TechRadar Verdict
The Acer Swift 5 is an excellent entry in the midrange market, with a solid battery life, great sound quality, and clear 1080p touchscreen. It’s surprisingly good as a casual gaming laptop too, but it comes at a steeper price.
Pros
- +
Excellent performance
- +
Beautiful design
- +
Solid battery life
- +
Great value for the price
Cons
- -
Screen glare is an issue
- -
Keyboard is a little slippery
- -
Limited availability outside the US
- -
There are some cheaper alternatives
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Acer Swift 5 (2022): Two minute review
The Acer Swift 5 (2022) is a solid laptop well-suited to tackling a wide variety of everyday computing needs. It's an ideal laptop for school or work due to its efficiency, quick start up time, and excellent performance that juggles many processor-heavy tasks without slowing down.
It looks as great as it performs, as well, and one of the biggest features of the Acer Swift 5 is the Gorilla Glass antimicrobial touchscreen. This is a premium feature for a mid-range laptop to be sure, but this screen is a blessing, we assure you, and well worth the bump up in price.
It’s incredibly responsive, reacting instantly to any touch, feels substantial and weighty, and resists fingerprints and dust surprisingly well. 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 pretty solid as well; even with intensive programs running it easily clears over six hours and running normal is even higher than that. If you need to recharge, the Thunderbolt 4 charging port refills the battery at about four hours of recharge time in just a half hour.
Wi-Fi 6E support is also built in, meaning a much faster wireless internet connection when available. Combined with its light weight that feels like a much smaller Chromebook, this is one of the best Ultrabooks generally 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 slim but satisfying keyboard, and a trackpad with a smooth and silky texture.
The Intel Alder Lake processor is beyond fast and remains just as responsive whether plugged in or running on battery, easily making it one of the best laptops in the midrange segment in terms of performance, but just expect to pay a little more than you might be expecting for that fancy new tech.
Acer Swift 5 (2022): Price and availability
- How much does it cost? Starting at $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,899
- When is it out? It is on sale now through Acer's online store or through major retailers
- Where can you get it? The Swift 5 is available in the US and UK, and Australia
The Acer Swift 5 (2022) is available now, starting at $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,899. This will get 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 16GB LPDDR4, which is slightly slower. And while we know the starting price in the UK, the exact configuration hasn't been released yet. However, the addition of Acer promo codes could weigh in your favor.
Comparing the pricing of this laptop to two other similar laptops, the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro is a good bit cheaper than the Swift 5, though it does have less powerful specs like a last-gen Intel Core i5 processor. Likewise, the Razer Book 13 has some fantastic performance and features while starting at a lower price than the Swift 5, though it too is running last-generation tech at this point.
The HP Elite Dragonfly G2 is closer in spec to the Swift 5, though it is far more expensive, starting at $1,800 / £1,699, which is about AU$3,000. So while the price point is a bit on the high side for a midrange laptop, it’s definitely not the most expensive option out there and it has fantastic specs for the price you're paying for it, making it a fantastic value all-around.
- Value: 4 / 5
Acer Swift 5 (2022): Design
- Gorgeous
- Spacious display
- Very light
Here is the Acer Swift 5 (2022) configuration sent to TechRadar for review:
CPU: 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1260P
Graphics: Intel Iris Xe Graphics
RAM: 16GB LPDDR5 memory
Screen: 14-inch WQXGA, 16:10 aspect ratio (2560x1600) 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 lbs | 1.2 kg
Size (W x D x H): 12.2 x 8.4 x 0.59 inches | 309.8 x 213.36 x 14.98 mm
If you’re looking for a laptop with a gorgeous and sleek exterior, then look no further than the Acer Swift 5 (2022). It’s made with aerospace-grade aluminium in mint green with gold highlights, smooth antimicrobial Gorilla Glass, and a backlit keyboard. From afar it’s a simple yet classy design that sets it apart from other midrange laptops.
Similarly the keyboard is also smooth with wide keys that make typing a breeze, and the backlight is not only aesthetically pleasing but provides some extra lighting at night or in dim areas.
The touch pad is silky, allowing your fingers to glide across with ease, and the same can be said of the 1080p touchscreen, which responds to every tap and flick instantaneously. The touchscreen feels so incredibly natural that we couldn’t imagine this laptop without it.
