Acer Swift Edge review: The lightest 16-inch laptop

The vast majority of 16-inch laptops have sufficiently powerful components with

discrete graphics cards, but they are quitemassive and heavy. Acer Swift Edge offers a slightly different user experience. The laptop has a superb quality 16-inch 4K+ OLED display, yet it's very light and thin, making it easy to carry around every day. Performance is quite enough for working with documents, browser and basic photo and video processing. And thanks to an efficient cooling system, the laptop always works stably and does not overheat. It is equipped with a sufficient number of connectors, including the most modern USB 4 versions. But it should be borne in mind that autonomy is not the strongest side of the laptop, and the battery is not enough for a full working day. The closest configuration of Acer Swift Edge with 16 GB RAM and one 512 GB drive is now 60 000 UAH.

Acer Swift Edge

Lightest 16" laptop

Thin and light metal laptopand an impressive 16-inch 4K+ OLED display. The processor uses AMD Ryzen 6th generation, the RAM can be 8/16/32 GB LPDDR5, and the drive can be up to two M.2 SSDs with PCIe 4.0 x4 interface

Comfy
MOYO
Power socket
Citrus

5 reasons to buy Acer Swift Edge:

amazing 16-inch 4K+ OLED display;
lightweight and durable construction;
efficient cooling system;
a good number of modern ports, including USB 4;
sufficient performance for working with documents and basic photo / video processing.

2 reasons not to buy Acer Swift Edge:

you need a laptop with discrete graphics for 3D modeling or other heavy tasks;
you're looking for a laptop that will last a full day on a single charge.

Fast passage:

What is in the box?
What does the Acer Swift Edge look like and what about the design features?
Is it convenient to use a laptop?
How good is the screen?
What about performance, battery life and sound?
In the dry residue

What is in the box?

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Acer Swift Edge came to us without a box, but notyou should expect something special in the kit. In the commercial version, you can find the laptop itself, a power supply, a power cable and documentation in the box.

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What does the Acer Swift Edge look like and what about the design features?

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In general, the Acer Swift laptop line has alwayswas compact in size and light in weight. For example, the Swift 5 was the first 14-inch laptop to weigh less than 1kg. The Acer Swift Edge continues this tradition with the lightest 16-inch laptop to date. The case is almost entirely made of magnesium alloy with aluminum (only the frame around the screen is plastic). The manufacturer claims that this alloy is 20% lighter and twice as strong as aluminum. The weight of the laptop is only 1.17 kg, which is really impressive considering the diagonal of the display. The Flax White variant has arrived. It is almost white, but shimmers a little under the rays of light. All surfaces have a rough finish, from decorative elements - only a small Acer logo on the top cover.

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Despite the large display diagonal, Acer SwiftThe Edge is still a thin and light laptop. But this did not prevent the installation of a good set of connectors. On the right side there is a combined 3.5 mm audio jack, USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, two LED indicators and a Noble Lock TZ08T slot.

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On the left are two Type-Cs of the new 4th version with support for Power Delivery and DisplayPort, another USB3.2 Gen 1 Type-A and HDMI 2.1. Only a card reader would be appropriate for this set.

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At the back there are two zones of cooling system holes, two hinges on the sides and two small rubber inserts on which the laptop rests in the open position.

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Front - wide cutout for lifting the top cover.

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It is claimed that the display occupies 92% of the areatop cover. The bezels are really very thin. Above the display is a standard set: a webcam with FullHD resolution, an indicator of its operation and a pair of microphones.

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Below is an almost standard set of functional elements. Four rubber feet, air vents, speakers and a reset button in a small hole.

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The dimensions of the laptop are 356.7×242.3×13.95 mm, it fits into a standard laptop compartment in a backpack without any problems, even with a case. The appearance turned out to be quite minimalistic and stylish. Tactilely, there were no complaints about the build quality, but endurance is difficult to determine in such a short time.

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Is it convenient to use a laptop?

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The hinges allow you to open the laptop for about135 °, while the display is fixed quite well. Although the lid trembles a little if you touch the laptop: a large area affects. Of course, the laptop is easy to open with one hand.

