Acer Swift 7 Review – an Elegant Thin and Light Notebook 

The Acer Swift 7 seems to follow the path of the MacBook (2016) – thin, light, lovely, with shallow keys, no full-sized ports, gorgeous display and good sound, except that the Swift 7 has a lower price tag and a more “traditional” 13 inch form factor. At no point could we stop calling the Swift 7 gorgeous. But what about typing comfort, battery stamina, and multitasking performance? Here’s our review.

The Acer Aspire Swift 7 is only 9.98mm thin, 1.125kg light, and yet has two USB 3.1 Type C ports and a headphone jack. Take note, Apple. This sub-1cm notebook has a 256GB SSD, 8GB of RAM, and runs on a 7th Gen Intel Core i5-7Y54. The Swift 7 has a 13.3-inch Full HD display, promises 9 hours of use, has an aluminum unibody chassis, and retails for P64,995. It even has one of the widest touchpads we’ve seen on a notebook. The Swift 7 is the newest addition to the Aspire S line, the other members being the S3 and the S5. Inspirational Speaker Francis Kong and Miss World 2014 Megan Young were announced at the Aspire S7’s launch as #Aspire brand ambassadors.

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Acer Aspire Swift 7 Full Specs

Windows 10 Home in a 64-bit
13.3-inch Full HD 1920 x 1080, high-brightness Acer CineCrystal LED-backlit TFT LCD
Corning Gorilla Glass
7th generation Intel Core i5-7Y54 | 256GB SSD
Dual-channel 8GB of on board LPDDR3 SDRAM | Intel HD Graphics 615
802.11ac wireless LAN with a 2×2 MU-MIMO technology | Bluetooth 4.0
USB Type-C port, supports DisplayPort over USB-C and DC-in
2 USB 3.1 Type C ports | headphone jack
HD webcam, with 720p HD audio/video recording, and High dynamic range imaging (HDR)
Aluminum unibody chassis | 9.98mm thin |1.125kg light
4-cell battery promises up to 9 hours of use
SRP P64,995 | by comparison, the MacBook starts at P69,990. 

We’ve just unboxed the thinnest (9.98mm) notebook in the world – the gorgeous Acer Swift 7. Bottom image is actually of the notebook’s hinge area, which in most notebooks is darn thick. But not here. The Swift 7 has not one but two Type C ports (take note, Apple) and comes with a free Type C to USB 3 adaptor and Type C to HDMI adaptor (take note, Apple). Full review in the works. #acer #acerswift7 #swift7 #aspire

A post shared by Irwin Allen Rivera (@swirlingovercoffee) on Dec 12, 2016 at 7:50pm PST

The Good

• Impressively thin, light, and premium-looking build. The Swift 7 “disappears” when inside your bag. We had to check a few times if we had actually brought it along, given how light our bag was. Despite the thin profile, it barely flexes.

• Gorgeous display, sharp details, vivid colors, great vertical and side viewing angles, high enough contrast so that working outdoors (despite the glossy screen) can be tolerable.

• Speakers are good, despite being placed underneath the keyboard base. Dialogue from videos are audible and the sound rarely “cracks” even when on full volume. Not a lot of bass though.

• Mix of a wonderful screen and good sound make for a great content consumption device (browsing, reading PDFs, editing documents, video binging on YouTube or Netflix).

• Very large touchpad is very responsive. Not glass but smooth enough to feel premium. Sudden cursor jumps are rare. If you’re left-handed and complain about touchpad placement favoring right-handed people, you might like the touchpad on the Swift 7: it’s very “reachable”.

• Full-sized keyboard has no warped or misplaced keys (save for the power button, which is where the Delete key usually is, but we don’t mind).

• Cocktail of Core M processor (though Intel re-brands it as Core i5), 256GB SSD, and 8GB RAM is fast enough for moderate multitasking – Word document editing, YouTube videos, browsing on Chrome with 7 tabs, with a few file explorer windows open.

• Bottom area rarely gets warm on your lap – something to keep in mind if you need to work on lounges and waiting areas with no tables.

• Simply beautiful, from any angle.

The Maybe Bad

• Absence of full-sized ports (USB in particular) disrupts your workflow. Although the Swift 7 comes with two adaptor cables (one for USB and another for HDMI), if you work with a mouse and one or two external hard drives, you still need a USB port hub. (And yet this cheaper thin and light has all the ports.)

• Battery life is only around 7 hours at moderate usage (Word document editing, watching YouTube videos, browsing on Chrome with 7 tabs, and with a few file explorer windows open). This is just an hour above better-spec’d, port-complete, and cheaper 2016 laptops like the ASUS ZenBook UX306LA and Dell Inspiron 5368 (to be fair, neither of these are as thin nor as elegant as the Swift 7).

• Underpowered for the price (P65k). It always feels odd when a Windows laptop is only good for moderate tasks, but has a premium design and build, and is priced like a budget gaming or video editing laptop.

• Shallow non-backlit keyboard is not for long typing sessions. While the keyboard is workable, there’s just not enough tactile feedback. We don’t mind the non-backlit keys (we get distracted by glowing keys), but some people might.

• Glossy non-touch display. This isn’t really a bad thing. Many of us are used to tolerating glossy screens when used outdoors. We’re not bothered by the non-touch display since that very large touchpad is so responsive.

• The display, area surrounding keyboard, and lid are fingerprint magnets. Get used to bringing along a microfiber cloth to keep things tidy.

The Verdict

The Acer Swift 7 is gorgeous and slim, its non-touch display is sharp and vibrant, its down-firing speakers adequately loud, its performance good enough for moderate work, but its keyboard is shallow and non-backlit, the lack of full-sized ports disrupts one’s workflow, and the battery life is just an hour above other better-spec’d, and cheaper 2016 laptops. Being the thinnest laptop doesn’t mean much if it compromises on ports, typing experience, and battery life. The Swift 7 performs like a sixth generation Core i3 office laptop but is priced like a budget gaming or video editing laptop. But, hey: it certainly is thin, super light, and pretty.

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