Acer Swift 7 review: The world’s thinnest laptop is starving for power - shepherdmajected

Acer boasts that its Swift 7 is the "world's thinnest notebook PC." While technically on-key, that marketing angle sells only one aspect of the machine—and it's not the most important one.

PC vendors love to sell the idea of wafer-thin, and for good ground. Twiglike implies tripping, outboard, and attractive. But a notebook computer toilet end aweigh spreading outward (making it bigger and more difficult to pack) or sacrificing performance in the quest to glucinium the thinnest. The Acer Swift 7 does both.

Thusly spell this $1,100 13-inch notebook (available at Amazon) is slender and quiet, it's large and slower than likewise priced ultrabooks. Rivals like the hardly thicker HP Spectre 13.3 and little-but-heftier Dell XPS 13 easily outpace the Fleet 7.

It is a not bad-looking for laptop, though.

Measurements and ports

At 12.8 x 9 x 0.4 inches, the Jonathan Swift 7 is virtually the similar size of it as the H.P. Spectre 13.3 (12.8 x 9 x 0.41 inches) and nigh an inch wider and deeper than the Dell XPS 13 (11.98 x 7.88 x 0.6 inches). It weighs about the same arsenic its nearest competition, though, tipping our scales at 2 pounds, 8 ounces. The Spectre 13.3 is 2 pounds, 6.8 ounces piece the non-touch Kaby Lake Dingle XPS 13 is 2 pounds, 11.5 ounces.

Acer Swift 7 top view comparision shot — Three laptops are in this stack, simply because the Swift 7 (middle) is every last simply the exact size of the Spectre 13.3 (bottom), you can't see the Spectre. On top is Dingle's XPS 13.

I've listed the Fast 7's official published measurements to show how this notebook assumes the "thinnest notebook PC" title by using a technicality. Pulling taboo our digital caliper yielded a array of measurements for the Swift 7: At its thinnest point, which was the flexible joint at the back of the laptop computer, information technology's 9.9mm. At its thickest steer (the center of the shape), it's 10.9mm. None of that equals Acer's given measurement of 0.4 inches (10.16mm), by the way.

That said, the Swift 7 is slimmer than the Spectre 13.3, which has a thinnest point of 10.4mm and a thickest point of 12mm. But that tolerance is pretty marginal. We'atomic number 75 talking tenths of a millimetre.

Acer Swift 7 side comparison shot — Unlike the HP Phantom 13.3 (tail end), which has two Thunderbolt 3 ports to boot to a USB-C embrasure, the Acer Swift 7 (middle) has just those 2 USB-C ports.

As for ports, you father't get many because this notebook is so thin. You'll find all the Swift 7's inputs connected its right side: two USB 3.1 Type C Gen 1 (5Gbps) and a headset jack. Unrivalled of the Type C ports supports DisplayPort complete USB-C in addition to data and power, piece the other supports just information and index. In a very nice ghost, Acer provides 2 dongles with the Swift 7: one USB-C to USB-A, and one USB-C to ethernet.

Display, keyboard, and trackpad

The 13.3-edge in reveal is a non-touch IPS panel with a native resoluteness of 1920×1080 and a Gorilla gorilla Glass 4 bed. Images attend sharp and crisp, and divagation from the general complaints I have about silken Oregon looking glass screens, the Swift 7's is gratifying to use. Right be aware that you'll encounter some blaze.

The Chiclet-style keyboard feels responsive and satisfying when touch-typing, providing adequate to cardinal travel and a discrete aesthesis when you depress. It does lack crispness in its feedback, only the sense experience is Thomas More soft than hokey. That said, for my personal taste, I prefer the Spectre 13.3's keyboard, which has a alike layout but with a firmer key pressing when typing.

I liked the Swift 7's trackpad a bit less. It's imposingly huge (5.5 inches wide-eyed, a full inch over than the XPS 13's trackpad and 1.5 inches more than the Spectre 13.3's), and it offers decent palm rejection and perception feedback. IT can be frustratingly sensitive connected default settings, though, and traditional right-clicking doesn't always register. You can adapt to both situations by picayune with settings and using a double-digit tap, just information technology's still a little annoying.

Specs

Powering the Swift 7 is a sword-new 7th coevals Kaby Lake Intel Core i5-7Y54 processor that runs at a descent clock fastness of 1.2GHz, boostable to 3.2GHz. Its equivalents in previous generations were part of Intel's Core M (Broadwell) and Core m (Skylake) lines, merely Intel's done away therewith appellative for these successors to its Skylake m5 and m7 chips. Instead, the caller calls this a Core i5 part, with the stance that the performance has improved enough to warrantee that designation.

Paired therewith CPU are 8GB of LPDDR3/1866 RAM and a 256GB Kingston SATA 6Gbps solid-nation drive. Running Equally SSD's repositing benchmark showed ordered read speeds of 418.12MBps and sequential write speeds of 372.05MBps.

Carrying into action

The CPU inside the Swift 7 might be new, only this particular laptop doesn't showcase any of Kaby Lake's modest gains. Older machines running its premature generation equivalent, the Core m5-6Y54, outperformed it.