The Acer Swift Edge keyboard is overall verynot bad, but there are a couple of aspects that could be improved. The layout is absolutely standard for 13.3- or 14-inch ultrabooks. Without additional digital block. Given the size and free space on the work surface, it would fit there quite well. Everything else is implemented absolutely standard. The top row of function buttons is reduced in size and is duplicated with additional functions, including adjusting the volume, brightness, keyboard backlight and mute the microphone. The series ends with a power button with a built-in fingerprint scanner. Home, End, PgUp and PgDn are duplicated with arrows through Fn. Both Shift are long, Enter is single-level.

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The buttons have standard sizes, the distances are differentfrom a friend and a clear click. But quite a short move, which took a little getting used to. There is a white backlight. How well the Cyrillic characters will be highlighted is hard to say: we received a sample without engraving. Although usually there are no problems with backlighting now.

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The touchpad is large, with a nice surface and very crisp finger tracking. There are no complaints about him.

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How good is the screen?

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The display is one of the most interesting featuresAcer Swift Edge. It has a diagonal of 16 inches, an aspect ratio of 16:10 and a resolution of 4K + (3840x2400). It uses an OLED matrix with a color gamut of 100% DCI-P3, a maximum brightness of 400 cd/m², a peak brightness of 500 cd/m² (in HDR mode), a pixel response time of 0.2 ms, and a refresh rate of 60 Hz. Visually, the display makes a very pleasant impression: the picture is very clear due to the high resolution and has very rich colors. Viewing angles are maximum. Hardware measurement showed that the maximum brightness almost corresponds to the declared figure. The color gamut of the screen is noticeably wider than the sRGB range, the calibration is very good, the deviation towards cool shades is minimal:

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What about performance, battery life and sound?

Acer Swift Edge uses AMD processorsRyzen. In our case, the 6000 series. But, based on the information on the official website, updated configurations for the 7000 series are planned. We received a sample with the most modest configuration. Inside is an AMD Ryzen 5 6600U processor, which is manufactured on a 6nm FinFET process and uses the Zen 3+ architecture. It includes 6 cores and supports 12 threads. The base frequency is 2.9 GHz, Boost is 4.5 GHz, the third level cache is 16 MB, TDP is from 15 to 28 watts. The built-in AMD Radeon 660M accelerator with a frequency of up to 1900 MHz is responsible for the graphics. There is no discrete graphics card. RAM can be 8, 16 or 32 GB of LPDDR5 type in dual-channel mode. In all variants, it is soldered to the motherboard, so no upgrade is provided. Therefore, you should immediately look at the 16 and 32 GB options: 8 GB is already not enough. There is Wi-Fi 6E 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax 2X2 MU-MIMO and Bluetooth 5.2.

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The performance is enough to work withbrowser, documents, basic photo and video processing. In benchmarks, the laptop shows very good results in processor and work tests. With heavy graphics, things are expected to be more modest. Which is not surprising, given the exclusively built-in accelerator.

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Acer Swift Edge has two slots forM.2 SSDs. In our case, two Micron 3400s with PCI-E 4.0 4x interface are installed. Claimed read speeds up to 6600 MB/s and write speeds up to 3600 MB/s.

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SSD read speeds are as advertised. Records - slightly higher: about 3950 MB / s:

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The laptop's cooling system proved to be effective.In the AIDA64 stress test in performance mode, the temperature can initially rise to about 80°C, and then stays at 65°C. Therefore, no throttling and performance degradation are observed. The cooling system at maximum speed is audible, but it does not work loudly and the sound is not annoying. The case gets a little warm over the keyboard. But it only gets warm, not hot.

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Of course, the laptop is not designed for gaming.But it is quite possible to play something not very demanding. For example, DOOM 2016 at 1920x1200 resolution and medium graphics settings runs at 30-36 FPS.

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The Acer Swift Edge uses a three-element54Wh battery with support for fast charging. They promise up to 7.5 hours (MobileMark 2018) and up to 10.5 hours of video playback. In real use - 50% brightness, Wi-Fi, web surfing, cropping photos in Photoshop, documents - the laptop lasted about 5.5 hours. Not much, but not surprising given the thin body and large 4K+ OLED display.

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The laptop has two speakers, their volumequite enough for movies or YouTube videos. And music lovers should still connect external acoustics. Of the useful branded applications, Acer Care Center is worth mentioning. It has all the statistics of the use of the laptop and the possibility of cleaning, optimizing and updating it.

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