Acer Swift 5 (2022): Two-minute review
The Acer Swift 5 (2022) is a solid laptop well-suited to tackle a wide variety of everyday computing needs. It’s an ideal laptop for school or work because of its efficiency, fast boot times, and excellent performance that juggle many processor-heavy tasks without slowing down.
It looks as good as it performs, and one of the greatest features of the Acer Swift 5 is the Gorilla Glass antimicrobial touchscreen. This is certainly a premium feature for a mid-range laptop, but this display is a boon, we assure you, and well worth the price hike.
It’s incredibly responsive, responds instantly to every touch, feels sturdy and heavy, and is surprisingly resistant to fingerprints and dust. The touchscreen feels like a natural extension of the laptop, and it’s refreshing to have one on a laptop that isn’t essentially a tablet with a keyboard.
The battery life is also pretty solid; even with intensive programs running it will easily erase more than six hours and normal running is even higher than that. When you need to recharge, the Thunderbolt 4 charging port recharges the battery with a charge time of approximately four hours in just half an hour.
Wi-Fi 6E support is also built in, which means a much faster wireless internet connection, if available. Combined with its light weight that feels like a much smaller Chromebook, this is one of the best Ultrabooks overall and possibly the best student laptop we’ve seen so far this year.
The Swift 5 is what happens when you combine style with substance, with an ultra-thin bezel, a sleek yet satisfying keyboard, and a trackpad with a smooth and silky texture.
The Intel Alder Lake processor is more than fast and remains just as responsive whether plugged in or running on battery, easily making it one of the best mid-range laptops in terms of performance, but just expect to pay a little more than you might have expected for that fancy new technology.
Acer Swift 5 (2022): Pricing and Availability
- How much is it? From $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,899
- When is it out? It is now on sale through Acer’s online store or through major retailers
- Where can you get it? The Swift 5 is available in the US, UK and Australia
The Acer Swift 5 (2022) is available now from $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,899. This gets you an Intel Core i7-1260P processor with Intel Iris Xe graphics, 16GB LPDDR5 RAM, and 1TB PCIe SSD. In Australia, the configuration is the same except for the RAM, which is 16 GB LPDDR4, which is slightly slower. And while we know the starting price in the UK, the exact configuration hasn’t been released yet.
If we compare the price of this laptop with two other comparable laptops, Samsung Galaxy Book Pro is a lot cheaper than the Swift 5, although it has less powerful specs, such as a last-generation Intel Core i5 processor. Likewise, the Razer Book 13 has some great performance and features, while starting out at a lower price point than the Swift 5, although it also uses the latest generation of technology at the moment.
The HP Elite Dragonfly G2 is closer to the Swift 5 in specs, although it’s much more expensive, starting at $1,800 / £1,699, which is around AU$3,000. So while the price is a little on the high side for a mid-range laptop, it’s certainly not the most expensive option out there and it has fantastic specs for the price you pay for it, making it fantastic value for money.
Acer Swift 5 (2022): Design
- Delicious
- Spacious screen
- very light
Specification Sheet
Here is the Acer Swift 5 (2022) configuration sent to Ditching for review:
PROCESSOR: 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1260P
Graphic: Intel Iris Xe graphics
RAM: 16 GB LPDDR5 memory
Screen: 14-inch WQXGA, 16:10 aspect ratio (2560×1600) touchscreen with Gorilla Glass
Storage: 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD
Ports: 2 x Thunderbolt 4 ports, 1 x HDMI 2.1 port, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
Camera: FHD webcam
Weight: 2.65 pounds | 1.2 kg
Dimensions (W x D x H): 12.2 x 8.4 x 0.59 in | 309.8 x 213.36 x 14.98mm
If you’re looking for a laptop with a sleek, sleek look, look no further than the Acer Swift 5 (2022). It’s made of aerospace-grade aluminum in mint green with gold accents, smooth antimicrobial Gorilla Glass, and a backlit keyboard. Seen from afar, it’s a simple yet stylish design that sets it apart from other midrange laptops.
Likewise, the keyboard is also smooth with wide keys that make typing a breeze, and the backlighting is not only aesthetically pleasing but also provides some extra lighting at night or in dark areas.
