Acer maxes out on portability by whittling away at this laptop’s weight to an almost outrageous extent.
The Acer Swift Edge is a high-end laptop made to balance portability and display size. It weighs less than 1.2kg but has a 16in screen, considerably larger than most ultraportable laptops.
These kind of specs aren’t really possible with conventional laptop design, pushing Acer to look for every opportunity to shave off a few grams.
The end result: Acer’s Swift Edge is a powerful laptop that will suit people who travel a lot for work. But there are a few issues in the build and design which means the Swift Edge doesn’t quite hit the heights of the LG Gram series, which originally put this style of laptop in the spotlight. Design & Build
Super-light magnesium aluminium alloy frame
Relatively poor panel rigidity
Sober, plain-looking design
The Swift Edge is exceptionally light considering it has a 16in screen. 1.17kg would be considered light for a 13in laptop, let alone one this big.
How Acer achieves this is by using a lot of the same techniques and compromises as the LG Gram 16 – the laptop that the Swift Edge is clearly gunning for. It may have aspirations to woo some people away from a MacBook Air, too.
The Acer Swift Edge’s body panels are made from magnesium alloy, and judging by how the Edge feels, they are quite thin. Every part of this laptop flexes a little bit, including the keyboard base where it starts to impact use.
Losing this much weight, then, certainly involves compromises. Are they worth it? If you travel all the time, sure. If the Acer Swift Edge will stay on your desk at home or in the office 90% of the time, not so much.
While we’re not worried about the Edge’s longevity, there’s a certain hollowness to the typing we don’t love. And it’s not evident in rivals that aren’t the product of an obsession with weight loss.
The Acer Swift Edge is also a fairly plain-looking laptop. It has a raised plastic screen bezel – the screen’s front layer is also plastic, in part because glass would add too much weight. The focus here is on portability and, at 13mm thick, the Edge slips into carry-on luggage after airport security as if it were an oversized iPad.Keyboard and touchpad
Shallow keyboard feels a little vague
Plastic touchpad is a disappointment
Basic 2-level white key backlight
There’s a certain ‘hollowness’ to the feel of typing on the Swift Edge, because the key stroke force reverberates around the frame. Keys are also shallow, and the action is fast and light, not meaty and substantial like a desktop keyboard.
Of course, no laptop keyboard can match a desktop, but here the typing experience here is ok at best. There is at least a two-level backlight.
There’s more strange stuff in the touchpad. This is a plastic pad, which is bizarre given the Acer Swift Edge’s cost. Once you get to around $1000 / £1000 you can usually expect a smooth glass pad.
While the Acer Swift Edge’s touchpad surface feels ok it does have a bit of plastic squeakiness that textured glass avoids. Click depth varies quite dramatically based on where you press on the pad. While that’s normal for a mechanical clicker, it’s more noticeable than usual on the Swift Edge.
Put simply, the touchpad feels like it belongs on a cheaper laptop and if it’s plastic just to shave off a few grams, it really wasn’t worth it.