And while it’s handy having it on an actual laptop instead of a tablet, it does have the drawback of making it reflective which affects visibility when in direct sunlight. Meaning that if you take it outside, be sure to sit under some shade or else it’ll be difficult 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 (1.2kg) and 0.59 inches (14.98 mm) thin, so carrying it around is an absolute breeze. Not only that, the screen is a more than respectable 14-inch and has a 92.22% screen-to-body ratio thanks to the ultra thin bezel.
The port selection is certainly no slouch either with two Thunderbolt 4 charging ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, a headphone jack, and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports. There’s plenty of selection here no matter what your needs are.
Typing with the keyboard feels pretty smooth and accurate. The keys themselves make it easier for those with larger or shaky fingers to type, though they could stand to be a little wider since there is the rare redundant or double press. This is confounded by the smooth keys since the same property that lets you glide across the keys can sometimes make you slip to the wrong key.
- Design: 4.5 / 5
Acer Swift 5 (2022): Performance
- Fantastic performance
- Great for casual gaming
Here is how the Acer Swift 5 (2022) performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
3DMark: Night Raid: 16,456; Fire Strike: 4,860; Time Spy: 1,946
Cinebench R20 Multi-core: 10,362
GeekBench 5: 1,682 (single-core); 9,824 (multi-core)
PCMark 10 (Home Test): 4,293 points
PCMark 10 Battery Life: 8:31
Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 6:02
The double fan setup is quiet yet does a great job of keeping the laptop nice and ventilated. During our daily testing there weren’t any overheating issues; at the most it became warm after extended use but nothing remotely alarming.
Its benchmark scores are better than other laptops with similar specs, so it’s more than capable of handling low and modestly demanding games. And while high-end titles will definitely struggle on this machine, the fact that it can play plenty of the best laptop games like Disco Elysium and Cuphead on top of school and productivity tasks makes its price tag look far more reasonable.
The 1080p display is crystal clear and vibrant and not in the least muddled by the touchscreen, though how long that remains the case will depend on how well you take care of it. A 4K display or an OLED would have been preferable but the drain to the battery life would probably have been too great to be worth it, especially for a pick-up-and-go type of laptop.
The 1080p webcam manages to take clean and well lit pictures and video and the sound quality is also great. Even with the most intricate musical pieces we could find, each instrument could be clearly heard. The volume itself is also well balanced, not too loud or quiet.
Overall performance is comparable to other laptops in the same price and spec range, however, the touchscreen and ability to run games decently well puts it over the edge. But while the price is well earned, 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 be able to find a similarly efficient Dell or Lenovo laptop for a better price.
- Performance: 4 / 5
Acer Swift 5 (2022): Battery Life
- Battery life is solid
- Recharges very quickly
The Acer Swift 5 has great battery life for the amount of power it possesses, both when the laptop is used normally and when it’s under stress from various programs running in the background.
When we ran our standard 1080p movie test, which involves looping Tears of Steel on balanced power settings until the battery life runs out, it took six hours before the battery died.
Meanwhile, when we ran the PCMark 10 Battery Life benchmark, it made it a much more respectable eight hours and 31 minutes, though this is about where other laptops with similar specs end up, so the Swift 5 is mostly making par as far as battery life goes.
Finally, recharging the battery doesn’t take very long either, so its time spent plugged in will be minimal.
- Battery life: 3.5/5
Should I buy an Acer Swift 5 (2022)?
Buy it if...
Don't buy it if...
Also consider
| Value | While definitely worth it, the price of the Acer Swift 5 is still steeper than some of its competitors and it has limited availability to boot. | 3.5/5 |
| Design | A simple yet lovely design, the Acer Swift 5 weighs in at a dreamy two and a half pounds and less than an inch thick makes for the perfect portable machine. | 4.5/5 |
| Performance | The Acer Swift 5 performs incredibly fast thanks to the 12th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU, which even picks up some of the slack and makes it a decent gaming laptop. | 4/5 |
| Battery | Though the Acer Swift 5’s battery is no slouch, compared to its competitors it noticeably falls behind. | 3.5/5 |
- First reviewed July 2022
