 4K content on the go. However the simple editing of FHD graphics is fairly easy, and titles such Rain 2 hazard operating on default settings with a steady frame rate.

Acer offered Wi-Fi 6 for this device in this price range which is overwhelming. It helps to make computer more future-proof when the software becomes more commonly used and certainly is great news if you’re online. Especially if a cheeky bit of Netflix is involved in streaming or even playing. A single SSD model with 256 GB of space for your applications and other parts are offered with this laptop.

Battery

In regards to battery life, given this power boost, the latest Swift 5 certainly will not mislead. Acer’s modified notebook sat in Power mark for a little under 10 hours, which is not too far away from the 12 hours reported.

This will be a bit low if you spend the whole day in the Chrome browser with a full charge of about eight hours. It is yet sufficient to have a standard working day which is not bad in view of the slim chassis.

Final Words

Acer has made it even better with this 2019 updates, increased reliability, increasing a few annoying quirks and introduced future-proof Wi-Fi 6, a powerful, highly portable laptop. It makes it a great full tool for teachers, practitioners and anyone who enters the roads most days of the week. This all-new Swift certainly gets my blessing, despite the extremely polite demanding cost.

Read Next: Apple is Selling Brydge’s iPad Keyboard in North American Retail Stores

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