The touchpad is silky, allowing your fingers to glide over it with ease, and the same can be said of the 1080p touchscreen, which responds instantly to every tap and movement. The touchscreen feels so incredibly natural that we couldn’t imagine this laptop without it.
And while it’s handy to have it on a real laptop rather than a tablet, it has the downside of being reflective, which affects visibility in direct sunlight. This means if you take it outside make sure you are in the shade otherwise it will be hard to see the screen.
Two other positives are the weight and screen size. The Acer Swift 5 comes in at an absolutely svelte 2.65 pounds (1.2 kg) and 0.59 inches (14.98 mm) thin, so carrying it around is a breeze. Not only that, the screen is a more than respectable 14in and has a screen-to-body ratio of 92.22% thanks to its ultra-thin bezel.
Port selection isn’t slow either with two Thunderbolt 4 charging ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, a headphone jack and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports. There is plenty of choice here, whatever your needs.
Typing with the keyboard feels quite smooth and accurate. The keys themselves make it easier for those with bigger or shaky fingers to type, although they could be a little wider as there is a rare redundant or double press. This is confused by the smooth keys, because the same feature that allows you to slide the keys can sometimes make you slide to the wrong key.
Acer Swift 5 (2022): Performance
- Fantastic performance
- Great for casual gaming
Benchmarks
Here’s how the Acer Swift 5 (2022) performed in our series of benchmark tests:
3DMark: Night Raid: 16,456† Fire Attack: 4.860† Time spy: 1946
Cinebench R20 Multicore: 10,362
Geek Bench 5: 1,682 (single wire); 9,824 (multicore)
PCMark 10 (Home Test): 4,293 points
Battery Life PCMark 10: 8:31
Battery Life (USA Health Reports Movie Test): 6:02 am
The dual fan arrangement is quiet but keeps the laptop well ventilated. There were no overheating issues in our daily testing; it got warm at most after extended use, but nothing alarming.
Its benchmark scores are better than other laptops with similar specs, so it’s more than adequate for low and moderately demanding games. And while high-end titles will certainly struggle on this machine, the fact that it can play many of the best laptop games like Disco Elysium and Cuphead in addition to school and productivity tasks makes the price tag look much more reasonable.
The 1080p display is crystal clear and vibrant and not the least bit confused by the touchscreen, but how long that lasts will depend on how well you take care of it. A 4K display or an OLED would have been preferable, but the battery life would probably have been too great to be worth it, especially for a pick-up-and-go laptop.
The 1080p webcam manages to take clean and well lit photos and videos and the sound quality is great too. Even with the most intricate pieces of music we could find, every instrument could be heard clearly. The volume itself is well balanced too, not too loud or quiet.
The overall performance is comparable to other laptops in the same price and specs range, but the touchscreen and the ability to run games quite well make it over the edge. But while the price is well deserved, it’s still a bit higher than other cheaper options that offer the same ability to work efficiently, so if you’re simply looking for the best business laptop for work, you might want to consider an equally efficient Dell or Lenovo laptop for a better price.
Acer Swift 5 (2022): Battery Life
- Battery life is solid
- Charges very quickly
The Acer Swift 5 has great battery life for the amount of power it has, both under normal use and under stress from various programs running in the background.
When we ran our standard 1080p movie test, creating a loop Tears of Steel (opens in new tab) on balanced power settings until it ran out of battery life, it took six hours to run out of battery.
Meanwhile, when we ran the PCMark 10 Battery Life benchmark, it made a much more respectable eight hours and 31 minutes, although this is where other laptops with similar specs end up, so the Swift 5 usually does well in terms of battery life.
Finally, the battery doesn’t take very long to charge either, so the time spent plugging in will be minimal.
Should I buy an Acer Swift 5 (2022)?
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
Also consider:
| Where the | While it’s well worth it, the Acer Swift 5’s price is still steeper than some of its competitors and has limited availability to boot. | 3.5/5 |
| Design | A simple yet beautiful design, the Acer Swift 5 weighs in at a dreamy two and a half pounds and less than an inch thick makes it the perfect portable machine. | 4.5/5 |
| Performance | The Acer Swift 5 performs incredibly fast thanks to its 12th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU, which even picks up some of the slack and turns it into a decent gaming laptop. | 4/5 |
| Battery | While the Acer Swift 5’s battery isn’t sluggish, it lags noticeably behind its competitors. | 3.5/5 |
