Acer Swift 7 Review: A Thin, Sleek, Kaby Lake Powered Ultrabook

Performance: The Acer Swift 7 performed admirably in our benchmarks, but didn’t offer any noteworthy scores outside of battery life due to the low-power nature of the Core M inside the machine. The benchmarks provide a picture of a laptop that will handle typical day-to-day computing duties just fine, but that might fall short of expectations if used heavily as a business workhorse. That said, the Swift 7 is very snappy with typical office-type applications and browsing, it ultra-portable, and has excellent battery life.



As users who often lug laptops around, we appreciate thin, light ultrabook designs for more than just their looks. But the tradeoffs in these super-thin systems may be too steep for some users. The Acer Swift isn’t as nimnle as some more powerful machines that are a touch thicker, and perhaps a bit more expensive. We think some users will also wish that the Swift had a keyboard backlight and longer keystroke travel, although those things probably won’t be deal-breakers for people who plan to stick to Web browsing and emailing.

Of course, the biggest sacrifice for many users will be the move to only two USB 3.1 Type-C ports. If you have just one device that you plan to plug into your Swift 7 (say, a portable hard drive with a USB 3.0 interface), it’s not a big deal to attach the USB dongle to it and just leave it on your device permanently. As soon as you start detaching the dongle from one device to plug it into another, and another, laptops with additional IO and legacy USB ports are going to seem much more attractive.

We don’t think the Acer Swift 7 will let users down when it comes to durability though. The laptop is much sturdier than its thin design portends and it is quite attractive in our opinion. It should hold up to the bumps and bangs of daily use just fine, and will looks good doing it. Buyers who are looking for a stylish laptop for casual use or light business duty should be satisfied with the Swift 7’s staid performance, and will likely appreciate its relatively affordable price point and dig its good looks and strong battery life.