Acer Swift 5 (2019): lightweight and versatile laptop (Topic)

Recently, there has been a trend of the Acer company to produce light and thin notebooks. Similar products from other companies cannot be called successful. They may and will be lightweight, but this will certainly affect the characteristics or performance of such devices. Acer Swift 5 appeared not so long ago. Everything that should be told about it is set out below.

Features and Design

The company's novelty, the Acer Swift 5 (2019) laptop, has an 8th generation Whiskey Lake Core i5-8265U quad-core processor as a CPU. He is assisted in his work by 8 GB of RAM (with the possibility of a 2-fold increase) and 256 GB of internal memory. The performance of this hardware is sufficient to solve most of the tasks inherent in a device of this type.

This is also evidenced by the results of testing the device in Geekbench, where it scored 4416 and 13754 points in single-core and multi-core modes, respectively.

One of its advantages is the use of PCIe NVMe SSD storage. The type of video card used is Intel UHD 620.

The gadget received a display measuring 15.6 inches diagonally, with a resolution of 1920 ? 1080 pixels. The laptop weighs 998 grams.

Among other technical data, it is worth noting the used protocol Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi - 802.11ac, ports: USB 3.1; USB 3.0 Always On; Noble Lock; HDMI-out; Combo Headphone / Mic Jack; USB Type-C.

Interesting first impressions when familiarizing with the Acer Swift 5. It seems almost weightless, as if filled with air. However, things are not as they seem. Its filling is quite solid.

The lightness of the product is given by the use of a magnesium-lithium alloy in its production. The case is quite strong, but when you press the cover you can see that it sags even from a slight impact.

The hinge mechanism is tight, the display cannot be opened with one hand. With an overall thickness of 1.6 cm, the gadget is still a full-size laptop with thin bezels.

The color gamut of these devices is limited mainly by gray body and black inserts.

Keypad and display

The keyboard of the novelty has an island type and one level of backlighting. The keys received a large stroke, tangible feedback and a crisp click. To press, you don't need to make a lot of effort, such a "keyboard" will surely appeal to those who are typing various texts for a long time.

Interesting is the Swift 5 (2019) touchpad, which is medium in size. It was equipped with support for the Microsoft Precision Touchpad driver. The main nuance was its rough surface, which affected the quality of the swipes not for the better.

The device has a touch screen, there is a fingerprint scanner. Its initial setup takes time, but then everything works fine.

The laptop received a 15.6-inch IPS display with Full HD resolution and a pixel density of 141ppi. The image is crisp and clear. The brightness of the screen is 310 nits, the color gamut of Adobe RGB reaches 72%, and sRGB - 96%. The color accuracy coefficient is 2.23. For many, this figure will not tell you anything, experts understand that this figure is enough for professional use of the device.

Performance, autonomy

In terms of gaming performance, this gadget lacks stars from the sky. He will "pull" outdated games with low graphics requirements. Rocket League is an example of such a game.

Some users and experts believe that the easiest way to lighten a laptop is to reduce the size of its battery, and therefore to reduce its capacity. This is exactly what was done in the case of the Acer Swift 5. Its battery has only 54 Wh.

Due to the energy efficient Whiskey Lake Core i5 processor, this capacity might be sufficient. But. Its Full HD screen is 15-inch. For him, this battery parameter will be clearly not enough.

So the research statistics speaks for this. In the Basemark test, the device only lasted 3.5 hours. Its competitors here showed results from 4.5 to 6.5 hours.

Another pageview test was passed with a result of 8.5 hours. Analogs from other manufacturers showed from 9.5 to 10.5 hours. The difference is small, but not in favor of the product from Acer.

If we abstract from the tests, then on average Acer Swift 5 can work all day. Provided that it works as usual, without launching demanding applications.

The Topic of Article: Acer Swift 5 (2019): lightweight and versatile laptop.
Author: Jake Pinkman