44 PCWorld JANUARY 2021REVIEWS ACER SWIFT 5 (2020)
Acer Swift 5 (late 2020)
SF514-55TA-74ECPROS- Very light (2.3 pounds) for a 14-inch touchscreen
laptop. - Excellent gaming performance and battery life for its
size. - HDMI, Thunderbolt 4, and two USB-A ports on
board.
CONS - Weak speakers with practically nonexistent bass.
- Middling webcam with no privacy shutter.
- Display could be brighter given the price.
BOTTOM LINE
The Acer Swift 5 is thin, light, and fast enough to play
Fortnite, showing off Intel’s 11th-gen Tiger Lake and
Iris Xe graphics at their best. It gets stellar battery life
too. The sound quality is the biggest disappointment.
$1,299
Though it doesn’t beat Dell’s XPS 13 2-in-1, the
Swift 5 still offers all-day battery life.Battery life
(Video rundown)
Minutes
ell XPS 13 2-in-1 9310Core i7-1165G7
Acer Swift 5 (late 2020)Core i7-1165G7
Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 14IIL05Core i5-1035G1
Razer Blade Stealth (2020)Core i7-1065G7
Asus ZenBook Flip S UX371ECore i7-1165G7
Acer Swift 5 (late 2019)Core i7-1065G7
LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE862537645789498588instance, at 720p and a stable 30 frames per
second on medium settings, despite Ubisoft’s
warnings that my graphics card did not meet
minimum requirements. For a 2.3-pound
laptop with integrated graphics, that’s
impressive.
Bear in mind, that performance doesn’t
kill battery life, which is typically the case with
laptops that have discrete graphics cards. In
our video rundown test, the Swift 5 lasted for
13 hours and 9 minutes, behind Dell’s XPS
2-in-1 but nearly five hours longer than last
year’s Swift 5. While its predecessor couldn’t
get through a full work day, I had no problems
doing so on the new version, bolstering Intel’s
claims of nine-hour “real-world” battery life for
laptops bearing the “Evo” label.
Like any computer, the Acer Swift 5 has
its weaknesses. There are laptops withricher, brighter displays, and laptops with
better audio quality. The lack of a webcam
privacy shutter also seems out of touch with
current premium laptop trends, even if it’s
not an essential feature. The bold color
choices and use of lightweight magnesium
might turn off a few folks given the
$1,000-and-up price tag.
But if you can look past those quibbles,
the Swift 5 is a fun little laptop, one that you
can easily carry around, that lasts for hours
on end, and that you can plug in at the end
of the day to enjoy a bounty of games that
only the Windows ecosystem provides. At a
purely gut level, I’ve really enjoyed having it
around. While it may not be an M1-powered
MacBook, it raises the bar in its own way.