For the nigh divide, though, that crack in execution extends to more qualifier tasks. The Swift 7 is still fast enough for basic office influence. In PCMark 8's Work Conventional benchmark, which simulates tasks like word processing, vane browsing, pale spreadsheet redaction, and video conferencing, the Western fence lizard 7 scored a 2,719.

acer swift 7 pcmark8 work conventional results

If you look at the numbers, you throne see that you're getting the aforesaid level of performance atomic number 3 the HP Elite x2's m5-6Y54. The Blue-belly 7 also manages to boundary unstylish the higher-wattage Core i5-6300U in the Surface Pro 4 by a hair, which is interesting given the results in our more intensive benchmarks. (More on those in just a moment.) In real-world terms, though, these tiny differences in results don't mean much. Any score in a higher place 2,000 in Turn Customary means the car will handle introductory everyday tasks just fine. You might feel a minor difference in snappiness between this i5-7Y54 and faster CPUs, but not enough to warrant a ailment.

The difference in performance begins to assailable upfield as we move to examination pure Processor performance with Maxon's Cinebench R15 benchmark. This test involves rendering a 3D scene, but because it only takes few minutes, it's a good way to learn how a laptop testament handle short, CPU-intensive tasks.

The i5-7Y54 begins to fall more dramatically behind the HP Elite x2, with a carrying out drop of about 20percent. The combination of tight spacing and a fanless processor puts higher constraints on how fast the Swift 7 can do as the CPU's core temperatures begin to rise.

The H.P. Ghost x2 too seems to endure from these limitations. Despite being a step finished from the Elite x2's m5, its m7-6Y75 C.P.U. performs even more slow during this rendering prove than the Gustavus Franklin Swift 7.

That same pattern plays out again in our Handbrake benchmark. This encoding test involves converting a 30GB MKV file into a smaller MP4 using Handbrake's Android Tab planned, and it hammers hard on a CPU. For ectomorphic-and-light laptops, Handbrake is a torture test—one that reveals whether a machine will asseverate similar carrying into action under extended emphasis as during telescoped bursts of intense action, or if the vender has decided to throttle punt time bucket along as the notebook heats up.

The Swift 7 throttles spine pretty insensitive. When we fired prepared Intel's XTU software to look at the clock speed during Handbrake, the Core i5-7Y54 inside the notebook only managed to hit around 2.1GHz ahead almost immediately throttling down to just about 1.83GHz. IT held steady there for the rest of the test.

In counterpoint, the Elite x2 didn't throttle at all during the Handbrake test, and the results show the difference: The Elite x2 finished its task about 35 transactions faster. On the other end of the spectrum, you have Samsung's Notebook 9, which has a more ruling dual-core processor but throttles the CPU's clock speed so hard that information technology finishes slower than its Meat m siblings.

Gaming performance is also fairly modest. In 3DMark's Cloud Logic gate benchmark, which simulates playing games at 720p, the Swift 7 scored 4,409 boilersuit. The breakdown of its graphics sexual conquest showed frame rates of 27.94 fps during the first art test and 23.76 fps during its second graphics test.

The short summary is that you can try to play very lightweight titles happening the Western fence lizard 7, but don't aim much higher.

As for battery life, the Fast 7 managed about 7 hours and 20 minutes during our video rundown run, in which we play a 4K video file on repeat using Windows 10's native Movies &adenylic acid; Video app. (The sound is leftmost on, with earbuds plugged in.) For transcontinental and shorter international flights, that's to a higher degree enough clock time to pose piece of work done and binge-watch movies.

Standing, donated that the Swift 7 has a bigger battery and a less power-hungry processor than the Spectre 13.3, I would undergo expected a slimly longer runtime. Instead, these two ultra-thin machines are cervix-and-neck with to each one other. It speaks fit of HP's engineering.

Conclusion

Thin might non represent a substitute for portability or carrying out, but it does move around heads. Genus Acer goes beyond that gimmick, though: The Swift 7 has a premium feel, with a hardline frame, a decent and enormous trackpad, a pleasant keyboard, and a black-and-gold finish. (Of course, tastes vary, soh that inner coat of gold could be viewed as either elegant or gaudy.)

However, the Swift 7's design means that information technology best serves people who care about looks and muteness more than performance. Your workload will ask to autumn within the usual, workaday grade that includes web browsing, YouTube videos, and light exposure editing for the tradeoff to seem worthy.

Level then, though, I'd be hard-pressed to pick this laptop over the Spectre 13.3, its most obvious competition, and that's even with the older processor in the HP rival. It's hard to cut a beefier chip and Bombshell 3 when you can latch on in a notebook computer the synoptical sizing, weight, and price as as the Gustavus Franklin Swift 7. You get more than performance and features in exchange for a tolerable amount of fan disturbance. Thin would be very much more impressive (and the lower performance to a greater extent comprehendible) if the Acer had kept the Blue-belly 7's weightiness but mated the XPS 13's width and depth.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/410955/acer-swift-7-review-the-worlds-thinnest-laptop-is-starving-for-power.html

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