JANUARY 2021 PCWorld 41what you’d find on
most premium
Windows laptops:
The surface feels
super-smooth under
your fingers, but the
clicking mechanism
is on the stiff side,
especially as you
move further up the
trackpad. Microsoft’s
Precision Touchpad
drivers are on board,
supporting gestures
such as three-finger
swipes to show the desktop or task view,
three-finger taps to search, and four-finger
swipes to move between desktops.
WEBCAM, SECURITY,
AND AUDIO
The Acer Swift 5 webcam is average. Despite
Acer’s boast of “super high dynamic range”
on its webcam, it’s still just a blurry, grainy
720p camera that turns shadowy images into
indistinct blobs. Unlike many other high-end
laptops these days, the Swift 5 offers no
privacy shutter or keyboard switch for its
camera and microphones.
The Swift 5 does have a fingerprint reader,
though, and while the shape is unusual—it’s
rectangular, not square like most Windows
laptops—it seems accurate enough and can
almost instantly wake the PC from standby.
The useless buzzwords also apply on the
audio front, where Acer boasts of
“TrueHarmony” technology for “headphone-
like” audio along with DTS Audio for
optimized bass response. In reality, the
speakers are terrible: They produce almost no
bass whatsoever and fail to muster enough
volume to compete in loud environments.A NOTE ABOUT BLOATWARE
While we’re griping, Acer’s pre-loaded
software is just slightly more annoying than
average for a Windows PC. Beyond the usual
bundled antivirus (in this case, from Norton),
Acer includes a bunch of programs that nag
you with notifications over time, including
Dropbox, Firefox, and Acer’s own JumpStart
software (which uses its notifications to
advertise games).A privacy shutter and branding-free bezel would have been nice.